So you’re at a party with friends, and Steve asks what you’ve been reading lately. You launch into a description of Sarah Bakewell’s “How to Live, A Life of Montaigne,” her biography of the “father of the essay,” telling Steve enthusiastically how much you’re learning from this book and how you want to read some of the Frenchman’s essays. Less than two minutes into your narrative, you notice that while he’s nodding at the appropriate places and saying such things as “interesting” or “wow,” Steve is looking past you at the treats the hostess is bringing to the hors d’oeuvres table. You might as well be talking to the sofa.
Or, even worse, a friend is telling you about his camping trip with his sons last weekend. He mentions to you the canoe they rented for an afternoon, and that word canoe sends you back to our own childhood when you used to hit North Carolina’s Yadkin River in that yellow fiberglass canoe your father had bought. Man, those were the days. You think of that time when you were still in your mid-teens, and your dad let you and your younger brother make an overnight river trip together, and how you had camped on an island. Why, you wonder, did you give up canoeing? Maybe you should consider buying a canoe for you and your own kids. Maybe—
