Conversational Reading: The Purpose of Literature

There is an interesting conversation going on between Leonard Bast and Dan Green (of The Reading Experience), as to whether literature can be justified solely on its own terms or if it should also have a more tangible, real-world component.

If you're interested, you should really read each post since in paraphrasing their positions I'm leaving a lot out. Bast is basically of the camp that although "literature of substance" can go horribly wrong, literature should generally have something to say, be it social, political, or metaphysical. Green strikes a more purist stance and is satisfied with the "merely literary" (as he puts it), the book that only aspires to work as art.

Update

After some thought, I'm jumping into the fray here. I think that my recent experience vis a vis Underworld and Cloud Atlas is instructive.

If you have read my recent posts on this topic, then you know that I found both books to be excellent, but liked Underworld far more. I did say that Cloud Atlas was a more compelling narrative; however, Underworld edged it out because of the sheer intellectual stimulation I got out of it.

Let us please set aside an objective comparison of the two books and, for the sake of argument, agree that I perceived Cloud Atlas as "more artistic" in the sense that the narrative felt more cohesive, better "built", and had more consuming characters. Also, I think Mitchell proved himself a better wordsmith in Cloud Atlas than DeLillo was in Underworld. That's not to say that these things were lacking in Underworld, just that I perceived them as better in Cloud Atlas.

So what did Underworld do better? I felt that the book had much, much more to say. Whereas Cloud Atlas hammered away at the same idea -- one note played beautifully -- the ideas in Underworld can only be described as immersive, in that I literally felt submerged by all that DeLillo brought to the table. Of course, part of Underworld's success was that for all the ideas DeLillo discussed, the book still felt rather cohesive and had compelling enough plots and characters to sustain my interest.

Now, from my perspective Cloud Atlas was the more artistically wrought book, but Underworld was the more intriguing one. It is worth noting that Cloud Atlas is 500 pages long versus Underworld's 800. I think this difference is key. After 500 pages of Cloud Atlas, the narrative was still as fresh as ever, but I was about ready for the book to end because, although it was artistically captivating, it had ceased working my mind. It was certainly a pleasure to read, but toward the end I did feel as though the book had ceased speaking to me and I was only marveling at Mitchell's literary acrobatics.

On the other hand, I read all 800 pages of Underworld with rapt attention, and would have displayed the same attention for at least another 200. The book continued speaking about the world (and when I say "the world" that is lazy shorthand for several social and theoretical issues that DeLillo discussed) in new and interesting ways, adding more and more layers and even throwing in some surprising new ideas late in the game. Although the narrative was less compelling, Underworld never felt stale as Cloud Atlas had.

I agree with Dan Green about artistic pleasures of literature, but my experiences with Cloud Atlas and Underworld have demonstrated, to me at least, there must be that dialog between a narrative and my mind. There are certainly many forms this dialog can take. It can be very, very political, as in Orwell's 1984, or it can be bery theoretical, as in Auster's works. It can be personal, as some of Nabokov's works have shown me. It can be spiritual, as I've seen in Hawthorn's short stories, or it can verge on literary games, as in some of Calvino's short stories. Whatever it is, I've discovered that my mind thirsts for something more in the text than artistic merit and beauty.