A moment of truth

David L. Ulin

This is what literature, at its best and most unrelenting, offers: a slicing through of all the noise and the ephemera, a cutting to the chase. There is something thrilling about it, this unburdening, the idea of getting at a truth so profound that, for a moment anyway, we become transcendent in the fullest sense.

David L. Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading

I love David L. Ulin's description above about the value of literature, but I seem to be most struck by his phrase "for a moment anyway."

Great novels can last a long time, and great lines from great novels may be repeated over and over again, yet Ulin is right. The profound truths that can be found in the best novels do tend to be fleeting. They strike us with power in the context of the story we are reading, but can never be quite as powerful again. Readers become transcendent, as he puts it, only briefly. And then reality swallows us up again.

I find that I recall certain novels with great fondness without remembering the reason, or even remembering much about the story itself or any of the characters. Perhaps what I am really remembering so fondly is that moment or moments of transcendence, those passages that momentarily hit home so powerfully.

Ulin sees the temporariness of literature as its virtue. "Its futility is what makes it noble; nothing will come of this, no one will be saved, but it is worth your attention anyway." Some people, including both nonreaders and those who read nonfiction exclusively, view fiction as a waste of time. What's the point?

The point, or at least one of them, is that occasional moment of truth.