You’re trying to create a sort of virtual reality, that’s why you need so much world-building. For example, the idea in ”Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is to get the reader to live the life of a slave. The best way to achieve that in writing is details, so the reader can make a picture in their heads. Some people are better than others in making these pictures. Movies are trying to achieve a similar effect, but it’s much easier there.
It is definitely about making an emotional connection. To persuade someone from that angle, think of it like this: a lot of people who were not abolitionists changed their minds after reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. If it wasn’t for that book, we would not be living in our modern world.
You need to make someone feel the horrors of slavery in order to get them to want to do something about it. That the brain is able to actually be able to go into this alternate reality just with words on papers is actually pretty crazy but definitely valuable.
Plus, a book doesn’t have to just have a single point. Look at “Brothers Karamazov”. There also wouldn’t be a modern world if it wasn’t for that book.
That’s not something you can do with anything other than art. To change someone’s mind. To influence someone...You can’t do that sort of societal change with a list article or a summary or even an essay.
I don’t think it’s a frivolous thing. It’s actually the most valuable and important work you can do if you want to change the world for the better.
I think that’s a good explanation. Literature can help persuade emotionally when people are otherwise not willing to change their mind based on a purely rational argument.
But what if you already agree with the author to begin with? Then it would seem less profound. Maybe that’s why I haven’t experienced any revelations yet from literature.
Perhaps I can find a great piece of literature I disagree with and it would leave me with a greater appreciation for art.
Another way to look at it is that not all books are literature. Literature is its own special category because it’s a tool for building culture.
The 10k latte-sipping moneys banging on their MacBooks at the local co-work hub will never make literature because intent matters. You have a job to do.
That job is to be a truth teller. to tell society the bitter truths they’d rather not hear. That’s why you have to hide it under a story.
Salman Rushdie for example. The satanic verses.
A book may be very well written, so much so that it can be said it had artistic merit, but for a book to have literary merit, it needs to play a part in the culture wars.
It is definitely about making an emotional connection. To persuade someone from that angle, think of it like this: a lot of people who were not abolitionists changed their minds after reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. If it wasn’t for that book, we would not be living in our modern world.
You need to make someone feel the horrors of slavery in order to get them to want to do something about it. That the brain is able to actually be able to go into this alternate reality just with words on papers is actually pretty crazy but definitely valuable.
Plus, a book doesn’t have to just have a single point. Look at “Brothers Karamazov”. There also wouldn’t be a modern world if it wasn’t for that book.
That’s not something you can do with anything other than art. To change someone’s mind. To influence someone...You can’t do that sort of societal change with a list article or a summary or even an essay.
I don’t think it’s a frivolous thing. It’s actually the most valuable and important work you can do if you want to change the world for the better.