Another outstanding essayist who is maddeningly inconsistent, alternating brilliant phrasing and insights with work that doesn’t work at all. Among the former are his essay on Amnon Shea, whose book “Reading the OED” yields this brilliant epigram: “Is he turning into, he wonders, one of the Library People—the bag toters and mutterers who spend all their time there,” or his girlfriend’s response: “The point at which I become bored has long since passed.” On the other hand, some of his essays just don’t work— the words on airplane wings, one summer about childhood summer experiences. His war pacifism work is very powerful. I particularly liked his elegy to Updike, referring to his “level of finish, of polish because we all have thoughts. They’re slumped on the couch and they are not at their very best, in fact they are completely unshaven and they aren’t all that clean, necessarily. They’re living in the halfway house of what you have to say. What…”  My favorite section was on reading; least favorite on his work to preserve old newspapers.