Author Unknown
Back once more to the realm of the unknown author; or anonymous.
I don't find this lack of acknowledgment too tricky with this quote as I get the sense so many people have probably thought this and possibly said it.
I think it goes to the fact that good authors - both novelists and non-fiction writers - can truly take us into other places and other lives and help us experience things well beyond our circumstances, our time and our place.
From reading books, we can imagine what it's like to working a hospital's emergency department; to be a highflying lawyer in a huge metropolis; to be a missionary in the Congo; to be a prisoner of war; to be a sheep farmer trying to repair and protect their land. Through books we can get glimpses into so many lives, in so many places.
In some ways if we really go down a rabbit burrow of a certain type - we can get an array of insights and perspectives on other lives. Reading a dozen books on being a junior doctor in a hospital gives us a pretty good understanding of what that might actually be like as a life.
I daresay it isn't actually realistic or possibly to literally live another life though reading books; but we certainly gain a much deeper understanding of other lives through reading.
The gates to Auschwitz.
your rabbit burrow reference brought to mind Watership Down ... which is to say I believe it's possible to imagine non-human existences as well ...
ReplyDeletesadly, I have read more than I can bear about humankind's very real capacity to commit atrocities, of which Auschwitz is but one example ... so I tend to shy away from graphic violence and have been known to skip over whole chapters or even put a book aside when I sense the words will haunt me (The Kite Runner comes to mind) ...
I feel that way about video or TV images of violence - I turn away or close my eyes until it is safe to return. I wonder about written violence and whether reading graphic descriptions is somehow worse because you are sort of having to create it in your own mind rather than observe or absorb it? I remember A Little Life made me think about that a lot. Go well.
DeleteF - so true - in the one life span we live so many lives simultaneously. B
ReplyDeleteI’m so many ways B!
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