The pitfalls of using science to prop up literature

"Hi, I’m lit-fitness celebrity JK Rowling. If you’re busy like me, then stay tuned because I’m excited to share with you the most innovative piece of emotional and interpersonal exercise equipment ever. I’m talking about the fastest, easiest way to make lightning-fast decisions and get your empathy into its best shape ever. ... Introducing, the great American novel."

We’ve always agreed that books are fun, diversionary, and entertaining. Now they are apparently as good for you as a bowl of bran flakes and a jog around the park.

There's a spate of new studies and research supporting what we’ve suspected all along: Reading is good for you. (Thanks, Mom.)

On one level, this is good news. I mean, who should be grumpy about research helping to boost the cultural relevance of an art form? 

But on another level, I’m skeptical, and a little depressed, by this new kind of literary analysis. (I also think post-structuralist, Marxist, feminist, post-colonialist, and deconstructionist literary theories take the joy out of literature, but that’s another rant.) Is relying on laboratory research to tell us books make us better human beings a positive development?

In my lastest post for the WBUR blog "Cognoscneti," I argue that all these new studies showing that reading good literature is scientifically beneficial to us is, well, kind of depressing, taking all the mystery and magic out of reading. Check out the full post here.

Books, Actually fiction project for BBF

Once again (for the third year running), I particuated in a fantastic collaborative audio fiction project called Books, Actually.

If you missed this year's edition --- "Books, Actually: What If?" --- at the 2013 Boston Book Festival, you can listen to it here.

Books, Actually is The Drum's collection of interlaced stories set in and around the Boston Book Festival. A thief, a teenaged poet, a coxswain, and a disgruntled author are just a few of the characters created by Boston authors Catherine Elcik, Ethan Gilsdorf, Katrina Grigg-Saito, Ted Weesner, Becky Tuch, Clarence Lai, Stace Budzko, and Henriette Lazaridis Power.

Hear them all, or go directly to a selected story. Here are the authors and the times on this audio file where Elcik (00:31), Gilsdorf (6:20), Lai (11:47), Power (17:12), Weesner (22:51), Tuch (29:23), Budzko (35:39), Grigg-Saito (37:17), Elcik (42:21).