“Stamping out conflict of interest may result in a ‘fairer’ book review. But will it produce a better one? I think not.”

Artists! Woods! Shooting stars! That is the fabulous concurrence to which I was recently exposed here at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where I am happily spending August.

Somehow word spread about the meteor showers. Rumor flitted from table to table at dinner, hot on the heels of the news that a certain novelist had been given extra sausages. Stories of stellar resplendence rolled with the 3-ball down the pool table. No one could quite explain it, but the attempts were creative: earth had rolled into a projectile meteor belt; the planet was tilting on its axis toward cosmic chaos, one of the gods had ashed a cigarette. In any case, there were shooting stars up there, and several of us decided to go to the golf course across the street to watch them. By 10 p.m., the appointed congregation time, word had spread further and the outing had grown–in the way colony outings often do–to the size of a Roman legion. We waited for last minute bathroom runs, then phalanxed onto the darkened road.

Immediate controversy arose over the use of flashlights. One of our number–a fabulously gung-ho sculptor–had vowed not to use her flashlight unless absolutely necessary. MacDowell has been impressively resistant to lighting, and as everyone knows, the woods are lovely, dark and deep. Going lightless can be challenging. However, one can usually follow either the hump of the rounded gravel roads, or the thin, jagged line of sky that parallels it, finding guidance, as humans will, either above or below.

In the absence of light, however, a Greek chorus of doom began summoning the specters of werewolves, ax-murderers and passing Volvos, and a few flashlights were duly, if grudgingly, engaged.