Novels and Living

2022-03-13

I'm feeling sleepy, so a two-minute timer today.

As I get older I wonder to what extent novels are a vehicle for change versus a defense of it. There are novels that have shaken and moved me — The Brothers Karamazov, Gilead, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Amber Spyglass as a child, and many others — but did they deepen me or just show me what I already knew, or would have learned eventually?

A longer thread for another time. I like to think the fiction all amounts to something. But at a certain point, I think, it's time to put it down and live it.