I have just sent in a book review to the New York Sun. It is a review of Robert & Ellen Kaplan’s The Art of the Infinite. Robert’s previous book was named The Nothing That Is (a line from a Wallace Stevens poem). My review–which should appear in the Wednesday or Thursday Sun–includes the sentence: “There has been–and, judging by how successful The Nothing That Is was, is–a good demand for books explaining math topics to readers with a decent liberal, but non-mathematical, education.” I confess to being pleased with that “…is was, is.” My inspiration here was the late Anthony Burgess, whose novel Enderby includes the sentence: “He breathed baffingly on him, for no banquet would serve, because of the known redolence of onions, onions, onions.” The following sentence also begins with the word “Onions.”