A favourite columnist is Harry Eyres in the Financial Times Weekend edition. He calls his column the Slow Lane, and that is perhaps where more of us should be. In a recent column, Our Greatest Invention, Harry wrote something that resonated with me. He said that he’d been reading a lot of philosophy because he thought he didn’t have the time to waste on fiction. Now he’s realised that the best fiction is actually philosophy, in perhaps a more accessible form. I’ve been going through the same cycle myself, especially after re-reading Bryan Magee’s superb Philosophy of Schopenhauer. Magee has a chapter on Schopenhauer’s influence on creative writers, such as Thomas Hardy and of course Proust. All this is good, but perhaps Harry and I should take the next step and actually write some fiction!
On a gloomy chilly rainy Sunday in Vancouver, thoughts of spring bubble up. A plan: three of us will grow the hard-to-find vegetables that Charlie Trotter lists in his book Charlie Trotter’s Vegetables. Then take it in turns to prepare the dishes.
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