What Are You Going Through

by Sigrid Nunez

I think it’s largely true, what I once heard a famous playwright say, that there are no truly stupid human beings, no uninteresting human lives, and that you’d discover this if you were willing to sit and listen to people. But sometimes you had to be willing to sit for a very long time.

Untold is a good word. Meaning, of course, not recounted or narrated. But also, too much or too many to say. The untold story of his youth. Untold suffering.

I should make a list, I thought. I’d made a lot of lists since all this began, endless to-do lists—as Scott Fitzgerald once pointed out people are wont to do when they’re on the verge of a crack-up. My way was to make a list then proceed to ignore it; instead of ever even looking at it again, I’d sit down and make a new one.