How to stay sane in election year? Dump CNN and read fiction instead.
In a season of heated, high-stakes presidential politics, is reading for pleasure beside the point?
The question has occurred to me these past few nights, as I spend my final minutes before bedtime within the pages of New Orleans author Katy Simpson Smith鈥檚 lovely 2014 novel, 鈥淭he Story of Land and Sea.鈥� On the surface, at least, Smith鈥檚 story of a Revolutionary-era father has absolutely nothing to do with the current campaign cycle, and that鈥檚 its chief charm. The book has been a respite from my day job editing an editorial page 鈥� a perch that places me at ground zero of the country鈥檚 bitterly partisan divide. I鈥檝e gotten so pleasantly removed from primary politics each night 鈥� if only for a few moments 鈥� that I look forward to following up 鈥淟and and Sea鈥� with Smith鈥檚 newly released historical novel, 鈥淔ree Men.鈥�
Yet I wonder: With so much seemingly at stake in our national life these days, is reading for pleasure nothing more than an indulgent exercise in escapism, something a citizen can ill afford? Shouldn鈥檛 I be watching C-SPAN or cable news instead?
But maybe in reading fiction a few moments each night, living vicariously within someone else鈥檚 life for awhile, I鈥檓 subtly enlarging my well of empathy, getting out of my comfort zone and preconceived notions about the world. And perhaps that鈥檚 an especially good thing for any citizen to do right now, as so much of our political gulf seems grounded in the inability to view reality as someone else does.
As the fictional small-town lawyer Atticus Finch reminds us in the recently departed Harper Lee鈥檚 鈥淭o Kill a Mockingbird,鈥� you 鈥渘ever really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.鈥� What Lee subtly suggests 鈥� and what is often overlooked 鈥� is that Atticus has developed this broad-mindedness at least partly by reading.
As I wrote in a 2008 Monitor oped, Atticus is viewed as a passive character by his daughter Scout because he reads so much. But for Atticus, reading is a vital way to engage the world, not escape from it. 鈥淪truggling against a town that despises his principles, Finch routinely reads to widen his worldview and deepen his soul,鈥� I told readers back then. 鈥淗e is reading, in a very real way, as if his life depends on it.鈥�
If politics is the proverbial art of the possible, then books, by stoking the bright fires of imagination, can enlarge our sense of what is possible. It鈥檚 why people read books not only in spite of hard times but because of them, as we learn in the bestselling 2008 novel, 鈥淭he Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.鈥� It鈥檚 about how the British residents of a Nazi-occupied island find the resolve to endure 鈥� and prevail 鈥� by forming a book club, of all things.
Far-fetched? Perhaps not so much. Last week, combing the shelves of my local used book shop, I came across a lovely edition of essays by the 17th-century man of letters Francis Bacon. Only after taking it home did I realize that my copy had been published in 1942 鈥� a time of profound worry and anxiety on the world stage.
I hope that Bacon was a bridge of sorts for the book鈥檚 first owner, taking him from the mean world of the present to the brighter world of what could be. And I hope that this book and all the others on my nightstand will do the same for me this season, as I tune out the white noise of the campaign trail each evening, then open a book, and rest within the calming presence of a voice that speaks to me without shouting.
鈥� Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Advocate newspaper in Louisiana, is the author of 鈥淎 Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.鈥� 听听听听听
