为什么

bout a year ago, an artist asked me to write a novel about his life. I’d recently written a pro- file of this artist, a photographer, for a magazine, and after the piece was published, he emailed me to say that he’d liked it very much (“adored it,” even), and wanted to know whether I’d be up for going on a walk with him sometime in a park near where he lived in Brixton. I said yes (“of course”), because although I’d never written a profile of an artist before, I’d heard from other more experienced journalists that this is what some- times happens: if you write a flatter- ing profile, afterward the artist might want to become your friend, …