Last night I drove down to Books & Books in Coral Gables to hear Scott Simon read from his new novel, Windy City, which is about his old hometown of ____ (fill in the blank). The host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday was very dapper in a black suit with a green-and-red pocket handkerchief, a white cuff-linked shirt, a silk tie, and a lapel pin of the flag of Chicago (there, I gave it away). One of the last of that breed of nattily dressed authors led by Saul Bellow (another, though now deceased, Chicagoan), Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese.

In his comments, Simon said that he worked for a while in an Indian restaurant in Chicago and he revealed that, while the waiters were Indian, the cooks were Salvadoran or Guatemalan. So you'd have Indian waiters walking into the kitchen and saying "Dos dosas por favor."

Somewhat related to this, Simon noted that the research for the book was the fun part. "I wish," he said, echoing the sentiments of travel writers everywhere, "you could go from the research to the book tour."