- “Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure, of course; but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.”
That kind of connection Llosa describes is what really made this paragraph stand out. The concept that even when we feel alone, we are consuming the same story many others do. There is also the connection of learning about ourselves and humans that Llosa talks about at the beginning of the quote. We love to read for enjoyment, but we also learn about the world and other people, at least through the author’s lens. This nearly unintended learning is what all literature is at its core. We read and we learn and we love until the bottomless pit is filled with this most wonderful knowledge.
How is it possible that so much information and art can be teaching the viewers, while at the same time it excites and intrigues us?
- “And this leads me to think that not only is literature indispensable for a full knowledge and a full mastery of language, but its fate is linked also and indissolubly with the fate of the book, that industrial product that many are now declaring obsolete.”
I’m not sure how, but Llosa made the three last paragraphs of this section so easy to disagree with. I can see where he’s coming from. I love physical books and literature, but he seems to be describing literature as something that can only come from physical words and pages that you read, when that isn’t true at all. Oral storytelling is our most ancient kind of literature. Would telling a grand story word for word make the story any less impactful than if you read it yourself? Maybe, but there is still that connection, that learning, we acquire in any consumption of words.
As Llosa talks about going too far into the future, might it be true that he can’t remember and appreciate the past?
