Kate Millett asked the question in the 1970s, but the effort to ignore it is prodigious.
Yet there is no nepotism involved there: his swooping falsetto on tracks such as Don't Worry Baby and Do It Again is prodigious.
And McAvoy's stutter is prodigious: it takes off into a symphony of its own, at one point of strong emotion becoming so powerful that it actually stops not only himself but his interlocutor.
But it's Brekke's prodigious powers of invention, his ability to keep coming up with unforgettable characters and indelible episodes, that lift this above his own earlier work and most of the heavy Nordic competition".
Whatever the arguments about her longevity and substance (zero and little insist the naysayers), it's her prodigious talent and scope that mark her out as one of 2012's best.
It's a prodigious effort in time and cost ($2m spent).
But it's her prodigious appetite for hard work that truly sets Ledecky apart – the willingness to not only suffer the mind-numbing repetition and inherent loneliness that swimming thousands of laps a week entails but to embrace it.
Beard's output is prodigious.
Wilder's learning was prodigious.
