Here’s Dwight again, reviewing a collection of essays and speeches, “Burning Questions,” by Margaret Atwood: “I kept reading. Hope springs eternal across a crowded table of contents. And there is some smart material and pawky wit in ‘Burning Questions,’ even if they huddle, trembling, like ferns behind a waterfall.” (Jonathan Gerard, Durham, N.C., and Betsy Snider, Acworth, N.H.)Sticking with The Times, here’s Elizabeth Spiers, whose mixed-bag skepticism about human progress clearly matches mine, on workplace romances: “We are a higher species capable of observing restraint, but we are also ambulatory clusters of needs and desires, with which evolution has both protected and sabotaged us.” (Mike Burke, Honeoye Falls, N.Y.)Here’s James Poniewozik, noting that an appetite for nostalgia helped render aspects of the Super Bowl, especially its rap-centric halftime show, as tasty as they were meant to be: “For the game to finally center America’s biggest music genre in front of America’s biggest audience was overdue and thrilling. But the calendar doesn’t lie. The Super Bowl, as a rule, discovers music when that music’s audience discovers high-fiber diets, and the price of admission was knowing that this revolutionary soundtrack was now dad’s treadmill workout playlist. Snoop Dogg commanded the midfield stage, cool and resplendent in a blue bandanna tracksuit; that afternoon he had hosted the Puppy Bowl with Martha Stewart.” (Max Shulman, Manhattan)Alexis Soloski, reviewing a new Off Broadway production of “The Merchant of Venice,” called it “a fairy tale with a corrosive center, a chocolate filled with battery acid.” (Leila Hover, Lacey, Wash.)Melissa Kirsch, pondering “How Life Resumes” after the worst of the pandemic, described a trip out to the movies: “Being in an audience, emoting in concert, even squeezing past the bitter-enders in my row who sat all the way through the credits, felt good. It felt like a two-hour workout for my weakened living-life muscles. (Mary Liz Olazabal, Miami)Sabrina Imbler and Emily Anthes traced the path of the coronavirus through the animal kingdom: “The virus infiltrated zoos, infecting the usual suspects (tigers and lions) as well as more surprising species (the coati-mundi, which is native to the Americas and resembles a raccoon crossed with a lemur, and the binturong, which is native to Southeast Asia and resembles a raccoon crossed with an elderly man).” (Susan Sawatzky, Colorado Springs, and Bernie Cosell, Pearisburg, Va.)In The Washington Post, George Will bemoaned the Trump-pleasing somersaults performed by so many Republicans: “Considering the amount of nonsense spoken, it is consoling that so many people mean so little of what they say.” (Arthur Rothstein, San Francisco)
Opinion | Putin’s Attack on Ukraine Teaches Us a Vital History Lesson
