 the neat racial, gendered or national boxes into which we often unthinkingly place them. It's a mistake to ask literature to reinforce such structures. Literature tends to crack them. Literature is where we free ourselves.)
. Yet the special thing about literature, the major art form of a Western civilization now ending before our very eyes, is not hard to define. Like literature, music can overwhelm you with sudden emotion, can move you to absolute sorrow or ecstasy; like literature, painting has the power to astonish, and to make you see the world through fresh eyes. But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, it limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting, or repugnant. Only literature can grant you access to a spirit from beyond the grave-a more direct, more complete, deeper access than you'd have in conversation with a friend. Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak so openly as when we face a blank page and address an unknown reader.){kind=spacer}
i-think-if-german-literature-could-survive-40s-russian-literature-could-survive-sovietism-american-literature-can-survive-google
 entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat- some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself. This isn't the case with literature. Literature stimulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.)
.)
you-can-travel-through-literature-you-can-expand-your-mind-through-literature-its-cheap-to-buy-that-kind-ticket-saul-williams
the-attempt-to-devote-oneself-to-literature-alone-is-a-most-deceptive-thing-and-often-paradoxically-it-is-literature-that-suffers-for-it
literature-at-least-good-literature-is-science-tempered-with-blood-art-like-architecture-music-carlos-ruiz-zafon
in-theory-it-was-around-now-literature-susan-hated-literature-shed-much-prefer-to-read-good-book-terry-pratchett
i-dont-accept-idea-that-literature-can-be-just-entertainment-that-there-is-no-consequences-literature-in-real-world-mario-vargas-llosa
if-you-read-literature-you-put-yourself-in-somebody-elses-shoes-you-learn-from-great-figures-in-literature-jim-leach
i-have-passion-for-childrens-literature-young-adult-literature-i-love-it-ive-always-loved-it-gretchen-rubin
national-literature-no-longer-means-very-much-the-age-of-world-literature-is-due
for-mythology-is-the-handmaid-of-literature-and-literature-is-one-of-the-best-allies-of-virtue-and-promoters-of-happiness
