The Dinner

by Herman Koch

happiness needs nothing but itself; it doesn’t have to be validated. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” is the opening sentence of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. All I could hope to add to that is that unhappy families—and within those families, in particular the unhappy husband and wife—can never get by on their own. The more validators, the merrier. Unhappiness loves company. Unhappiness can’t stand silence—especially not the uneasy silence that settles in when it is all alone.

But a world without disasters and violence—be it the violence of nature or that of muscle and blood—would be the truly unbearable thing.

That was how I looked at life sometimes, as a warm meal that was growing cold. I knew I had to eat, or else I would die, but I had lost my appetite.