All Intensive Purposes

The Washington Post's Bob Thompson profiles Colson Whitehead, whose most recent novel is Apex Hides The Hurt. There's much about how Whitehead got started, and then there's also this aside about what he did with his genius grant:

In 2002, he won one of the so-called "genius awards" from the MacArthur Foundation. "It gave us this ability to say, 'Oh, maybe we should have a kid,' " he says gratefully. His daughter, Madeleine, is now a year and a half old.

Is there a better way to use a MacArthur award?