Why We Read Novels, Letter to the Editor, New York Times
Published: May 2, 2013
To the Editor:
The headline on Nathaniel Rich’s essay “Writing the End” (April 21) asks, “Should novelists try harder to confront long-term environmental crises?” As the author of 12 novels since 1961 and another in progress, I answer no.
Rich’s final paragraph offers a litany of reasons we read novels. They hold “a mirror to our secret desires and fears,” they allow us “to confront our long-term crises,” and they help us “to understand how the vast, complex problems of our time connect with our private inner lives.”
Then Rich burdens fellow novelists with the obligation “to pose the intimate questions” concerning the many ways the bad news about man’s future affects us. As a writer and teacher of writing for 60 years, I cannot recall ever hearing a writer or reader testify to the value of a novel as deriving from such utilitarian purposes as Rich claims. Great novels create pure experiences that affect our emotions, imaginations and intellect in ways that are mostly mysterious.
DAVID MADDEN
Black Mountain, N.C.