..this Indiscriminate Love Feels Entirely

Jenny Offill's Dept. Of Speculation Resembles No Book I've Read Before. If I Tell You That It's Funny, And Moving, And True; That It's As Compact And Mysterious As A Neutron; That It Tells A Profound Story Of Love And Parenthood While Invoking (among Others) Keats, Kafka, Einstein, Russian Cosmonauts, And Advice For The Housewife Of 1896, Will You Please Simply Believe Me, And Read It?

It's The City's Crush And Heave That Move You; Its Intricacy; Its Endless Life. You Know The Story About Manhattan As A Wilderness Purchased For Strings Of Beads, But You Find It Impossible Not To Believe That It Has Always Been A City; That If You Dug Beneath It You Would Find The Ruins Of Another, Older City, And Then Another And Another.

. . . He Felt Himself Entering A Moment So Real He Could Only Run Toward It, Shouting.

What I Want To Say Is That I Owe All The Happiness Of My Life To You. You Have Been Entirely Patient With Me And Incredibly Good. Everything Is Gone From Me But The Certainty Of Your Goodness. I Can't Go On Spoiling Your Life Any Longer. I Don't Think Two People Could Have Been Happier Than We Have Been.

At The Risk, Then, Of Being Shunned By Some Of My Gloomier Peers, I Venture To Tell You That Writers Work Like Demons, Suffer Greatly, And Are Also Happy, In Unmistakable Ways, Some Of The Time. If We Had No Knowledge Of Happiness, Our Novels Wouldn't Sufficiently Resemble Real Life. Some Of Us Are Even Made A Little Bit Happy, On Occasion, By The Writing Process Itself. I Mean, Really, If There Wasn't Some Sort Of Enjoyment To Be Derived, Would Any Of Us Keep Doing It?