Why we are all solipsists
I once tried to write a novel but lacking any ear for dialogue or skill at characterisation, I abandoned the attempt. The plot, though, was quite good. A couple on a smallholding are facing hard times. Their farm is failing. Daily life is shot through with anxiety, and they retreat increasingly into their interior worlds. Alone at night the husband keeps dreaming he’s in another place, a farm where he and his wife are happier, things go better, and life is crowded with incident. Gradually he finds himself living for nightfall, retreating from domestic misery and awaiting only the next episode in a different life unfolding in his dreams: a
