午夜福利1000集合

The Song of the Earth, by Hugh Nissenson, Algonquin Books, $24.95,
ISBN 1565122984

HOW we have learned to hate the phrase 鈥淣ature versus nurture鈥�! Not only is
it stupid鈥攖he contest it suggests exists nowhere in nature, only in
newspapers鈥攂ut now the fiction shelves are groaning with
misrepresentations of how genes and the environment work together.

So thank heavens for Hugh Nissenson, whose experimental novel casts a
genetically enhanced artist as its hero. If there were prizes for risks taken,
Nissenson would own a cupboard-full. He succeeds in writing realistically and
soberly about how genes contribute to personality. He describes our genetically
engineered future in the voices of ordinary people. He even gets away with
including his own artwork, passing it off as the product of his hero鈥檚
genius.

But the trouble with experimentation is that it risks appearing foolish.
Nissenson鈥檚 depiction of global gender conflict, in particular, is jolly silly.
And the book is structured as scraps and snatches, ostensibly compiled without
commentary some years after the artist鈥檚 untimely death. This is not a narrative
to be enjoyed, but a body of evidence to be sifted: a rather unengaging twiddle.