SOURCE: Wood, Michael. “Up to the Minutiae.” New York Review of Books 43, no. 8 (20 June 1996): 65-6.

In the following review, Wood examines the variety of essays in The Size of Thoughts, commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of various pieces. Wood praises the humor and passion evident in several essays, focusing on “Discards” and “Lumber” in particular.

There is much to be said for tiny signs, and we don't have to laugh at the idea of what Erich Heller once called a “profound” semicolon in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Borges's story “The Library of Babel” opens with a pretty deep parenthesis: “The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. …” Just a pair of small curved marks, but what a difference they make. You could get the meaning here, and even the rhythm, with commas or dashes, but you couldn't...