Found in the Bowels of Crooked Timber: This Made Us Laugh So Fucking Hard

19. I’ve given up on everybody. Surely there’s no point in grownups continuing to read fiction. Time is short, there’s too much real stuff we still don’t understand but need to, Richard Dawkins is a better writer than any novelist; and if you’ve read Tolstoy, Flaubert and, yes, Henry James you’ve already learned all you’re going to about human nature from any novelist.


46. ...Note to “Richard Dawkins is a better writer than any novelist”—that is the most touching confession of an utter lack of aesthetic sensibility that I’ve ever seen. Don’t fret; it’s like you’re color-blind, or tone-deaf, or such.