Literature - novels, plays, and poems - can have an uncanny dual life, where they simultaneously represent something eternal and something historical, and this is often how they are taught in school.
Interpretation
Literature connects timeless themes with historical contexts, enriching the learning experience.
Jane Smiley highlights the unique ability of literature to embody both eternal truths and specific historical narratives. This duality enhances our understanding of literary works, as they not only reflect universal human experiences but also capture the essence of the time and culture in which they were created, shaping how they are approached in educational settings.
In practice
In a classroom discussion about historical novels, a teacher might quote this to highlight the importance of understanding both the story and its context.
I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.
I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.
Somehow, knowing that Alzheimer's is coming mocks all one's aspirations - to tell stories, to think through certain issues as only a novel can do, to be recognised for one's accomplishments and hard work - in a way that old familiar death does not.
No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not.
Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.
I now understand what Nelle Morton meant when she said that one of the great tasks in our time is to "hear people to speech." Behind their fearful silence, our students want to find their voices, speak their voices, have their voices heard. A good teacher is one who can listen to those voices even before they are spoken-so that someday they can speak with truth and confidence.
To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously, to allow what you're reading to pierce routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled. Then, what of the right answers, the so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?
If you really want to know about the future, don't ask a technologist, a scientist, a physicist. No! Don't ask somebody who's writing code. No, if you want to know what society's going to be like in 20 years, ask a kindergarten teacher.
If a nation allows its literary culture to die, it's a sign that it doesn't fundamentally care.
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