So often in our daily encounters we are asked, What do you do?

Inevitably, the speaker inquires after our vocation, our job, our means of earning a living wage. We respond, either in brief or at length, and in many ways we become defined, categorized, labeled, judged according to this answer. But what if, instead, we were asked, Why do you do what you do? Or What compels you to do what you do? We would certainly answer the question of what in the process of answering why and in my opinion, the why is the far more intriguing of the two. From time to time, I find the answers to the question, Why do you do what you do? reiterated back to me. More often than not, these echoes, these mirrors into my own passion and enthusiasm come from books themselves. Not from every book, certainly, and not even from most books. But there are certain works of literature ranging widely across genres, time, place and authorship that reconfirm for me that I have found, in the truest sense of the word, my calling. Every once in a while, I read a book that reminds me why I must work on behalf of the Written Word and her many voices. This week, the book I uphold as an answer to why I am an independent book publicist is J.M. Coetzees Foe. Written in 1986 by the author of Disgrace and Life and Times of Michael K (among many other works), Foe is barely one hundred and fifty pages long. Coetzee retells the story of Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe from the point of view of the female character Susan Barton (and the fractured p.o.v. of the slave character Friday). Foe was published when I was very young, and Ill likely never be Coetzees publicist, so what does the book have to do with what I do and why I do it? Book publicists often describe themselves as in the trenches. We fight hard for the titles we represent, and on challenging days my work feels more like a battlefield than an exercise in networking creativity. Yet the artistry of Foe, its story and its ability to convey so much in so few words prove what so many of us publicists (and readers!) know to be true: literature can be and often is worth our blood, sweat and tears. My dear friend who recommended Foe to me warned that each sentence contained within was a rabbit hole. Standing in Powells in Portland, OR, she explained that every moment in the book is a carefully crafted commentary by Coetzee on the act of writing, on post-colonial experience, on criticism, and on an authors and a critics right (or lack there of) to give voice to the voiceless. She wasnt exaggerating. I am shocked and surprised that, as a student of literary and critical theory in university, I have only stumbled upon Foe now. Reading Coetzees Foe was like having my mind explode apart in the very same moment that I reconnected with an old friend. The text is at once provocative and familiar. I had similar reading experiences with Calvinos Invisible Cities, Millers Tropic of Cancer, Shakespeares King Lear and A

Midsummer Nights Dream, Vonneguts Breakfast of Champions and