An important book

I'm always reading more than one book at a time, no doubt a carryover from my student days. Today I began what I already can tell will be a significant book for me.

The Use and Abuse of Literature by Marjorie Garber

In the pages that follow I will attempt not only to argue for but also to invoke and demonstrate the “uses” of reading and of literature, not as an instrument of moral or cultural control, nor yet as an infusion of “pleasure,” but rather as a way of thinking. That is why, in my view, it is high time to take back the term literature. To do so will mean explaining why reading—not skimming for information or for the plot (or for the sexy, titillating “good parts” of a novel or a political exposé)—is really hard to do; and why the very uselessness of literature is its most profound and valuable attribute. The result of such a radical reorientation of our understanding of what it means to read, and to read literature, and to read in a “literary” way, would be enormous. A better understanding of these questions is the only way to return literature to the center, rather than the periphery, of personal, educational, and professional life.

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 If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature’s most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation—the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered—is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture.