An e-mail:

Last night my three year old son was refusing to lie down and go to sleep. He came over to my spot on the couch as I had just started reading the collection of your father’s work, The Norman Podhoretz Reader. He climbed up on my lap and asked, “What are you reading daddy, the news?” I flipped the book back to its cover and read him the title. My wife suggested I read him a bedtime story, so I started reading aloud the first entry from the book, “The Adventures of Saul Bellow.” To my surprise, he was listening to the words and staring blankly at the picture-less pages. After five or six pages I could hear him lightly snoring. My wife came out of the kitchen, and to her surprise, he had fallen asleep on my lap listening to The Norman Podhoretz Reader. We’ll cross our fingers and see if your dad’s writing works as magically as it did last night. I’ll give him a choice, Thomas the Tank Engine or Norman Podhoretz?