Tom Wolfe is my writer hero. And he’s been busy lately, writing The Kingdom of Speech.

Our top evolutionists and linguists recently admitted that, despite what they’ve been teaching for years about how man, the only “animal” that can speak, developed the power of language, they really can’t find any evidence for their theories.

Wolfe, stumbling upon this admission, couldn’t help himself. He sat down with his laptop, or his yellow legal pad, or whatever he uses, and wrote about it.

The whole debate is this: Is human speech innate, evolved, hard-wired? Or is it an “artifact,” something man invented?

Wolfe recounts with hand-rubbing glee the embarrassment, the dropped jaw, the slowly blinking eye of the big ego when it learns it has been wrong. What Wolfe cannot stand are pretensions and unsupported assumptions, and it turns out there have been quite a few. He relishes the tale of small, earnest, hard-working scientists pitted against well-to-do gentleman scholars propped up by friends in high places:

“In 2005,

[Professor A] was flying very high. In fact, very high barely says it. The man was . . . in orbit. . . . Bored brainless by all those tiny little languages that old-fashioned flycatchers like [Professor B] were still bringing back from out in the ‘the field.’ . . .”

Professor B was “a clueless outsider who crashes the party of the big thinkers. Look at him! [B] was everything [A] wasn’t: a rugged outdoorsman, a hard rider with a thatchy reddish beard and a head of thick thatchy reddish hair. He could have passed for a ranch hand or a West Virginia gas driller.”

Even though my grasp on the subject is still not solid, I laughed plenty. I shook my pom-poms for the underdog. I threatened to read passages to my husband (the true sign of a fun read) but never did because, really, I would need to read him the whole book.

That’s why we write reviews around here, to get people to read it themselves.

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For our meal of the week, we unaccountably ended up with all yellow, but tasty, food:

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Corn Chowder

Low-Fat Cornbread  20161001_181138_resized

Microwave Peanut Butter Fudge:

2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup chunky-style peanut butter
6 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
3/4 tsp. vanilla

In large bowl, place butter and peanut butter. Microwave on high until butter melts (1 1/2 to 2 min.) Stir until blended.

Add remaining ingredients; stir until lumps of sugar disappear. Microwave on high until softened but not bubbly (1 to 1 1/2 minutes). Stir. Pour into buttered 9″ square baking pan.

Cover; refrigerate at least 1 hour. Cut in 36 pieces. Store refrigerated. (Recipe from the Village Nursery Cookbook, one of those send-in-your-favorite-recipes, school fund-raising cookbooks)

You can make the fudge ahead of time. It will only take you 15 minutes.

The rest came together in just under an hour. Start the cornbread and, while it bakes, move on to the soup.

The chowder doesn’t use a whole 12-oz. can of evaporated milk. I diluted some of the extra and used it in the fudge.

This chowder can be a thin soup. But you can mash up the potatoes in your bowl. It will give you something to do while the soup cools.

Here’s the grocery list.