G.K. Chesterton once observed, “People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.”
What does he mean? Well, remember when Einstein, who dedicated his life to science, said either nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle? Or when Emily Dickinson reminded us that gladness cannot be reduced to a mathematical equation?
Science and math and history have their place. But without stories, without literature, novels, and the like, how would we even begin to talk about human things like love, gratitude, courage, despair, eternity? I suppose we could try to explain them in purely mathematical or scientific terms—but Romeo + Juliet = Oxytocin + Family feud + death2/(poison + dagger)? That’s just gibberish.
As C.S. Lewis observed: “it is disastrous when instead of merely attending to a rose we are forced to think of ourselves looking at the rose, with a certain type of mind and a certain type of eyes. It is disastrous because, if you are not very careful, the color of the rose gets attributed to our optic nerves and its scent to our noses, and in the end there is no rose left.”
We read and write literature, because literature is the stuff of being human. As Muriel Rukeyser famously said: “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
Have a wonderful day.
