Literature may enable empathy, but it often doesn't.
4th September 2017 | for Creatives | reading, books, writing, writer-reader relationship, value the art, Charles Baxter, Josef Goebbels, Knut Hamsun, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Ezra Pound |
"We need to be careful about the argument that literature always enables empathy. There are counter-examples: Josef Goebbels, that Nazi kingpin, wrote a novel. Knut Hamsun was a great novelist and the most unpleasant major writer of the 20th center. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, a great writer, was a crazy anti-Semite. Ezra Pound, another great writer, had, let us say, limited resources of empathy. I could go on with this rogue's gallery. Literature may enable empathy, but it often doesn't. It can't turn monsters, even monsters of genius, into good people. That's not the business of literature."
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