When the subject came up, I told my children that there is no God, no good and loving God anyway, which is why we humans have to do our best to help and care for each other.
Now, it may be a clichéd subject, but when I told a few people in my class that I'm reading Mansfield Park they gawped at me like I was a rare and exotic fish from the deepest depths of the South American jungle rivers (when in fact it was they who looked like fish – gawping is not a good look!).
After I'd written and submitted the column I wrote, my wife asked me what the subject was, and I told her it was about a guy who got dumped, tried to sleep in a tree, slept in the bushes at his ex's place, got beat up by an ex-Marine and got sprayed in the face with bear mace.
It depends, most people just change the subject once I tell them what I do.
Or as a former executive editor of this newspaper put it and I'm going to have to clean it up — " 'I don't care if my reporters have intimate congress with an elephant, as long as they do not cover the circus.' " Which is kind of appropriate, because the subject I am telling you about was Gunther Gebel-Williams, the star animal trainer at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus.
He also values graduates who have a broad background in their subject: "I always tell young people to get a solid basis in their subject, whether it is chemistry, physics, or biology, and to specialise afterward," he explains.
So many choose the softer, creative subjects but I tell them they can still do those subjects later on – what you can't do is go back and study the sciences.
I was pretty sure that his idea of serious reading would be the Condensed Books of the Reader's Digest, and to get him off the subject of my studies I told him about my rooming house.
Just before "The Adversary" was to be published, Mr. Carrère gave a copy to him in prison to prepare him for any success the book would have and the possibility that once again Mr. Romand would be subjected to public scrunity: "I told him I would change nothing, not even the smallest detail".
