thoughts, words, deeds

dreaming new hopes

“For the twenty million Americans who are hungry tonight, for the homeless freezing tonight, literature is as useless as a knowledge of astronomy” Andre Dubus, Broken Vessels: Essays

What do you think? Is literature as useless as Andre Dubus says?

Okay, I have to admit that I have a stake in this question. As someone who writes, I am never going to admit that literature is useless. Any more than knowledge of astronomy is useless. I do agree that reading a book comes low on a priority list for many who are hungry, who are freezing, and books don’t feed or warm physically. However, that doesn’t mean they’re useless, even to those hungry and homeless that Dubus was talking about.

First, because literature and reading it provides an avenue where these questions can be asked, and perhaps, those things changed. Dubus himself agreed about that or he wouldn’t have published a book of essays in the first place. He wanted people to read his words and come up with prompts like this, questions like this that get people thinking about how changes can be affected in the world.

Second, because no knowledge is ever wasted. The bits and pieces learned from books can eventually change a person’s circumstances—for goodness sake, reading the Little House books or My Side of the Mountain can give clues about how to survive in primitive circumstances. Most of what I know how to do comes as a combination of what I’ve learned through observation and through reading.

Third—and most important, learning about literature or astronomy gives everyone, even people who are frightened and hungry and cold, the impetus to dream of a way to get out. Seeing the stars, reading a story can give people hope, and sometimes that hope is what’s necessary to make things change in their lives. It doesn’t work all the time, but it works enough of the time that I don’t think we can discount dreams as a motive force.

I think that this quote misses the point. Sure, the most important thing that a person who is hungry needs is food, but abandoning literature isn’t going to feed that person. It isn’t going to warm them. A writer who abandons her calling might by inaction—by those books that she didn’t write—fail to save someone who could have been helped if they just read of another way to live. A person who is hungry and fails to work—through whatever means necessary—to better their condition (and that may include reading) isn’t going to find a dream of something different to hold on to.