I can't find the edit button, so I'll add this as a new post.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by faithbw
How will I become a better person by reading The Satanic Verses or Little Dorrit?
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For an example, I'll take The Enchantress of Florence, because I read it more recently than Satanic Verses. Here's a quote from Rushdie talking about the book:
Quote:
In the book there is the constant question of how we come to mean something. So there are two kinds of characters in the book. First, there are characters who think that your life acquires meaning as the consequence of a journey -- that you go somewhere, do something, conquer something or realize some achievement. That's how you become somebody: by leaving home, traveling. The Mughals came from what is now Kurdistan to India and established an empire, and that's what they meant.
On the other hand, there are characters in the book who think that's kind of absurd. They think, "Why would you leave home?" -- because for them, home is the place where you mean something.
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This is an abstract presentation of one idea presented vividly in the book - two contrasting character types. One can understand the abstract idea, intellectually, in a minute or two by reading the quote. But by reading the book itself, one understands it in a different way - the speech, behaviour, and thoughts of the characters which Rushdie relates bring home the idea of the contrast. (The same way that meeting and talking to homeless people, for example, might bring home to you aspects of their lives which you hitherto understood only in an abstract way.) The reader can therefore come to understand a group of people (whichever of the two groups he doesn't belong to) which he might not meet in real life (or which he might not have thought about in this way). He can become a better (in this case, more understanding) person.