I'm now reading books #5 and #6 in my "Literary Life Reading Challenge" for this year. I tend to read books in pairs in case I get bored with one; I can switch to the other.
In the Literary Life group, there's a little saying: "Stories will save the world!" The members of this group believe this, and they share accounts that they think demonstrate the salvific nature of stories. I'm inclined to agree with them.
Take a few minutes to read this article, if you like: "What Neil Gaiman and My Secret Agent Grandmother Taught Me." In the article, the writer reminds us that books and stories can inspire both noble goodness and horrific evil. He suggests, when you've finished reading a book, "take a moment to consider what that story means, what larger narratives it fits into. Is it something you would die for? Is it something you would die to prevent? Who might suffer, and who might be empowered, if it were to come true?"
I cast my mind back to the four books I've finished:
What deep life truths are those authors speaking to? Are they truths that resonate with my soul? Do I think people should die for them? Would I die for them?
Knock at a Star is a book of widely varying poems for children (and adults). I feel strongly about the power of poetry, about its significance in human history and its unique power to convey story. I need to ponder how those questions apply to this book.
84 Charing Cross Road is about the power of book-loving to connect people who never meet each other except through the written word, and how much love can be conveyed in that way. Is that type of communication worth dying for? How important is it?
Guernsey is precisely about this very topic: the power of stories to save people's lives, to save their inner world in the middle of crushing German occupation in WW2. The members of that literary society would die for each other. Books united them and saved them not only from their misery but for each other.
And Antigone. Oh, how I love that story! I think I could read it each year, and I don't feel that way about any other story. Antigone dies for what she believes, for fidelity to her brother and to her religious beliefs. She defies the king (her uncle) and the laws. I love Antigone's courage, her unyielding adherence to her highest ideals, her devotion to her brother.
Perhaps that's one definition of courage: knowing what you will die for, and doing it if push comes to shove.
Now I've moved on to Alice's Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carroll (which I never finished before, really never began) and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I wonder if those books will present any deep thoughts along these lines? I'll get back to you on that.
3 comments:
Why do we have to die for the truth?
Sandi, that's such a good question! In our present living situation in the U.S., it seems foolish to think we would ever have to. But in the link I posted in the blog, people found themselves in situations in WW2 where they were certainly offered a choice: live, and do without your book; die if you opt to keep your books. People have been given the same dire choice many times in history. Such is the power of story. Some regimes desperately want to silence storytelling because it challenge power.
So I don't think we HAVE to die for truth (for story), but I think it can come to that -- as I say, "if push came to shove." And some folks would die for some books, and some wouldn't. Some would die for no books. To me, the physical book is just a symbol for the right to speak, to tell a story that might broaden or change someone's mind in a way that argument never can.
And what about the stories we tell ourselves, and those who listen to us, about ourselves, and about life? Those could definitely be significant, one way or the other. I'm keeping a book pile...
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