For­rest Gander has a nice (re)consideration of Eliot Weinberger’s An Ele­men­tal Thing, “the best book by our best living lit­er­ary essayist,” over at Har­riet. (My con­tri­bu­tion to the “scant attention” the book received after its pub­li­ca­tion may be read here.)

And while I’m at it, may I rec­om­mend Pico Iyer’s essay on Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leop­ard in the cur­rent NYRB? It’s a sen­si­tive and thought­ful piece, and useful not least as anti­dote to the clat­ter and in(s)anity of the cur­rent season. (I’ll post a link when the NYRB site starts work­ing again.)