Joy said she hadn't really understood the meaning of life until Tyffanie had come along, but now she understood it perfectly. Well, great, I felt like saying. Make sure you share the news with Plato and Kierkegaard and all those other philosophers who'd banged their heads against the wall, trying to figure things out.

Among these he mentions painters Edward Hopper and Rene Magritte. A. He credits his perennial teaching of certain novels to high school students with teaching him about "the scaffolding" of longer stories.

Wally Lamb (born October 17 1950) is an American author known as the writer of the novels She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True both of which were selected for Oprah's Book Club. He was the director of the Writing Center at Norwich Free Academy in Norwich from 1989 to 1998 and has taught Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of Connecticut.