More on life and narrative: Anthony Lane in last week's New Yorker:

The film proceeds with a stop-start motion, as if it lacked enough gas for a certifiable plot. This may be deliberate; you could argue that plotlessness is the family’s problem, as they fight to lend thrust and purpose to their survival in a foreign land. And thus we get the search for a home ... link

Also from that issue: Malcolm Gladwell on institution as a moralistic buzzword, and Louis Menand on John Updike.