"Without its terrible history, the Enola Gay is just another old aircraft brought to an ersatz life in a museum whose lunchroom is a Macdonald’s joined by “the largest McCafé in America"."


"While the novel is about Kazakhs and the past legends of Kazakhs, it should be noted that Aitmatov himself is Kirghiz."


"The human heroine of the book, Jaya Nihalani, might easily be described as a terrorist. Did you have any trouble with this?"


"If there ever was to be a revolution, however, the literary theorists have failed it. While the disparity between rich and poor in the US grew wider and more abysmal, while France and the rest of Europe created an underclass of Muslim immigrants, while the US became an empire and exported its industrial jobs to its de facto colonies, while the Christian right demonized homosexuals, while English departments grew yet more exploitative of its adjunct workers—wile all this happened, the tenured class studied Wittgenstein, Marx, Foucault, hooks, Fanon, Lacan, Spivak, Lyotard, Kristeva, Poulet, Butler, and Gertrude Stein and felt subversive."