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Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you for this. I think Milan Kundera's words are very valuable also: “The novel has accompanied man uninterruptedly and faithfully since the beginning of the Modern Era. It was then that the "passion to know," which Husserl considered the essence of European spirituality, seized the novel and led it to scrutinize man's concrete life and protect it against "the forgetting of being"; to hold "the world of life" under a permanent light. That is the sense in which I understand and share Hermann Broch's insistence in repeating: The sole raison d'etre of a novel is to discover what only the novel can discover. A novel that does not discover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.”

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martha's avatar

thanks for this--although I think you may underestimate the force of the roaring emanating from those who wish to be on the correct side in conflicts (the military one and the one regarding the role of literature and art) in which they are not in fact engaged; nevertheless, your column gives me hope.

and while I have the space, thanks for your excellent commentaries on the issues surrounding specialty high schools and parental aspirations rooted in cultural traditions and presuppositions.

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