Right here’s Dwight once more, reviewing a set of essays and speeches, “Burning Questions,” by Margaret Atwood: “I stored studying. Hope springs everlasting throughout a crowded desk of contents. And there may be some sensible materials and pawky wit in ‘Burning Questions,’ even when they huddle, trembling, like ferns behind a waterfall.” (Jonathan Gerard, Durham, N.C., and Betsy Snider, Acworth, N.H.)
Sticking with The Occasions, right here’s Elizabeth Spiers, whose mixed-bag skepticism about human progress clearly matches mine, on office romances: “We’re the next species able to observing restraint, however we’re additionally ambulatory clusters of wants and needs, with which evolution has each protected and sabotaged us.” (Mike Burke, Honeoye Falls, N.Y.)
Right here’s James Poniewozik, noting that an urge for food for nostalgia helped render elements of the Tremendous Bowl, particularly its rap-centric halftime present, as tasty as they have been meant to be: “For the sport to lastly heart America’s largest music style in entrance of America’s largest viewers was overdue and thrilling. However the calendar doesn’t lie. The Tremendous Bowl, as a rule, discovers music when that music’s viewers discovers high-fiber diets, and the worth of admission was realizing that this revolutionary soundtrack was now dad’s treadmill exercise playlist. Snoop Dogg commanded the midfield stage, cool and resplendent in a blue bandanna tracksuit; that afternoon he had hosted the Pet Bowl with Martha Stewart.” (Max Shulman, Manhattan)
Alexis Soloski, reviewing a brand new Off Broadway manufacturing of “The Service provider of Venice,” known as it “a fairy story with a corrosive heart, a chocolate stuffed with battery acid.” (Leila Hover, Lacey, Wash.)
Melissa Kirsch, pondering “How Life Resumes” after the worst of the pandemic, described a visit out to the films: “Being in an viewers, emoting in live performance, even squeezing previous the bitter-enders in my row who sat during the credit, felt good. It felt like a two-hour exercise for my weakened living-life muscle tissue. (Mary Liz Olazabal, Miami)
Sabrina Imbler and Emily Anthes traced the trail of the coronavirus by means of the animal kingdom: “The virus infiltrated zoos, infecting the same old suspects (tigers and lions) in addition to extra stunning species (the coati-mundi, which is native to the Americas and resembles a raccoon crossed with a lemur, and the binturong, which is native to Southeast Asia and resembles a raccoon crossed with an aged man).” (Susan Sawatzky, Colorado Springs, and Bernie Cosell, Pearisburg, Va.)
In The Washington Submit, George Will bemoaned the Trump-pleasing somersaults carried out by so many Republicans: “Contemplating the quantity of nonsense spoken, it’s consoling that so many individuals imply so little of what they are saying.” (Arthur Rothstein, San Francisco)