Congrats on staying the course, Felix! This is smart commentary on the "why" of literature. Horace's dictum, that literature ought to both instruct and delight is serviceable enough for most explanations, but I like your more nuanced examination.
One thing I might add to your notes on wisdom and spirituality is the Emersonian view of the poet as an emancipator who reveals us to ourselves. We are half ourselves, half our expression, and the great writer gives voice to something we've always known but could not say ourselves. In some cases, the writer expresses truths we've never apprehended at all.
I used to meditate on this with my students while traveling to Red Cloud, Nebraska, at the end of my senior seminar on Willa Cather. I know of no better illustration of the transformative power of literature than that sleepy Nebraska town. Cather knew Red Cloud through the people who settled there -- the diverse immigrant communities, the businesspeople and laborers. But she also knew it through her reading. She had the benefit of some private mentors, who introduced her to Greek mythology and the ancients, and so she perceived her life in Red Cloud through that long historical lens. In circumstances that others might have found trivial, she saw timeless truths, echoes of the Greeks and Romans. You hear this in her Nebraska novels, and her art has proved so enduring that the only major economic engine in Red Cloud now is the National Willa Cather Center. And so now Red Cloud is known by all through Cather's understanding of it through literature.
Every place has its own genius, its own kinship with other epochs and empires. A great writer reveals these affinities and thereby transforms the individual's and the community's understanding of its own worth.
Thanks Josh, and thanks for your support from the very beginning!
This view on Emerson's part isn't too far off from the prophetic status of the poet in Slavic cultures; it's actually fascinating how uncannily similar those two concepts are, given the radical differences between the cultures. It was recognized that the poets had taken on a role as custodians of the soul of the nation and were special intellects in that sense. Whitman is the closest we've come to a poet taking on this role in America. Poetry, of course, has a few of its own directives. Some of which would come off as rather esoteric to people today. But traditionally it shares the three mentioned here with prose and drama. In some cultures it is overwhelmingly spiritual. Who is your favorite poet, by the way?
Timelessness can be found anywhere and everywhere, as long as the artist knows how to do that. But to do that we need great artists, geniuses if we can find them. I think they can arise in any generation, but trees only grow in certain weather conditions. Present-day Willa Cathers must exist out there, but I don't know if the current conditions now are conducive to creating genius. It's not too different from how we're disincentivized to pursue wisdom, but in this case we might also be trampling the garden without knowing it.
As for Red Cloud, I'll be sure to add it to my travel list should fate ever bring me back to the Great Plains, which I only traveled through once. Not as knowledgable on the town, though I know all about the Indian chief. A great and tragic individual. In any case, examples like this town show that literature can, in fact, have a positive effect on the economy.
Congratulations on a year of writing that has made us all think and learn more about literature! It sounds as if it has made you happy as well, even better.
I enjoy this reflection very much and have been considering recently some kind of “why read fiction” post. If I get around to it, I shall no doubt direct readers here as well. I think you get at the heart of what I tell my students who undoubtably at some point will say: “why do we read about so much death and tragedy?” There are many good answers to the that question, but ultimately in terms of happiness I think we have to have foresight. That is, it may not make us happy exactly while we are reading, but we can have greater happiness as an effect of that reading in the future.
Thanks Kathleen! In some ways it has. Substack has helped me collect and organize a lot of my thoughts in general, which is another plus! But as long as I share some insights that encourage readers and writers to go deep while spreading a bit of awareness for my projects, I'm successful.
I see a lot of the current crisis in the arts as something that can be resolved in part by going back to its roots. In the case of literature, basic storytelling and basic functions of storytelling. Sweep the trashy experimentalism of postmodernism away, polish the old jewels and let them sparkle again. I think if we can accomplish that, the basic utility of literature - including literature about death - will be clear to people and require minimal explanation. Though as you said, there are a lot of great answers as to why we read about death and tragedy.
And I definitely agree about foresight! Other languages are fortunate enough to have words that translate as "happy" that connote happiness with longevity and not the brief, dopamine-high meaning of the word in English. I think it's possible that the word "happy" can reorient itself to mean something permanent: after all, we often use its opposite, "unhappy," to reference less brief and more long-lasting spells of unhappiness. Whether the culture is there or not is another question.
Your questions are deep! The appeal of entertainment, spirituality, and wisdom is a good start. Meanwhile, your essay made me wonder why more men don't read fiction, compared to women. If true, how international is this disinterest? Has it always been so? Or is it because of the recent X, Y, and Z? Where are male readers who don't like literature getting their entertainment, spirituality, and wisdom? There's lots of speculation and claims out there.
Thanks Mosby! I truly appreciate all your support and insight during all this time! Love your eccentric takes on things. I like eccentricity, even if I don't always include it in my language. (A side effect of being tired of Queen, but that's a different story)
That reminds me how Jonathan Franzen got into trouble back in the day for saying he was concerned that being on Oprah would interfere with his goal of getting more men to read. I think it depends somewhat on the culture. In the Anglosphere, I think the publishing industry always understood that women bought more novels than men. But it's not as if novels with direct appeal to men - like novels of ideas - weren't considered marketable, so clearly men were buying and reading back in the day with enough regularity to justify marketing man-friendly novels. The lack of men who read isn't so much of a mystery when taking this into account: science fiction is a genre most often read and appreciated by men. It is also considered the literature of ideas. The case of science fiction reveals that men love to read: it's just that science fiction does it for them in a way other genres do not today.
This is worth its own post, but for now I'll entertain a hypothesis. In the classic era and throughout most of the 20th century, the great writers wrote so subliminally and beautifully but also intellectually about emotional intelligence that men - more interested in ideas - resonated with great fiction as much as they would with a novel of ideas. Crime & Punishment is as much a novel of ideas as it is of Raskolnikov. At some point in the postwar period, we lost that. On one hand, the lefticization of American literature was being completed. On the other hand, postwar authors jeopardized the male readership with their explorations of masculinity. While there are exceptions, I reckon most men didn't want to read about how a failed guy named Rabbit had a fake sense of his masculinity, and so therefore it's all fake anyway; or how Portnoy, by virtue of his crazed masculinity, meets a foul end. No doubt many men didn't mind such stories, but if I was a guy in the 50s or early 60s with a healthy masculinity I too might have preferred Leave It To Beaver over those novels.
Where I am in the world, gender divisions also have emerged but for reasons more to do with contemporary gender roles than anything. Men want to be programmers and that kind of thing: literature is something of the past. They are surrendering culture to women, who in a relationship deal more with cultural matters. Maybe that also did happen in America and I'm missing a puzzle piece? In this part of the world, the division whereby fiction is for women and nonfiction is for men is becoming a lot more entrenched. But again, this also falls back to this greater failure of "literary" literature to be well-rounded like the classics were and give readers this wisdom. Still, at least they're reading something. The equivocation of facts with wisdom is another discussion that would be most interesting.
Cheers, Felix! Wonderfully poignant essay. I do believe even the darkest of literature can make someone happy, transcend from darkness to light. It has been the case for me. But as a child, I found joy in reading Oscar Wilde.
Congratulations Felix
Thanks Rolando!
Congrats on staying the course, Felix! This is smart commentary on the "why" of literature. Horace's dictum, that literature ought to both instruct and delight is serviceable enough for most explanations, but I like your more nuanced examination.
One thing I might add to your notes on wisdom and spirituality is the Emersonian view of the poet as an emancipator who reveals us to ourselves. We are half ourselves, half our expression, and the great writer gives voice to something we've always known but could not say ourselves. In some cases, the writer expresses truths we've never apprehended at all.
I used to meditate on this with my students while traveling to Red Cloud, Nebraska, at the end of my senior seminar on Willa Cather. I know of no better illustration of the transformative power of literature than that sleepy Nebraska town. Cather knew Red Cloud through the people who settled there -- the diverse immigrant communities, the businesspeople and laborers. But she also knew it through her reading. She had the benefit of some private mentors, who introduced her to Greek mythology and the ancients, and so she perceived her life in Red Cloud through that long historical lens. In circumstances that others might have found trivial, she saw timeless truths, echoes of the Greeks and Romans. You hear this in her Nebraska novels, and her art has proved so enduring that the only major economic engine in Red Cloud now is the National Willa Cather Center. And so now Red Cloud is known by all through Cather's understanding of it through literature.
Every place has its own genius, its own kinship with other epochs and empires. A great writer reveals these affinities and thereby transforms the individual's and the community's understanding of its own worth.
https://www.willacather.org/visit/national-willa-cather-center
Thanks Josh, and thanks for your support from the very beginning!
This view on Emerson's part isn't too far off from the prophetic status of the poet in Slavic cultures; it's actually fascinating how uncannily similar those two concepts are, given the radical differences between the cultures. It was recognized that the poets had taken on a role as custodians of the soul of the nation and were special intellects in that sense. Whitman is the closest we've come to a poet taking on this role in America. Poetry, of course, has a few of its own directives. Some of which would come off as rather esoteric to people today. But traditionally it shares the three mentioned here with prose and drama. In some cultures it is overwhelmingly spiritual. Who is your favorite poet, by the way?
Timelessness can be found anywhere and everywhere, as long as the artist knows how to do that. But to do that we need great artists, geniuses if we can find them. I think they can arise in any generation, but trees only grow in certain weather conditions. Present-day Willa Cathers must exist out there, but I don't know if the current conditions now are conducive to creating genius. It's not too different from how we're disincentivized to pursue wisdom, but in this case we might also be trampling the garden without knowing it.
As for Red Cloud, I'll be sure to add it to my travel list should fate ever bring me back to the Great Plains, which I only traveled through once. Not as knowledgable on the town, though I know all about the Indian chief. A great and tragic individual. In any case, examples like this town show that literature can, in fact, have a positive effect on the economy.
Congratulations, Felix!
Thanks Zina! I hope you are doing well with everything in life!
Congratulations on a year of writing that has made us all think and learn more about literature! It sounds as if it has made you happy as well, even better.
I enjoy this reflection very much and have been considering recently some kind of “why read fiction” post. If I get around to it, I shall no doubt direct readers here as well. I think you get at the heart of what I tell my students who undoubtably at some point will say: “why do we read about so much death and tragedy?” There are many good answers to the that question, but ultimately in terms of happiness I think we have to have foresight. That is, it may not make us happy exactly while we are reading, but we can have greater happiness as an effect of that reading in the future.
Thanks Kathleen! In some ways it has. Substack has helped me collect and organize a lot of my thoughts in general, which is another plus! But as long as I share some insights that encourage readers and writers to go deep while spreading a bit of awareness for my projects, I'm successful.
I see a lot of the current crisis in the arts as something that can be resolved in part by going back to its roots. In the case of literature, basic storytelling and basic functions of storytelling. Sweep the trashy experimentalism of postmodernism away, polish the old jewels and let them sparkle again. I think if we can accomplish that, the basic utility of literature - including literature about death - will be clear to people and require minimal explanation. Though as you said, there are a lot of great answers as to why we read about death and tragedy.
And I definitely agree about foresight! Other languages are fortunate enough to have words that translate as "happy" that connote happiness with longevity and not the brief, dopamine-high meaning of the word in English. I think it's possible that the word "happy" can reorient itself to mean something permanent: after all, we often use its opposite, "unhappy," to reference less brief and more long-lasting spells of unhappiness. Whether the culture is there or not is another question.
Congratulations, Felix, you earned it!
Your questions are deep! The appeal of entertainment, spirituality, and wisdom is a good start. Meanwhile, your essay made me wonder why more men don't read fiction, compared to women. If true, how international is this disinterest? Has it always been so? Or is it because of the recent X, Y, and Z? Where are male readers who don't like literature getting their entertainment, spirituality, and wisdom? There's lots of speculation and claims out there.
I'm looking forward to another year of Timeless.
Thanks Mosby! I truly appreciate all your support and insight during all this time! Love your eccentric takes on things. I like eccentricity, even if I don't always include it in my language. (A side effect of being tired of Queen, but that's a different story)
That reminds me how Jonathan Franzen got into trouble back in the day for saying he was concerned that being on Oprah would interfere with his goal of getting more men to read. I think it depends somewhat on the culture. In the Anglosphere, I think the publishing industry always understood that women bought more novels than men. But it's not as if novels with direct appeal to men - like novels of ideas - weren't considered marketable, so clearly men were buying and reading back in the day with enough regularity to justify marketing man-friendly novels. The lack of men who read isn't so much of a mystery when taking this into account: science fiction is a genre most often read and appreciated by men. It is also considered the literature of ideas. The case of science fiction reveals that men love to read: it's just that science fiction does it for them in a way other genres do not today.
This is worth its own post, but for now I'll entertain a hypothesis. In the classic era and throughout most of the 20th century, the great writers wrote so subliminally and beautifully but also intellectually about emotional intelligence that men - more interested in ideas - resonated with great fiction as much as they would with a novel of ideas. Crime & Punishment is as much a novel of ideas as it is of Raskolnikov. At some point in the postwar period, we lost that. On one hand, the lefticization of American literature was being completed. On the other hand, postwar authors jeopardized the male readership with their explorations of masculinity. While there are exceptions, I reckon most men didn't want to read about how a failed guy named Rabbit had a fake sense of his masculinity, and so therefore it's all fake anyway; or how Portnoy, by virtue of his crazed masculinity, meets a foul end. No doubt many men didn't mind such stories, but if I was a guy in the 50s or early 60s with a healthy masculinity I too might have preferred Leave It To Beaver over those novels.
Where I am in the world, gender divisions also have emerged but for reasons more to do with contemporary gender roles than anything. Men want to be programmers and that kind of thing: literature is something of the past. They are surrendering culture to women, who in a relationship deal more with cultural matters. Maybe that also did happen in America and I'm missing a puzzle piece? In this part of the world, the division whereby fiction is for women and nonfiction is for men is becoming a lot more entrenched. But again, this also falls back to this greater failure of "literary" literature to be well-rounded like the classics were and give readers this wisdom. Still, at least they're reading something. The equivocation of facts with wisdom is another discussion that would be most interesting.
Me too!
Cheers, Felix! Wonderfully poignant essay. I do believe even the darkest of literature can make someone happy, transcend from darkness to light. It has been the case for me. But as a child, I found joy in reading Oscar Wilde.
Thanks Nadia! I think so too. My experience with darker literature has been much the same.