I am willing to believe, not having time to read it, that Nicholson Baker’s anti-Churchill piece is as obnoxiously wrong-headed as it sounds. I’d just like to record, though, that I thought The Mezzanine one of the best novels of the 1980s, very funny and original. (The action of the book all takes place as the narrator rides an escalator from first floor to mezzanine in an office building.) Of the others, I only read The Fermata, which sci-fi writer have done much better.

Baker’s “book rescue” project, which I occasionally read something about, also seems very worthy. And some of his essays stick in the mind … I dimly recall one about the propriety of putting a comma after a dash. Not many peopole can get an essay out of minutiae as minute as that.