Why Zoë Jenny does not want to go skydiving

Zoë Jenny has little interest in skydiving, white-water rafting, bungee jumping or what she calls similar forms of survival training. “I think surviving normal life is adventurous enough,” she says.

The author’s answers move between fear, curiosity and darkly playful observations. She says crowds, severe storms and illness now frighten her more than they once did. She would like to learn Hebrew, which she began studying online during the coronavirus pandemic, grow her own vegetables and learn how to fly a plane.

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I think surviving normal life is adventurous enough.

Jenny also talks about the inheritance of 20,000 books from her father, who told her, “Make something of it.” She says she feels like an adult because she has a teenager at home. Her preferred German word is “poetry,” and she credits her parents with choosing a name with a beautiful meaning: Zoë comes from the ancient Greek word “zoon” and means life.

She says she can sleep anywhere and at any time, even while people are talking to her. She rejects schadenfreude and says hostility ends for her when someone is lying on the ground. Recently, she helped a neighbor who had fallen with her walking frame. The neighbor normally insulted her, but Jenny sat beside her until rescuers arrived and listened as she spoke about sons who never visited. Jenny offered her a schnapps and a cigarette, but the woman refused both.

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Make something of it.