Why do We Read Literature?
The people engaged in psychology and sociology will tell us that we read literature because we want to escape from a harsh and dull reality to a pleasant or interesting fantasy. The humanistic educator tells us that certain good things happen if we read literature, because we will be rewarded by an increased knowledge of the reality and a heightened sensibility.
All this is true and worth saying. And the list of reasons could go on to be much longer, for literature serves all kinds of purposes, varying with different cultures, with different groups in the same culture, with individuals in the same group, with the age and habits of individuals. Yet in the end the sum of all reasons does not really give us an entire explanation. Just so we do not fully understand why people participate in a sport. That it keeps one fit, that it distracts the mind from its troubles, that it gratifies pride – none of these, nor all of them together explain why the skier is drawn to the slopes, the fisherman to the river, the tennis-player – to the court. In each case the attraction lies beyond the reach of explanation. The same is to be said of artistic creation. If we ask, say, a poet why he engages in his enterprise, he’ll probably answer that the love of fame or the hope of money or the wish to advance a certain view of life has some part in what he does, but the only answer that will seem to him to make sense is that he writes poetry because he is a poet.
And to the question of why we read literature we must give a similar answer: because we are human.
From “The Experience of Literature”
N.Y. 1967
