The Vulnerables

by Sigrid Nunez

There lies behind everything . . . a certain quality which we may call grief. • James Saunders, Next Time I’ll Sing to You

Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described.

A vulnerable, she called me. You’re a vulnerable, she said. And you need to act like one.

Something is missing. Something has been lost. I believe this is at the heart of why I write.

But the feeling has survived and will not go away: I want to know why I feel as though I have been mourning all my life.

(A friend who has had the same experience gives this explanation: It happened to me the year I retired. You reach a certain age, and it all kicks in: Social Security, Medicare, and a fondness for hydrangeas.)

Anthropomorphism: we should have made it our religion, I once heard an environmental activist say. Irrational, but then what religion is not. And consider how many more irrational beliefs people have always embraced.