Sigrid Nunez on All the Basic Questions We Deny to Answer

As René Descartes meditated on the nature of mind and warned that I can know my mind beyond doubt but it's nearly impossible to know the other's mind; however, I can imitate the great Dickensian phrase: It is the best of thing and it is the worst of thing that I don't have the direct sense data of what's going on other's mind, therefore, I will invite to take the medication as Sigrid Nunez has prescribed, "be kind, because everyone you meet is going through a struggle." From The Friend 's dog, Nunez hands us over to a Scheherazade-like talking cat in the constant serendipity of "What Are You Going Through" (Riverhead Books, 2020), that whispers the sibilant monologues and reflections of a voluntary childless woman who rents a room through Airbnb in a small cando of a "depressing" widow with a dead cat in late September 2017 to visit a terminally ill friend who is "swing between euphoria and depression" with her toxic r...