1 00:00:03,199 --> 00:00:05,569 We have a general sense that these sort of places 2 00:00:05,569 --> 00:00:10,660 are filled with things that are deeply important, but what exactly is literature good for? 3 00:00:10,660 --> 00:00:13,639 Why should we spend our time reading novels or poems 4 00:00:13,639 --> 00:00:15,889 when out there, big things are going on. 5 00:00:15,889 --> 00:00:21,950 Let’s have a think about some of the ways literature benefits us.. 6 00:00:21,950 --> 00:00:26,680 Of course, it looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is ultimately the greatest 7 00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:32,659 time-saver, for it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you 8 00:00:32,659 --> 00:00:37,340 years, decades, millenia to try to experience directly. 9 00:00:37,340 --> 00:00:42,230 Literature is the greatest ‘reality simulator’, a machine that puts you through infinitely 10 00:00:42,230 --> 00:00:45,730 more situations than you could ever directly witness. 11 00:00:45,730 --> 00:00:49,630 It lets you - safely: that's crucial - see what it’s like to get divorced. 12 00:00:49,630 --> 00:00:53,100 Or kill someone and feel remorseful. Or chuck in your job and take off to the desert. 13 00:00:53,150 --> 00:00:56,300 Or make a terrible mistake while leading your country. 14 00:00:56,300 --> 00:01:01,290 It lets you speed up time: in order to see the arc of a life from childhood 15 00:01:01,290 --> 00:01:02,399 to old age 16 00:01:02,399 --> 00:01:05,078 It gives you the keys to the palace, and to countless bedrooms, 17 00:01:05,078 --> 00:01:09,090 so you can assess your life in relation to that of others. 18 00:01:09,090 --> 00:01:14,270 It introduces you to fascinating people: a Roman general, an 11th century French princess, 19 00:01:14,270 --> 00:01:17,819 a Russian upper class mother just embarking on an affair... 20 00:01:17,819 --> 00:01:19,189 It takes you across continents 21 00:01:19,189 --> 00:01:20,490 and centuries 22 00:01:20,490 --> 00:01:26,900 Literature cures you of provincialism and, at almost no cost, turns us into citizens of the world. 23 00:01:28,709 --> 00:01:33,090 Literature performs the basic magic of showing us what things look like from someone else’s 24 00:01:28,710 --> 00:01:34,710 --- 25 00:01:33,090 --> 00:01:34,369 point of view. 26 00:01:34,369 --> 00:01:39,500 It allows us to consider the consequences of our actions on others in a way we otherwise wouldn’t. 27 00:01:39,600 --> 00:01:44,069 And it shows us examples of kindly, generous, sympathetic people 28 00:01:44,069 --> 00:01:48,899 Literature typically stands opposed to the dominant value system, the one that rewards 29 00:01:48,899 --> 00:01:51,049 money and power. 30 00:01:51,049 --> 00:01:55,479 Writers are on the other side, they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are 31 00:01:55,479 --> 00:02:00,700 of deep importance but that can’t afford airtime in a commercialised, status-conscious 32 00:02:00,700 --> 00:02:01,939 and cynical world. 33 00:02:04,119 --> 00:02:06,429 We are weirder than we’re allowed to admit. 34 00:02:06,429 --> 00:02:08,740 We often can’t say what's really on our minds. 35 00:02:08,740 --> 00:02:14,079 But in books, we find descriptions of who we genuinely are and what events are actually like, 36 00:02:14,079 --> 00:02:20,189 described with an honesty quite different from what ordinary conversation allows for. 37 00:02:20,189 --> 00:02:24,079 In the best books it’s as if the writer knows us better than we know ourselves. 38 00:02:24,079 --> 00:02:30,849 They find the words to describe the fragile, weird, special experiences of our inner lives: 39 00:02:30,849 --> 00:02:34,480 - the light on a summer morning - the anxiety we felt at the gathering 40 00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:39,000 - the sensations of a first kiss - the envy when a friend told us of their new business 41 00:02:39,200 --> 00:02:42,250 - the longing we experienced on the train, 42 00:02:42,250 --> 00:02:47,090 looking at the profile of another passenger we never dare to speak to 43 00:02:47,090 --> 00:02:51,920 Writers open our hearts and minds - and give us maps to our own selves so that we can travel 44 00:02:51,920 --> 00:02:57,500 in them more reliably and with less of a feeling of paranoia and persecution. 45 00:02:57,500 --> 00:03:03,500 As the writer Emerson remarked: ‘In the works of great writers, we find our own neglected thoughts.’ 46 00:03:04,549 --> 00:03:09,730 Literature is a corrective to the superficiality and compromises of friendship. 47 00:03:09,730 --> 00:03:15,379 Books are our true friends, always to hand, never too busy, giving us unvarnished accounts 48 00:03:15,379 --> 00:03:17,609 of what things are really like. 49 00:03:17,750 --> 00:03:21,900 All of our lives, one of our greatest fears is of failing, of messing up… of becoming, 50 00:03:21,900 --> 00:03:24,590 as the tabloids put it, a ‘LOSER’. 51 00:03:24,590 --> 00:03:27,469 Every day, the media takes us into stories of failure 52 00:03:27,469 --> 00:03:32,790 Interestingly, a lot of literature is also about failure. In one way or another, a great 53 00:03:32,790 --> 00:03:36,939 many novels, plays and poems are about people who’ve messed up, people... 54 00:03:36,939 --> 00:03:38,739 ...who slept with mum by mistake 55 00:03:38,739 --> 00:03:40,309 ... who let down their partner 56 00:03:40,309 --> 00:03:43,569 ... or who died after running up some debts on shopping sprees. 57 00:03:43,569 --> 00:03:47,609 If the media got to them, they’d make mincemeat out of them. 58 00:03:47,609 --> 00:03:52,769 But great books don’t judge as harshly or as one-dimensionally as the media. 59 00:03:52,769 --> 00:03:59,900 They evoke pity for the hero and fear for ourselves based on a new sense of how near we all are to destroying our own lives. 60 00:04:00,659 --> 00:04:06,700 But if literature can really do all these things, we might need to treat it a bit differently to the way we do now. 61 00:04:07,049 --> 00:04:10,290 We tend to treat it as a distraction, an entertainment (something for the beach). 62 00:04:10,290 --> 00:04:14,689 But it’s far more than that, it’s really therapy, in the broad sense. 63 00:04:14,689 --> 00:04:18,450 We should learn to treat it as doctors treat their medicines, something we prescribe in 64 00:04:18,450 --> 00:04:23,130 response to a range of ailments and classify according to the problems it might be best 65 00:04:23,130 --> 00:04:26,030 suited to addressing. 66 00:04:26,030 --> 00:04:31,070 Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to 67 00:04:31,070 --> 00:04:35,250 help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness and sanity.