My mom is a big fan of literature, whereas my dad is “too busy” to read. Mario Vargas Llosa said that a lot of times men approached to him with a book in their hands and asked for a signature, saying: "It is for my wife or my daughter or my sister or my mother; she, or they, are big readers and love literature ". Vargas Llosa then asks immediately: "And what about you, don’t you like reading? " The answer rarely changes: "Well, of course I do, I like it, but I 'm a very busy person, you know." As most men, my dad has so many important things, so many responsibilities and obligations, that he can’t waste a couple of hours of his precious time engrossed in a novel, a book of poems or a literary essay. According to this conception, literature should be in the family tree of sports, cinema, or even chess; literature is just a dispensable activity that can be killed without compunction when established a priority table with chores and essential commitments.
It is true, literature is gradually becoming a female activity: in bookstores, at conferences and, of course, university departments devoted to letters, skirts defeat pants by a landslide. The explanation given is that women read more because they work fewer hours than men, and also because women tend to see the time devoted to fantasy and illusion more justified than men. I am a bit allergic to these explanations, which divide men and women in closed categories and attribute to each sex collective strengths and weaknesses, so I do not advocate at all these explanations. But what is certain is that literary readers are decreasing in general, and within them, women prevail.
I'm happy for women, of course, but, in this regard, I deplore men, and those millions of people who can read, but resign to. Not only because they don’t know the pleasure lost, but from a less hedonistic perspective, because I am convinced that a society without novels, or in which literature has been relegated, as certain unmentionable vices, is doomed to spiritually barbarize itself and it compromises its freedom.
In this blog I will talk about my denial to accept literature as a fancy hobby, and my appreciation of it, since through novels we enrich our spirit. Reading is, in my opinion, an irreplaceable activity for the formation of a citizen in a modern, democratic society of free individuals, and therefore, this skill should be inculcated in families since childhood and should form part of all educational programs as a basic discipline. We know that it is happening the opposite, that literature tends to shrink and even disappear from school curriculums as if it were an expendable teaching.
We live in an age of specialization of knowledge, because of the prodigious development of science and technology, and its fragmentation into many avenues and behaviors. The specialization brings, undoubtedly, many benefits, as it allows deeper exploration and experimentation, and it is the engine of progress. But it has, as well, a negative consequence; it eliminates those common denominators of culture, which allow men and women to coexist, communicate and feel, somehow, supportive. Specialization leads, eventually, to social isolation.
Literature, conversely, unlike science and technology, is, was and will remain being, one of those common denominators of human experience. Thanks to it we recognize ourselves, and we dialogue with others. Readers of Cervantes or Shakespeare, Dante or Tolstoy, they understand themselves and they feel as members of the same species because, in the works created, they learned what they share as human beings, what remains in all of them below the wide range of differences that separates us all.
It is true, literature is gradually becoming a female activity: in bookstores, at conferences and, of course, university departments devoted to letters, skirts defeat pants by a landslide. The explanation given is that women read more because they work fewer hours than men, and also because women tend to see the time devoted to fantasy and illusion more justified than men. I am a bit allergic to these explanations, which divide men and women in closed categories and attribute to each sex collective strengths and weaknesses, so I do not advocate at all these explanations. But what is certain is that literary readers are decreasing in general, and within them, women prevail.
I'm happy for women, of course, but, in this regard, I deplore men, and those millions of people who can read, but resign to. Not only because they don’t know the pleasure lost, but from a less hedonistic perspective, because I am convinced that a society without novels, or in which literature has been relegated, as certain unmentionable vices, is doomed to spiritually barbarize itself and it compromises its freedom.
In this blog I will talk about my denial to accept literature as a fancy hobby, and my appreciation of it, since through novels we enrich our spirit. Reading is, in my opinion, an irreplaceable activity for the formation of a citizen in a modern, democratic society of free individuals, and therefore, this skill should be inculcated in families since childhood and should form part of all educational programs as a basic discipline. We know that it is happening the opposite, that literature tends to shrink and even disappear from school curriculums as if it were an expendable teaching.
We live in an age of specialization of knowledge, because of the prodigious development of science and technology, and its fragmentation into many avenues and behaviors. The specialization brings, undoubtedly, many benefits, as it allows deeper exploration and experimentation, and it is the engine of progress. But it has, as well, a negative consequence; it eliminates those common denominators of culture, which allow men and women to coexist, communicate and feel, somehow, supportive. Specialization leads, eventually, to social isolation.
Literature, conversely, unlike science and technology, is, was and will remain being, one of those common denominators of human experience. Thanks to it we recognize ourselves, and we dialogue with others. Readers of Cervantes or Shakespeare, Dante or Tolstoy, they understand themselves and they feel as members of the same species because, in the works created, they learned what they share as human beings, what remains in all of them below the wide range of differences that separates us all.