All these books about the horribleness of modern life, she said, a lot of them brilliant, I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me. But I don’t want to read any more about narcissism and alienation and the futility of relationships between the sexes. I don’t want to read any more about human, in particular male, hideousness. Whatever happened to Faulkner’s idea that a writer’s job was to lift people up?
