the short stories in the Life of Fiction collection
behind every life is a story
There is no such thing as an ordinary life. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy and a tragedy.
Mark Twain
If you are born in New Zealand you are born blessed, for the closest river to your place of birth becomes your river, the closest mountain, your mountain. The pull of your mountain, your maunga, is powerful, and hard to resist. But when you grow up fatherless at the end of the railroad you grow up wondering what lies at the other end of the line. So one night when still a boy I gathered all my strength and broke free from the pull of my maunga. I set off to find where the tracks might lead.
They led me all over the world.
At first I traveled in the dark, blinkered by the prism of parochial experience. Travel, they say, broadens the mind. What a hollow trope that is. Mostly, travel confirms prejudice. You may go off “to see the world,” but you leave already assured there is no place like home. And you carry your narrow mind with you as easily as you carry your socks.
Slowly, very slowly, I came to understand that “no place like home” is an insidious expression. Every nation is ninety-percent fictional, with a chasm between the fantasy country united by…
