Tegan Bennett-Daylight

I used to have a friend who was a huge reader of Mervyn Peake, his Titus books, Titus Grown and Titus Alone.

And even when you look on the page, it's crosshatched with detail.

Unbelievable detail.

I've actually always loved that.

I am actually just nearing the end of, and in fact, I've just been emailing Geordie about this Thoreau's Walden, which is something I've been meaning to read for a really long time.

And I started to read it because I started to read Tyson Yunker Porter's Sand Talk.

And for some reason, it felt to me that it was invoking Walden and I needed to read them both at the same time.

I didn't enjoy it at first.

I found it fairly hard going.

He just makes lists of how much everything costs and how he doesn't pay anything for anything.

But after a while, just the accumulation of detail of nature around him is really, really soothing.

I'm finding it a very restful book to read before bed.

It's New York City.

I'm assuming it's New York City.

It's Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022, and there are five characters.

Jim and Tessa are a couple coming home to New York from a trip to Europe.

They're on an airplane.

Max and Diane are their friends in their apartment in Manhattan waiting for them to arrive.

and Martin Decker, younger than the others who all feel as though they'll be in their 50s or 60s, possibly later.

Martin is a physicist, a student of Diane, who's a retired physics professor.