The power of elegant prose

I discovered writer Robert Ebert ’s blog just in time for his well-turned and generous observations on the Beijing Olympics this past summer.   He has long since passed from my list of favorite critics into my list of favorite writers, an artist whose work transcends the specifics of his trade and touches the root of human nuance and communication. (Aside: such artistry is surprisingly orthogonal to quality of work, and those with deep perception regularly produce careless or incomplete work, as do we all.)  So it was a lasting pleasure to see that not only does he have a changeable personal blog to complement his regular cleanly-patterned column of film reviews, but also that he explores the medium for real conversation, with well-moderated and replied-to comments that expand his two-page posts a hundred times over.  Three cheers for that.  As for those story reviews, I find a number of them (in moderation - don’t eat more than twenty at o...