My career has been such a strange one so far, I am not sure whether I can suggest that any math student try to follow in my footsteps. At first glance it can almost seem, topologically speaking, discontinuous.

I majored in intensive mathematics at Yale University and completed my course work for my MA in mathematics at Brandeis University, but after that I left the field of mathematics completely.

I started writing about a variety of subjects for major intellectual publications like Commentary, The New York Review of Books, and The American Scholar about literature, music, and politics. I went on to receive an MA in English literature at Columbia University and a PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where I studied philosophy, music, and literature.

After completing my course work at Chicago I became a music critic for The New York Times, then music critic for The New Republic, and in 1991, Chief Music Critic for The New York Times. Beginning in the fall of 1995, I began work as cultural critic-at-large for The New York Times. I could be considered an eclectic intellectual, who turned in his exam papers in algebraic topology, never to return. But the real astonishment, even for me, about my career, is how deeply the study of mathematics has informed its every turn.