The Song of the Earth, by Hugh Nissenson, Algonquin Books, $24.95,
ISBN 1565122984
HOW we have learned to hate the phrase “Nature versus nurture”! Not only is
it stupid—the contest it suggests exists nowhere in nature, only in
newspapers—but now the fiction shelves are groaning with
misrepresentations of how genes and the environment work together.
So thank heavens for Hugh Nissenson, whose experimental novel casts a
genetically enhanced artist as its hero. If there were prizes for risks taken,
Nissenson would own a cupboard-full. He succeeds in writing realistically and
soberly about how genes contribute to personality. He…
