Only after speaking with Elena Passarello for an hour do I remember that in an earlier incarnation she was an actor. Perhaps that’s why she’s so at ease being interviewed. She seems to possess none of the stilted seriousness that so many writers like to put on when talking about their work. Tellingly, her show business past is given all the attention of a footnote in her first essay collection Let Me Clear My Throat—a scientifically girded exploration into the oddities and impacts of the …