In the three years that I worked at the Post, I fielded mail from all manner of people—doctors, teachers, prison inmates, and, not infrequently, Ralph Nader—about reviews I had written of everything from Senator Josh Hawley’s book about masculinity to the letters of Gustave Flaubert. Readers wrote from the D.C. suburbs and the Netherlands, from Arizona and New York. What they often evinced was better than interest, better even than bibliophilia; it was the rare and precious capacity to be interested in what they didn’t already know interested them. It was a willingness to be changed.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter