It’s time for my annual summer reading suggestions for corporate counsel. So pack the sunscreen, fire up the eReader and don the Hawaiian shirts.
The best lawyers develop empathy, and the best way to do so is by reading fiction. Paul Auster’s latest is “Sunset Park” and he has never been better at exploring the interior lives of his characters. He incisively sums up their lives, from a 60-something publisher who is “straddling the border between inevitable extinction and the possibility of continued life,” to a lonely, young woman who “is so starved for physical contact that she can barely think about anything else.” This is powerful stuff. Auster’s novel is a beautiful work of art on what it means to be human, and the strength and optimism it gives each of us. He writes of the 60-something, who comes away thinking — after embracing his former wife — that “the dark time will soon be over, and all will be forgiven.”
