Of all the things one sacrifices when marrying, I miss this most of all: the freedom to get involved in another person, in their story, their idiosyncrasies and, simultaneously, to reveal oneself enough to appear interesting to yourself again.  The discovery of another and yourself through their eyes.  One thing that made university so heady was the long late-night conversations in the common areas with the other students, each of us trying to understand the world and ourselves by talking about it.  I no longer have those sorts of encounters and the world seems particularly bland and unpalatable as a consequence.

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.