Have these people never read Moby Dick?

Jane Smiley is one of Queenie’s favourite novelists. All of her books have taken on a literary challenge – epic, mystery, confession, history, or just plain tale – and created something unforgettable. I am currently reading her Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, which arose out of Smiley’s writer’s block in the wake of 9/11, and her consequent decision to read 100 novels.

It’s fantastic and well worth buying for Chapter 8 alone, which is called The Novel and History. The chapter assigns an important role for the novel in political and personal historical terms, and warns of a world without novels, or more importantly novel readers. I’ve typed some of it out, with apologies to Ms. Smiley, but this is important stuff, so I hope she won’t mind too much:

“I saw with some surprise, that my world is fragile not only because of forces from the East, but also because of forces from within the West, forces from Texas, forces from Wyoming, forces from the evangelical right, forces from the corporate world, forces from the world of think tanks and political institutes. We seem to live in a world now where all thoughts are focused on the idea of prevailing, of imposing one’s beliefs on others, and no thoughts, no thoughts are given to the costs of prevailing, or even what it means. Have these people never read Moby Dick? Well no, they haven’t.”

“These are current concerns that perhaps someday will seem momentary in retrospect, but they remind me that those who don’t read novels are condemned to repeat the oldest mistakes in literature – the mistake of hubris, a Greek mistake, and the mistake of attributing one’s own emotions to God, a Judeo-Christian-Islamic mistake. Pride, arrogance, moral blindness and narcissism are endemic among humans, especially humans who occupy positions of power, either in society, or in the family. But when I have read a long novel, when I have entered systematically into a sensibility that is alien to mine, the author’s or a character’s, when I have become interested in another person because he is interesting, not because he is privileged or great, there is a possibility that at the end I will be a degree less self-centred than I was at the beginning, that I will be a degree more able to see the world as another sees it. And there is the possibility that I will be able to reason about my own emotions. In the end I will be more empathetic … and I will be more sympathetic....”

…

“When we talk about the death of the novel, what we are really talking about is the possibility that empathy, however minimal, would no longer be attainable for those for whom the novel has died. If the novel has died for the bureaucrats who run our country, then they are likely not to pause before engaging in narcissistic and foolish policies. If the novel has died for men … then the inner lives of their friends and family members are a degree more closed to them than before. If the novel dies, or never lives, for children and teenagers, who spend their time watching TV or playing video games, then they will always be somewhat mystified by others, and by themselves as well. If the novel should die, what is to replace it?”

“My guess is that mere technology will not kill the novel. It is too different from movies and other forms of visual entertainment to be replaced by them. Nor do I believe that novels are bannable. Too many of them reside in private hands; they would be as hard to get rid of as guns and bullets. But novels can be sidelined – dismissed to the seraglio, where they are read by women and children and have no effect on those in power. What that happens, our society will be brutalised and coarsened by people who speak rather like us, and look rather like us but who have no way of understanding us or each other.”

Queenie would like to point out that she has read Moby Dick three times. Not because she liked it over-much, mind, a brain storm the day she had to pick an essay topic one time years back caused it. But Smiley is right about the book's lessons.