Alain de Botton: How Proust Can Change Your Life
Alain de Botton sees literature as a series of lenses that can significantly change the way you view the world. Alain de Botton was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1969 and now lives in London....
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I think the way to look at literature is as an instrument that sensitizes us to different things. We all know that if five different people are asked to describe one scene, they will all describe it differently. Some will describe the light, others will focus on what people's feet were doing, others will look at the, you know, material, shape of the room or whatever. A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It's almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments. What literature is about is a record of people with very sophisticated radars who are picking up on the really important stuff. The interesting thing is that, for me, that radar is not something we should simply passively accept while we read the book. It's ...
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I think the way to look at literature is as an instrument that sensitizes us to different things. We all know that if five different people are asked to describe one scene, they will all describe it differently. Some will describe the light, others will focus on what people's feet were doing, others will look at the, you know, material, shape of the room or whatever. A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It's almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments. What literature is about is a record of people with very sophisticated radars who are picking up on the really important stuff. The interesting thing is that, for me, that radar is not something we should simply passively accept while we read the book. It's ...
