#JAMES WOOD, HOW FICTION WORKS#
Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us towards it, whereas literature teaches us to notice - to notice the way my mother, say, often wipes her lips just before kissing me; the drilling sound of a London cab when its diesel engine is flabbily idling; the way old leather jackets have white lines in them like the striations of fat in pieces of meat; the way fresh snow ‘creaks’ underfoot; the way a baby’s arms are so fat that they seem tied with string (ah, the others are mine but that last example is from Tolstoy!).

This tutoring is dialectical. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practise on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life. And so on and on.

Detail 46,47

摘于6/24/2026 #分别善恶知识树上的果子#