Meanwhile,

I have been reading other things as well.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet

As enjoyable as Sherlock Holmes' adventures are, I disagree with their place in the English literary canon. Take this, for example. There is nothing, to my eye, aside from the obvious skill in characterization, to set this apart from any other detective novel. Why are these considered anything other than well-written pablum?

Chris Hedges: I Don't Believe in Atheists

See, this is why I don't read much non-fiction. What is true for another current project, the Autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila, is true for Hedges here: they have no sense of structure. Teresa had no access to an editor and a word processor, however, and her rambling is correspondingly excusable. Hedges has no such excuse. It's as if he felt irritated about something or, as in this case, someone, and just started talking about it. He makes a couple of good points, but he makes them repeatedly and in no particular order. As with so many before him, he doesn't even seem to see the virtue of a satisfying conclusion. this should be either chopped up and recooked, or boiled into a much thinner work.

Which is not to say that I disagree with him. Certain new (conservative) atheists are truly bags of bilious wind. But his raillery against them has the unpleasant flavor of a straw man argument, the very thing of which he is accusing them. In short, I'm sure it would be much more satisfying to have coffee with this man than to read a book written by him.

BTD: 3