community

People who listen carefully are oblivious to themselves; they immerse themselves in what they hear: ‘The more self-forgetful the listener is, the more deeply what he listens to is impressed upon his memory.’14 We are increasingly losing the gift to listen carefully. We play to the gallery; we eavesdrop on each other instead of forgetting ourselves

A narrative creates community; a novel, however, is born of the lonely, isolated individual. A novel psychologizes and interprets, but a narrative proceeds descriptively: ‘The most extraordinary things, marvelous things, are related with the greatest accuracy, but the psychological connections among the events are not forced on the reader.’