THE PURPOSE OF A BOOK

Among my acquaintances is a lovely lady who will not read a book unless it is a true story. What a shock and what a miss! There was a time in America when the "dime novel" was something to avoid. But even before that time, great works of fiction were already on the scene, such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. In England the Bronte sisters had turned out two enduring novels Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. And Jane Austen tops the list for English fiction, both then and now, with her Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, to name only two of them. These literary masterpieces are enough proof that great value abounds in the well written make-belief worlds of those with the gift for writing. 

I have omitted above the great novels of the pre-revolutionary writers of Russian literature, which can claim the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I'll not indulge your time with a longer list but it certainly does exist for those writers of that time in Russia. 

I bring these titles to mind as examples of great literature that is needed even if one goes into a different field from reading and writing. The architect, as an example, can learn much about his chosen field in only a few minutes with fiction, whereas in a class of architecture instruction it might take a whole hour to get it. With fiction, you can learn such a multiplicity of ideas that you might otherwise never know. So what? you might ask. Everything that enriches your mental life should make your life more enjoyable and profitable but also hurt a little for the less fortunate. So? You owe it to those in your orbit to help enrich their lives. I do not mean you should go around telling others what to think, but to set the example for the contagion of idea gathering.   

Several years ago, as a teacher of accelerated seniors who had big ideas about what to study in college, I assigned each one of them to write to the college of their choice and ask for a catalog of courses of study. They wrote to such schools as Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, etc., and got the surprise of their young lives. The recommendation for undergraduate study in medicine, law, and even physical education was the same: MAJOR IN ENGLISH! (An undergraduate major in English covers in depth study of literature but also written composition. It requires two years of one foreign language and a course in history of England.) Of course, my students asked why. It took about one minute to tell them you learn all about human nature in literature much faster than from individuals that may become your clients or patients or quarterbacks. I've often wondered how many of them followed those recommendations. 

I once read a book by a professional man whose field was science. So long as he wrote about science, he did all right. But outside his field, his lack of a literary education was most evident. And that is what sells a book, not the story alone and often not the story at all. A meticulous vocabulary is what makes it or breaks it. Perhaps everyone who goes to college should major in English.