Let’s start with Ernest Becker.

I picked The Denial of Death not so much because it’s my favourite of Becker’s, but it’s probably his best known; it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1974, a few weeks after Becker’s early death aged 49. I would argue it’s one of the most important books that’s been relatively ignored in the last century. Becker was a cultural anthropologist and his ideas are very simple: he doesn’t claim that they’re original, so much as that what he’s doing is synthesising thoughts that have been around for thousands of years. Basically, the claim is that human beings are like all other creatures: following Darwin, we’re biologically constructed to survive in the service of reproduction. But only human beings, as far as we know, by virtue of our fantastic cognitive capabilities that allow us to dabble in abstract and symbolic thought, are sufficiently self-conscious to recognise that like all living things we will some day die. And not only that but it could be at any moment, for reasons we could never anticipate or control. Becker’s point is that the awareness of death, and that we're highly vulnerable and subject to the vagaries of nature, renders us prone to potentially paralysing terror. And that the way that we reduce that potential terror is through the construction and maintenance of what Becker as an anthropologist calls culture, which he defines as humanly constructed beliefs about the nature of reality that we share with people in our group. What that does is to give us a sense that we live in a world that has meaning, and that we as individuals are significant participants in that world of meaning.

Does Becker think that we could or we should overcome anxiety about death?

Oh, great question! Becker equivocates: in the book he argues that it’s literally impossible to overcome death anxiety. That would require a radical alteration in human nature beyond the bounds of what’s ever going to happen, and so the question is not so much to get rid of death anxiety but rather to minimise the damage that it causes both to ourselves and to people around us. Becker’s alternatives are that people need to embrace religion, broadly defined. And here’s where it gets a little bit sticky because, from Becker’s point of view, the only way to go is to have faith that there is some transcendent meaning in life, which need not require that we subscribe to an organised religion per se, but I think along the lines of what the transcendentalists in America in the 19th century might advocate. Then he talks about this idea that we really don’t know if life has any absolute meaning or purpose so the best that we can do is to fervently devote ourselves to living. At the end of the book he offers what I think is the closest he gets to a prescription. He says: “The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion something, an object or ourselves, and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it so to speak to the life force.” Now I'm not sure I know what that means but I think it’s a nice thought.

Tell me about Winesburg, Ohio.

This is one of my favourite pieces of fiction by I think one of the great American writers of the 20th century. It’s about a little town, and there’s definitely a historical dimension to the novel. Anderson realises that this is the end of an era, that the Industrial Revolution and all the things happening in America in the 20th century – the migration to cities and so on – marks the end of a way of life that he bemoans, and so there’s a good deal of attention to the juxtaposition of growing up in a little town and the alternative, which is to make it to the city. I like how incisively observant Anderson is in terms of his depiction of, and his sensitivity and respect for, different people – particularly marginalised people. It’s about the death of a community and to some extent the different ways that people manage the terror of death.

The next to last vignette is called “Sophistication” and it’s a lovely, lovely tale that takes place on the county fairgrounds on the very last day of the fair. It’s this guy George along with a woman, Helen, that he’s very fond of, and they’re on the fairgrounds and everything is silent. Anderson points out the juxtaposition between the activity that was there a moment ago and now there’s nothing there and it’s the end of the summer. It sets up what I think is a very lovely passage where it gets this guy George to thinking, and Anderson writes: “For the first time [he] looks out upon the world and sees countless figures of men before him who have come out of nothingness, lived their lives, and disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. He looks around, and already he hears death calling.” And so here’s this striking realisation of his existential position in life. And then there’s a very tender and amorous mutual recognition with Helen, that to be connected to another human being is the ultimate solution to the existential problems that are engendered by knowing that we’ll some day die. In other words, it sounds trite but the idea is that love does indeed conquer death. I love this book; this is a great book!