'The Sudden Erection of Your Small Dorsal Hairs'

The medical technician performing the echocardiogram asked me to lie on my side, not “dorsally.” I thought first of the triangular fin on the back of a porpoise. Then I thought of Nabokov’s 1966 interview with Alfred J. Appel , who asks, “Do you think literary criticism is at all purposeful, and if so, what kind of criticism would you point to?” He replies: “My advice to a budding literary critic…