An escape or a confirmation?

Lawrence Durrell

"I don't believe one reads to escape reality," the British novelist Lawrence Durrell said. "A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he had not experienced."

But can't both be true, even at the same time?

A man may work in an office in Cincinnati or as a plumber in Philadelphia and, in the evening, enjoy reading western novels. He may want to both escape the reality of his own circumstances — perhaps there is even a nagging wife — while at the same time wanting to experience a reality, even if it's an imagined one, that he can never experience in real life.

Or a war novel may be read by someone with no military experience at all. He will never know what it is really like being in combat, but a book can confirm that reality, while at the same taking him briefly away from his normal routine.

A lonely middle-aged woman who has never experienced romance in her life may read one romance novel after another to confirm a reality that she believes other women have known.

And so on.

Thanks to books, one can travel into space, explore the deep ocean, find true love, win a bar fight, hit a home run in the World Series, solve mysteries, travel the world or do almost anything else. There are many more realities than any one person can experience in one lifetime. Books expand our possibilities.