more of it than we think

I've been thinking about literature, and my relation to it. Until not too long ago, literature was my religion: I looked to it for Answers, for some way of living life, of understanding and finding one's way around the world. I think that, in a vague kinda way, I thought (or hoped) that words had the power to change the world - one idea at a time, one person at a time.

All of these beliefs still hold true for me, I think, but to a much lesser extent than in the past. Now, the main role that literature plays for me is as a counterbalance or even a corrective to religious fundamentalism, to the kind of closed-up, totalising perspective on the world that threatens anyone who embraces any kind of religious faith. It's also my refuge - 'the refuge of art', as Nabokov puts it in the gorgeous, swoon-inducing closing paragraph of Lolita. It's the space where anything can be thought and said, where being merely human is treated with an honesty, a forthrightness, and sometimes a kindness and sympathy, that the more dogmatic strains of religion often do not make room for. In other words, it's my antidote to myopia and goody-two-shoe-ness.

I think I'll also have to ask my friends to alert me if they see any signs of myopia and goody-two-shoe-ness emerging in my attitudes and behaviour. I'd hate to forget the world's more-of-it-than-we-think-ness, its incorrigible plurality.
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