Today I’m taking a lesson on empathy and compassion from Denis Johnson.

Fuckhead, the protagonist of one of Johnson’s stories, recalls the day his friend Dundun shot a certain McInnes dead, tortured a friend and beat another man with a tire iron.

Fuckhead says about Dundun:

“It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.”