When a man asks a question about something important, he is doing something important. Let the man ask the question. Help him, if possible, to answer it. Whatever you do, don’t parry, obfuscate, or otherwise stifle the question.

I make these observations in light of Levi Asher’s comments on the blog, Literary Kicks (which, incidentally, was the first literary blog I ever visited, several years ago, and remains one of my favorites). In his weekly commentary-post on the New York Times Book Review, “Reviewing the Review,” Asher writes:

“Let’s turn to Julian Barnes, whose new Nothing To Be Frightened Of is a memoir about the author’s fear of death. I’ve enjoyed Barnes and his parrots and ten-and-a-half chapters in the past, but this book sounds dreadfully unnecessary to me. If the biggest problem Julian Barnes has is the inevitability of death, then he must be doing far too well to write a memoir anybody I know would find relevant. Most people I know are dealing with more immediate and earthly concerns. We also prefer to grapple with problems that, unlike the inevitability of death, have some chance of being solved.”

To give a little context, here’s the first paragraph of Barnes’ book, as published online in the Times:

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him. That’s what I say when the question is put. I asked my brother, who has taught philosophy at Oxford, Geneva, and the Sorbonne, what he thought of such a statement, without revealing that it was my own. He replied with a single word: ‘Soppy.’”

That’s a fine opening, and it tugs at your gut, whether you’re a believer or an unbeliever. That’s because it’s clear that the sentence is about pain more than it is about the cosmological argument. Not all of us have studied Aristotle, but we all do suffer. Barnes doesn’t want to remain alone in his suffering; he wants to reach out, to find someone to sympathize with him, someone to speak with.

Why else would he write a book? I don’t know what type of answer he is expecting, and I doubt he knows, either. But we owe it to him—and to ourselves—to get the question right, and to take seriously the author’s experiences that have led to the asking of the question. It’s not a formal question, encapsulated in a sentence. It’s an observed disproportion between what Barnes wants and what the world seemingly has to offer.

One way to avoid the question is to pretend that it’s irrelevant. There’s a strange sort of populism in Asher’s argument that I find very out of place in Literary Kicks. “Most people” he knows are dealing with “more earthly concerns.” Well then, why read literature at all? “Most people” should probably dedicate themselves to more practical concerns than, say, trying to figure out what that annoying, spoiled aristocrat named Hamlet is moaning about in a graveyard. Most people shouldn’t spend too much time dealing with Mersault’s ranting in his prison cell, Willy Loman’s midlife crisis, or Tommy Wilhelm’s sobbing, at a funeral, over “his heart’s ultimate need.”

But of course Asher would not agree. It’s true that philosophy and art are only possible in a society with ample time for leisure, and that many people lack that sort of leisure today. But just as society generates within itself certain people who are assigned specific tasks—doctors, lawyers, cooks—it also generates artists and philosophers who deal with the questions that Asher says he has no time for. It’s their job to think (philosophy) and to feel (in a certain way, art) about these things, and the fruits of these labors a useful to society as a whole. And death is at the center of these concerns.

I don’t mean to arbitrarily attack Asher, whose blog, again, I read often, and is worth a visit. But the value I am trying to defend here is this: Barnes’ questioning, or wailing, or whatever you want to call it, should be taken seriously. Even Garrison Keiller, in a very soft and not terribly incisive review, doesn’t do justice to the magnitude of scope that Barnes seems to be aiming for.

And Barnes’ brother, with his quick answer, misses the most interesting part of the question: the experience of the person—his brother—asking it. It’s easier to dismiss a question than to dismiss a questioner, and both should be taken seriously if a serious matter is being discussed. Barnes deserves a full hearing.