I had said in this column once that, “Michael Dirda has been America’s most engaging, energetic book critic.” A few days later Amitava Kumar emailed me to say, “I disagree slightly with your assessment of Dirda; I’d give that honour to the British-born, New York-based James Wood, who pushes up the stakes in this business like nobody else. Unlike Dirda, his readings of someone like Updike is demanding and to my mind utterly persuasive. I’d like to argue a bit more strenuously in favour of Wood.” I wrote back saying I wholeheartedly agreed with him.

Pradeep Sebastian in the Hindu begins his column–a review of James Wood’s How Fiction Works–by invoking my somewhat polemical praise in a message I sent him some years ago.

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BIDEN: Based on what you’ve said, there’s really no hope — we really should get the hell out of there right now. I mean, there’s nothing to do. Nothing.

ROSEN: As a journalist, I’m uncomfortable advising an imperialist power about how to be a more efficient imperialist power. And I don’t think that we’re there for the interest of the Iraqi people. I don’t think that’s ever been a motivation. […]

BIDEN: [If we withdraw], the good news is we wouldn’t be imperialists in Iraq, from your perspective.

ROSEN: Only elsewhere in the region. (laughter). … There’s no positive scenario in Iraq these days. Not every situation has a solution.

Watch the exchange here.

(Hat-tip, Jim Holstun)

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Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters tend to be immigrants from India and their American-reared children, exiles who straddle two countries, two cultures, and belong to neither: too used to freedom to accept the rituals and conventions of home, and yet too steeped in tradition to embrace American mores fully.

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At this time, this review article is the fifth most e-mailed story from today’s New York Times. Why? If this were a multiple choice test, how might the answers be presented?

A. Book reviews are very popular.
B. We are all Indians.
C. Jhumpa Lahiri is a wonderful writer.
D. Wonder Bread and Curry–there’s a new cliché for you.
E. All or none of the above.

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