Helen DeWitt is the author of The Last Samurai, Lightning Rods and, with Ilya Gridneff, Your Name Here.
I write this with a baseball bat by the bed. A weapon that will do more damage than you can bring yourself to inflict is useless; last time I made the wrong choice. (Could I hit someone with a baseball bat? Perhaps.) This may be completely unnecessary. Or it might not. The Women’s Freedom Center of Brattleboro, Vermont has advised me to leave at once for my mother’s home in DC.
The laconic riposte is a pivot or judo throw that makes use of an opponent’s superior weight and strength in order to tip them off-balance. Helen DeWitt has been talking in laconic for quite a while...
Some years ago, the novelist David Foster Wallace submitted himself to a long television interview with Charlie Rose, the PBS chat-show host. It was a terrific performance, and in it Wallace...
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