FOUR FAVORITES
Read more fiction. Watch more films.
*** LET’S TAKE A MOMENT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WHO ARE EXPERIENCING SUCH DISTRESS. SENDING LOVE AND HOPE! ***
We are at a beautiful beach in the New Zealand summer. Behind me, on the track to Wharariki beach, Stuart and our four kids Thomasin, Davida, Pete and Sara were talking about their Christmas books. I overheard Stuart say: "Reading books and watching films is the only way to understand the interiority of another person, to experience what it is to think like someone else".
Stuart had given me the novel ALL FOURS, by Miranda July for Christmas. This was provocative because he knows that I only read science books about quantum physics and cosmology. Why? Because if I read fiction I get completely consumed by it and cannot think about anything else but the fictional story and characters. I stay up all night until the book is finished. This is impractical! And so it proved to be, I went to Sydney for work right after Christmas and I finished ALL FOURS in tw…