loving

One thing I forgot to mention in my post on The Last Friend is how moving and beautiful a novel it is. Ben Jelloun brings a real passion for life and for the friendship his relationship describes.

I’ve read other books that reward a reader in the same way as this one, bringing with it a powerful sense of grace and contentment: John Berger’s Here is Where We Meet and Frederic Tuten’s The Green Hour both come to immediate mind.  The thing these books all share is a true love for their subject matter, for the material of which they are composed (rather than for the ideas that animate them).  Berger writes about Portugal (and to a lesser extent his mother) with a loving tenderness while Tuten writes about art and a boy very like his godson with evident and equal ardor.  These are the qualities that Ben Jelloun brings to The Last Friend: tenderness, awe, respect, longing; in short, love.

This love for one’s material is what makes for the most rewarding stories (although not necessarily the greatest—none of the books I mentioned are great in the normal sense of that term).  More than writing what you know, as so many guidebooks suggest you do, I suggest that you write what you love, whatever or whomever that might be.