Forum / Caveat lector

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  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 23, 03:46pm

  As a boy, I learned that... even if you win an argument... a debate, shouting match... or even a fist fight, you'll still not ever change anyone's mind, not in fact if only in appearance. I learned that the human will is insistent and displays its most rigid and unbending quality of mind in the face of opposition. It occurred to me later that a good story is like a sucker punch that will catch a body unaware of the sudden impact when it lands in a pleasurable zone. I learned that a good story can teach, that people can indeed learn new things when they are presented an unnacceptable idea in a friendly, less threatening package.

  Is there a novel that so impressed you that it changed your mind? Were you aware of the change as it occurred?

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  Christopher Allen

  Jan 23, 09:34pm

  Great question, JLD! In graduate school I read everything Henry James wrote. At the time (and probably still, but less so I'm sure), I was incapable of understanding the linguistics of human relationships: intellectually fit but emotionally wee. I'm sure I became more aware of how to communicate on various levels of intimacy at that time. It did change the way I see characters. And people.

  And Henry James did this to me?

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  John Riley

  Jan 24, 12:02am

  It is a great question James but before mentioning my example I have to voice my admiration of Christopher. Reading all of Henry James is an achievement I'm fairly certain I'll never attain. The explanation of how it helped you better understand the language of human relationships is as good a justification for reading literature as any I've encountered.

  I grew up as obsessed with history as I was with literature, maybe more so. Naturally, as a boy I was prone to make heroes out of the "Great Men" and immerse myself in how they had piloted history. When I read "War & Peace" in college Tolstoy didn't sway me completely to his historiography but he did puncture my naive idea of how humans have moved through time. He and Thucydides did away with any notion I had of history progressing. Also, like a lot of history boys, I romanticized war when I was young and they and a few others did a good job of remedying that character defect. There are other examples of how I've changed my views based on things I've read but these are two of the big ones. Reading is an experience and it stands to reason that it can change someone's mind as easily as any other experience.

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  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 24, 03:35am

  John, if history teaches anything, it's that mankind may gain technical abilities and acquire knowledge that seems to build upon itself at accelerated rates... but that wisdom waxes and wanes in consistent, predictable ways. Interesting.

  Christopher, for me, it was Steinbeck, a moral voice not unlike the prophets of the Bible, but with a contemporary grace and exquisite, even exquisitely painful simplicity of heart. It was difficult to maintain my growing cynicism after reading Grapes of Wrath. There is something hopeful in the desolation of that story, a hopeful light, a hunger for something worthy of our ideals in the face of injustice.

  I hope that sounds naive.
  If it does, then the lesson took hold.
  I'd hate to lose it.

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  Gary Hardaway

  Jan 25, 09:50pm

  I've never been conscious of how reading a novel has changed me or my mind. It always feels like and addition rather than a reorganization of consciousness. I'm a slow reader, though, so that may allow acclimation.

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  Dolemite

  Jan 26, 03:35am

  The Happy Hollisters

  I didn't know, at the age of eight, that families could exist on the same page.

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