Julian Barnes

Yes, yes, that's right.

It's sort of our relationship with the brain is very strange.

You know, how do we have a relationship with our brain when everything that we need to have that relationship is inside the brain anyway?

It's very paradoxical.

And, you know, in the book, I go through various sort of metaphors or versions of what it's like

to receive memories from the brain.

And the one I come up with eventually is it's like spy fiction.

Freud said that everything was up there.

Everything that happened to us is up there.

So it's a question of what the brain lets us know and lets us see.

So I thought of the comparison with spy fiction, with John le Carré.

We're like an agent running in the field and the brain is like the spy center, the control.

And the brain only tells us

what we need to do our next task.

So just as control doesn't let the spy know everything that's happening, only lets the spy know what is useful to him in his spying and doesn't overcomplicate matters.

That, I think, is how the brain behaves with us.

My wife passed.

I hate that.

I hate that.

It's a way of not using the right word.