(2002-02-28) b

DanSimmons on Tom Wolfe vs his critics: When, in Boulder Co, a few miles down the road from where I live, the murder of little Jon Benet Ramsey eventually cost the careers of the district attorney (an idiot I'd known slightly for 16 years) and the mayor and the city manager and the chief of police and the chief of detectives and ... well, those of us who read Tom Wolfe had a sense of the dynamic of it all. Those who read John Updike and Irving and Norman Mailer and Salman Rushdie ... who knows what insights they gleaned? Perhaps Jon Benet was murdered by a disembodied hand from a telepathic Egyptian escaped from a Shakespearean play or fallen out of an airliner passing over. And, reminding me of Wealth Bondage, That which is excellent is serious, however comedic in its tone or inwardly Jamesian in its focus or grandly Stevensonian in its scope and adventure. Talent commands.