Befriending Books by Leta Sundet
I
was going to write an essay about why everyone should read Jane Austen's novels. I was going to make an impassioned case that her books are not just the smart girl's romance novels or guides for men seeking to understand the female mind but truly great books, as insightful in their way into the nature of reality and the human soul as Homer or Dante's poems. But I realized that, in general, the only people persuaded by those arguments (probably the only people who read those arguments) are the people already convinced. Instead, what to say to the person who wouldn't read that essay—to the person who says of a book (Austen or otherwise), "Look, I tried. I just couldn't get into it. Why waste time reading what I know I won't appreciate? I'll pick something else that will actually do me some good." I understand the logic—I've used it many times. We tend to be somewhat utilitarian in our approach to literature. We're interested in what we can "get out" of books—whether information, a moral vision, a jolt of conviction, or simply entertainment, wish-fulfillment, escape. We generally know which we want at any given time, and before we invest in a book we want to know what the book will deliver. If we find, as we read, that a book is not delivering, we discard it. None of the above are bad reasons to read. Reading, as a leisure activity, should to some degree be dictated by our desires. But if we think of our literary lives merely in terms of brief encounters that are either worthwhile or not, that either succeed or not, we miss the fact that neither people nor books really work that way. To truly know a person takes a real investment of time, attention, and even affection. People reveal themselves over time in response to curiosity and love. Good books are no different. I want to make a case that we should think of our relationships with texts as relationships—that we should be in the business of cultivating friendships with books. Since my own most potent experience of literary friendship thus far has been with one of Austen's novels, I'll use it as a touchstone. But the way her novels work on a reader over time teaches us how all great texts work. If we bring to our reading the virtues that we bring to friendship—charity, attention, patience, long-suffering—books reward us the way that human friendships reward us: with more than we expected to "get out" of them, with more than we thought to ask for from them—with unanticipated challenge, surprising understanding, unexpected delight.
Leta Sundet is a doctoral candidate in literature in the Institute for Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas. She received her M.A. in theology and letters from New Saint Andrews College, and also received an M.A. in English literature from the University of Dallas. Her dissertation research explores narrative surprise in the work of Jane Austen, Isak Dinesen, and Flannery O'Connor.
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