thanks to the coincidences

of a day I bumped into both Galen Strawson, Michel Houellebecq, Vendela Vida and Nick Hornby within the span of 15 minutes this Friday morning. It started with an intervjue with Mrs. Vida in Klassekampen, who was said to write for the California based magazine The Believer which I happened to remember from Nick Hornby's book THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE. And as I read on in the interview I was introduced to the philosopher Galen Strawson who claims, in his essay AGAINST NARRATIVITY, that there are two types of people (Oh! these endless dicotomies): those who look upon life as a coherent story, and those who experience life as a series of incoherent episodes. And I immediately felt I belonged to the last group, even if these make up only 5% of us, according to Strawson. Then Michel Houellebecq comes in because he is one of the authors mentioned in this particular issue of The Believer. He writes: “Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”
So why are all those people who are writing and talking about life and the world those that are fed up with it. They seem to care though.