Yesterday, the New York Times ran an op-ed piece by a 24-year-old Brooklyn lad named Ben Dolnick, about his summer working at the Central Park Zoo. Dolnick's first novel, Zoology, was published last month, and it's about an 18-year-old boy from Chevy Chase, Md. (where Dolnick is from, too!) who goes to work at the Central Park Zoo. In a wee review, the New Yorker wrote that "Dolnick seems to share some of his protagonist's immaturity, but he demonstrates an engaging lightness of touch." The book seems to be—we haven't read it—a pretty slight coming-of-age novel in which the protagonist barely comes of age. (It's blurbed by Jonathan Safran Foer, but still! UPDATE: We have learned that they went to the same D.C. private school.) Dolnick's doing pretty well for himself! It probably helps that Dolnick's mom, Lynn Dolnick, is Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr.'s cousin. Also, she sits on the board of the New York Times Company. Not that the Times, which seems to get its panties in a bunch about conflicts of interest and disclosures and the like, mentioned that. But there's more of this web to untangle.