The School of Life

They will be different for each of us, but the way in which they affect us will be similar.

The core, and perhaps unexpected, thing that books do for us is simplify. It sounds odd, because we think of literature as sophisticated. But there are powerful ways in which books organise and clarify our concerns – and in this sense simplify them.

We need simplification because our minds become checkmated by the complexity of our lives. The writer, on rare but hugely significant occasions, puts into words feelings that have long eluded us; they know us better than we know ourselves.

Literature corrects our native inarticulacy. So often we feel lost for words. We are impressed by the sight of a bird wheeling in the dusk sky; we are aware of a particular atmosphere at dawn; we love someone’s slightly wild but sympathetic manner. Yet, we struggle to verbalise our feelings; we may end up remarking: ‘that’s so nice’. Our feelings seem too complex, subtle, vague and elusive for us to be able to spell out. The ideal writer homes in on a few striking things: the angle of the wing; the slow movement of the largest branch of a tree; the angle of the mouth in a smile. Simplification does not betray the nuance of life: it renders life more visible.