Jay McInerney reviews Mark Haddon's first novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The book, as described, is fascinating, but what really caught my attention was McInerney's lead:

The difference between literature and its imitations might be defined in any number of ways, but let's be reckless, even elitist, and propose that a literary novel requires new reading skills and teaches them within its pages, while a conventional novel—whether it is about lawyers or professors or smart single girls—depends on our ingrained habits of reading and perception, and ultimately confirms them as adequate to our understanding of the world around us.

posted: 10:41:33 AM