The beginning of a plot is the prompting of desire.

One is happy to report that Israel Shenker is still at the aerosol stage. His energy is still compressed. The result distinguishes him both as a Jew and as an observer of Jews.

A brilliant and challenging discussion presented with extraordinary clarity.

The dream is everything in the sport of fishing. You dream with every cast of your fly that the shadowy form will finally rise to your fly. You dream as you drop off to sleep at night about the lunker that got loose just as you were about to net it.

To be crazy is not necessarily to writhe in snake pits or converse with imaginary gods. It can sometimes be not knowing what to do in the morning.

In the spirit of Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot and Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, Mr. Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage keeps circling its subject in widening loops and then darting at it when you least expect it . . . a wild book.

Even when you disagree with her, she electrifies your mind.