Reading literature can change their lives — and ours. The thing is, we don’t quite understand how this process works — nor will we ever understand. Certainly we can’t predict it past a certain point. That’s why reading literature can’t be a discipline. I, a straight white American male, can see myself in a black character or a female one, understand a point made by a dead Russian or a living Albanian, meditate on an abstract point made by an anonymous author. But that equally means that an X reader (say, black, gay, Albanian) need not read an X author (or character?) to get something from a work. Reading literature doesn’t require us to check our list of identifying adjectives to see if we’ll understand. Instead, we just have to dive in. Maybe we’ll sink, maybe we’ll swim. Nobody can tell beforehand. That’s the beauty of books.
Interaction with literature can never be the basis of a systematic undertaking: It’s all too scattershot. All we can do is describe the sense of looking up from a page full of little black and white squiggles with the feeling that suddenly we understand our own lives, that names have been given to things that lacked them, and that the iron filings that hitherto were scattered about have configured into a clear pattern. Things are different now — somehow. Maybe that will cause us to act differently, maybe not.
6 months ago“All brands want consumers to be their ‘friends.’ Oh, boy, do they!” But speaking for himself, he said he had reservations about the very premise. “I don’t want to be best friends with a brand,” he said. “It’s just stuff.”
[ht: Bethany]
6 months ago[If you’re like most people, the number of people with whom you can carry on meaningful relationships is probably 148.5, give or take a few.
Unless, of course, you have a larger-than-normal neocortex.]
6 months agoHave you ever had the nagging sense that there’s something not quite right with the adulation that follows Malcolm Gladwell - the author of Tipping Point? But you couldn’t quite put your finger on it? We’re here to help, dear reader.
…Who is Malcolm Gladwell? What’s he really saying? Who are these people who lap it all up? And what is it that he’s saying that hold so much appeal?
7 months ago7 months ago“We have a writing crisis on ours hands. Everybody in the country is writing books but only a fraction of that number is interested in reading them; while the Chinese work, we workshop. There’s no bigger folly than writing instruction displacing “literature” in college English, though this seems to be what’s happening—not because you can’t teach writing, but because there’s no point in teaching writing when you haven’t reproduced the art of reading. The best you can hope to do is create an artificial market of people who will have to purchase the current round of books, whatever they may be, because they weren’t given the skills to read the books that came before. It’s like those Hollywood remakes that trade on the fact that modern viewers can’t watch black and white, or Technicolor, or even actors with bygone accents and uptight hairdos.”— n+1, cited [here](http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/The-writing-crisis-5358)
Second Sunday of Advent
We wait with the people of South East Asia, of Pakistan and of New Orleans
For a time when man and earth will no longer be in conflict.
We wait with the whole of Creation
We wait in hope for the Sons of God to be revealed.
We wait with the people of Palestine, of Iraq and of Sudan
For a time when all will be free from oppression and bloodshed
We wait with the whole of Creation
We wait in hope for the Sons of God to be revealed.
We wait with the people of Paris, of London and of Bradford
For a time when we can live together in peace and friendship.
We wait with the whole of creation
We wait in hope for the Sons of God to be revealed.
We wait with the whole of creation and with our brothers and sisters around the world.
For a time when we will be liberated from bondage and live in the freedom of God.
We wait with the whole of creation
We wait in hope for the Sons of God to be revealed.



