I spend a lot of time reading the arguments of my nonfiction writer friends and admirees — peers in policy, academia, journalism — and I am plenty often convinced by them in the usual way. I am convinced by their logic and by their evidentiary appeals. I desperately need that persuasion as nourishment, and I seek out minds much sharper and more skilled than my own. I need a steady diet of their ideas to think with. I’m acutely aware of my limitations.
But I don’t really long to join these writers in that kind of persuasion, to have that form of something to say…. I want to be convincing about what it feels like to be a human being.
SAME.