The Reason We Read

In his book, How to Read and Why, Harold Bloom, the respected literary critic, says that there is no single way to read well, but that there is a prime reason. "Information," Bloom says, is "endlessly available to us..." Then he rhetorically asks, "Where shall we find wisdom?"

Bloom unknowingly underscores the urgency of Proverbs 3: "Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding / for the gain from her is better than gain from silver / and the profit better than gold..."

Nearly every human, I think, intuitively understands the value of wisdom. As parents, teachers, and friends we strive to pass on more than mere knowledge. Our aim, ultimately, is to cultivate goodness. We look to philosophers and theologians. They provide guidelines; they articulate principles and thereby supply a grid through which we can weigh right and wrong. But, as poet Philip Sidney said (and this goes back to the 1580s) philosophy is abstract; it's theoretical, and sometimes -- in the midst of pain, joy, grief, or gladness -- it's hard to see its relevance.

Historians reconstruct the world's pivotal moments. They piece the puzzle together, revealing cause-and-effect, even suggesting, occasionally, the rationale for men's actions. But historians stick to the facts. They're confined by what they can verify. They're prohibited, as historians, from delving into what "ought to be."

Which means that neither philosopher nor historian reveals much of the mystery that we -- real people who get up and go to work every day -- must ponder.

I think it was Philip Sidney, the poet I just mentioned, who first pointed out that the poet provides that picture. It is literature, Sidney said 430 years ago, that takes the abstract and makes it real. With action, dialog, and reflection novelists not only tell us what happened, but what happens -- to us, every day, in the midst of hard-and-fast reality. They give us a story of flesh-and-blood humans who think and feel and struggle ... just like we do.

Novelists, with tools that aren't available to historians or philosophers, can impart wisdom and, one hopes, virtue.

Novelists, unlike historians, create characters. And as we read we come to love, hate, or admire them. Novelists, (and I'm paraphrasing Sidney here) unlike philosophers, can, by the power of their own imagination, create other worlds. They do this as humans created in the image of God -- most like Him when they speak (or write) a world into existence; when they speak (or write) people into being-characters who have names, faces, good qualities, as well as bad ones.

This is one of the means by which we subdue the earth. This is why we tell stories, and why we read them. This is why, according to writer and teacher Leland Ryken, "we not only learn from literature but enjoy it: it delights as it teaches. It conveys ... truth through the creation of concrete images which incarnate or embody ideas which would otherwise remain abstract and nebulous."

Richard Doster is the editor of byFaith magazine. He is also the author of two novels, Safe at Home and Crossing the Lines, both published by David C. Cook Publishers. You can find out more at www.richarddoster.com

Books that prompted these thoughts: 

Ryken, Leylan, ed. The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith and Literature in Writing. Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 2002

Bloom, Harold. How to Read and Why. New York: Scribner, 2000