A friend of mine, who is having an especially difficult year, told me a story that he attributed to the fiction of John Irving. This was a story about people taking an unreasonable abundance of caution to avoid an extremely improbable risk of death. Due to an accident too freakish to foresee, the caution taken by the people failed, and everyone died anyway. Many dislike John Irving’s fiction for its cruel implausibilities, but my friend wanted to push back on that opinion. Implausible things happen all the time, and people are regularly traumatized by them. The comment made sense, coming Read more