(Lev Grossman writes about books here on Wednesdays. Subscribe to his RSS feed.) This post is by way of a reply to Arthur Krystal’s “Easy Writers,” a thoroughly thought-provoking piece about the relationship between genre fiction and literary fiction that ran in the New Yorker this week. I was happy to see the New Yorker weighing in on this, because I think it’s an important part of what’s going on in fiction right now. I think about it a lot. So naturally if anybody says anything about it anywhere, the world urgently requires my response. [I want to be clear, by the way, that this is a response in the sense of a (probably one-sided) critical conversation. There’s been some umbrage in the genre world ... Continue reading →

John B. Carnett / Bonnier Coorporation via Getty Images David Eagleman is a professor of neuroscience at Baylor University running his own lab, a successful author, a dynamic lecturer (with a popular TED talk on his resume), and his reputation was sealed when The New Yorker profiled his unusual work on the brain’s perception of time. His latest book, Incognito: the Secret Lives of the Brain, is out on paperback this week. Eagleman speaks about accidentally founding a worldwide movement, why being high-profile can be an occasional liability, and how being featured in The New Yorker changed his life. At the foot of the Sandia Mountains, just outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. Where and what did you study? As an undergraduate I majored in British and ... Continue reading →

The first sporting event that I remember caring about was the 1982 Boston Marathon. I was six years old, which is an age when most sports make no sense: the players wear masks, are freakishly tall, or contend with complicated matters like strike zones. But children know how to run and they know how to race. There’s little competition that’s purer than two men—Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley, in this case—racing side by side for 26.2 miles. Beardsley wore a white cap; Salazar wore red shorts; they ran so close together that they seemed like one. Salazar was twenty-three years old, and full of swagger. “I’m the fastest runner in the race,” he told reporters beforehand. He was the world-record holder in the event, and ... Continue reading →

This Sunday’s New York Times Book Review contains a critical review of Imagine by Christopher Chabris, a psychology professor at Union College and co-author of The Invisible Gorilla. I enjoyed his book, so I was disappointed to learn he didn’t enjoy mine. (Needless to say, I preferred my first Times review!) The review doesn’t really engage with the ideas of Imagine. Rather, Chabris uses his review to undertake a larger critique of my popular science writing, with its reliance on the “story-study-lesson” format and its tendency to not “discuss whether or how often [scientific results] have been replicated.” The first seems to me a matter of personal taste, and I’ll address the important issue of replication below. But before we get to that, I’d like ... Continue reading →

Jonathan Hanson for The Wall Street Journal Self-control problems often fade away when it comes to obeying religious dictates. These teenagers are eating a kosher meal in Maryland. I was raised in a kosher household. Though I never fully understood why I couldn't eat cheeseburgers or pepperoni pizza—the theology still confuses me—I quickly learned to follow the rules. At birthday parties, I always informed the hosts that I preferred my pizza plain. If they forgot, I would just eat the crust. What's odd about such self-restraint is that I was terrible at holding back my childish desires in almost every other way. Even as I skipped the pepperoni, I would often gorge myself on cake. I could deny myself lobster, but I would throw massive ... Continue reading →