Getting 2 Know Kenneth Radu

Getting 2 Know Kenneth Radu NOVEMBER 18

What’s the best book you’ve read lately, and why?

I read several books at a time like many committed readers. Because I find much to admire in them and they are so different, however, it’s not possible for me to decide which is best. I have read Alice Munro’s marvelous Too Much Happiness, and Annabel Lyon’s superb The Golden Mean, and brilliant stories by James Salter, and the fascinating Book of Clouds by Chloe Aridjiis, enjoying them all in equal measure. As I am not a jury awarding a literary prize, it’s not necessary for me to choose the best, a problematic and dubious process in any case, so I delight in their excellence which gives me profound pleasure.

Why do you think what you do matters?

On a personal level writing matters because it is so intrinsically part of who I am that not writing would be a form of slow dying. It matters the way any passion matters. I cannot imagine not writing. On a larger or social scale, writing matters because it offers us the opportunity to expand our awareness and understanding of the phenomenal range of human activity, anxieties, aspirations and complications. Writing takes us out of our own egos and conception of things. We are driven to know and to understand, and writing is a means to that end.