Flashes of brilliance …

… An Apostle to the Intellectuals - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

There is, indeed, a surprisingly ungenerous quality to much of Ms. Robinson’s analytical writing—an attitude also apparent in her immediately previous collection of essays, “When I Was a Child I Read Books” (2012). I say it’s surprising because in her fiction—I think of “Home” and especially “Gilead”—she is capable of conveying the outlooks and even the delusions of other minds with a graceful and gentle charity. That charity largely vanishes when she treats social trends and contemporary politics. Those who take a different view from Ms. Robinson’s barely merit naming, fair assessments not at all.