Notes Towards an Applied Literature
In Woolf's words, it made us ask: "But why live at all”
For those who had lost religious faith, Russian literature became the place to contemplate essentially religious questions, and for those who retained
it, Russian literature became a way to revitalize it.
Literature not only illuminated another’s experience, it provided, I believed, the richest material for moral reflection.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
Fiction is often really much more useful than lived experience; it takes much less time, costs nothing (from the library), and comes in a manageable, orderly form. You can understand it. Experience just steamrollers over you and you begin to see what happened only years and years later, if ever. Fiction is much better than reality at providing usef
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