By Heart: The Author of 'The Automobile Club of Egypt,' Alaa Al Aswany, on How Literature Inspires Empathy. By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature.
See entries from Karl Ove Knausgaard, Jonathan Franzen, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, and more. Alaa Al Aswany, the author of The Automobile Club of Egypt, is no stranger to activism. One of Egypt’s most recognizable literary celebrities, he was a high-profile fixture of the 2011 Tahrir Square demonstrations. A New Yorker profile established Aswany’s political clout with a dramatic opening anecdote: His onscreen confrontation with Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik led, in the morning, to Shafik’s resignation.
But despite his role as a pro-democracy figurehead and cultural arbiter, Aswany seems to feel his main work takes place at the writing desk. The Automobile Club of Egypt is set in 1940s Cairo, during the last days of British colonial rule. The New Yorker has called Aswany “the most popular writer in Egypt and the most prominent Egyptian writer in the world.” Lezen met ALS: Proust? Daar kun je niet vroeg genoeg aan beginnen. What Books Do for the Human Soul: The Four Psychological Functions of Great Literature.
It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver — because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
Literature is the greatest reality simulator — a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness. Literature performs the basic magic of what things look like though someone else’s point of view; it allows us to consider the consequences of our actions on others in a way we otherwise wouldn’t; and it shows us examples of kindly, generous, sympathetic people. Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system — the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side — they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-conscious, and cynical world. We’re weirder than we like to admit. Why can’t we read anymore?
Spending time with friends, or family, I often feel a soul-deep throb coming from that perfectly engineered wafer of stainless steel and glass and rare earth metals in my pocket.
Touch me. Literatuur maakt mensen beter in 'gedachten lezen' Foto: Thinkstock Na het lezen van literaire meesterwerken van schrijvers zoals Don Delillo en Anton Tsjechov slagen mensen er beter in om gezichtsuitdrukkingen te interpreteren.
Het lezen van literatuur bevordert empathie en sociale vaardigheden. Of het nu Oliver Twist is of Harry Potter, Hester Prynne uit The scarlet letter of Katnisse Everdeen uit The hunger games, literaire karakters bieden ons een kans op een indirecte manier het leven in al zijn facetten te beleven: humor, mysterie en avontuur.
Via Atticus Finch uit To kill a mockingbird vechten we voor een morele zaak. Via Lizzy Bennet uit Pride and prejudice trotseren we klassentegenstellingen en vinden we romantisch geluk. Via Ralph Ellisons Invisible man betreuren we het dat de maatschappij onze individualiteit niet erkent. Does reading fiction make you a more empathic, better person? Illustration by Charlie Powell Does reading fiction make you a better, less self-absorbed person?
You read because you are interested in the broad sweep of human experience, and because you want to gain access into the narrow sanctum of specific otherness—to feel Anna Karenina’s recklessness and desperation, or know the shape and weight of Ahab’s obsession, and thereby something of humanity itself. But in order to make any headway with a novel, you need to grant yourself a leave of absence from human affairs, to sequester yourself in a place where you are sheltered from the demanding presence of other people. Opening a novel might be a kind of exposure to the world beyond the self, but it’s one that necessarily involves a foreclosure against it too. A life spent reading is, among other things, a life spent alone. Mark O'Connell is Slate's books columnist and a staff writer for the Millions. The reaction to this was widespread and, as you’d expect, overwhelmingly pleased. The First Sentence Is a Handshake. By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature.
100 Must Read Books: The Man's Essential Library. Internet’s Most Influential Writers. The debate as to whether the Internet is good or bad for literature doesn’t seem any closer to resolution now than when it began, years ago, but the fact remains that some people in the literary world are excellent at using Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and even Instagram or Pinterest to communicate with readers and get people interested in what they’re writing.
These aren’t the writers who have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers but only tweet when they have a book come out, or the ones who write a guest blog post every year to get their names back into the conversation. Some are young authors, others are firmly established. Some of them are publishing industry veterans or new media superstars who want to use their clout (or Klout) to talk up writers they love, while others command small armies via their Tumblrs.
Some start hashtag trends, while others have scored book deals with their clever tweets. Literary journals/blogs. Literature. Literature. Books online.