[Music]
my friend George was dying of cancer and
a friend and I decided that we would go
visit him once he had entered palliative
care this wasn’t the first time that
we’d gone to visit him and in the
previous visits we had largely exhausted
the sorts of conversations that happen
around a deathbed but our decision this
time was to take one of George’s
favorite books along and read it out
loud to him that intention was
challenged by George’s three roommates
the first of whom was watching sports on
television the second who was listening
to hard rock on the radio and both of
them had the volume loud enough to drown
out the third a man who was plagued by
loud racking coughs we began to read but
the combined cacophony of television
radio and respiratory sickness
distracted us and we stumbled over some
of our words we mispronounced others
George lay there with his eyes closed
felt like he was concentrating perhaps
and I wondered if he had drifted off
into sleep and I wondered if he was
hearing what we were saying over the
discordant din of the room and then it
happened
George opened up his eyes and he said
stop read that last part again and you
can’t refuse a dying man his wish so we
did the dragon swooped once more lower
than ever and as he turned and dived
down his belly glittered white with
sparkling fires of gems in the moon but
not in one place the great bow twanged
the black arrows sped straight from the
strings straight for the hollow by the
left breast where the four leg was flung
wide in it smote and vanish
barbed shaft and feather so fierce was
its flight with a shriek that deafened
men felled trees and split stone smog
shot spouting into the air turned over
and crashed down from on high in ruin
Smaug the dragon was dead slain by bards
arrow and the words the language of
Tolkien’s The Hobbit was so evocative so
beautiful to George that it brought
tears to his eyes and it whoa whoa ville
illusion that that drown out the noise
of the room we were suddenly transported
to Lake town to see the dragon fall we
were with Bilbo the Hobbit and his
dwarven companions we were absolutely
there in that room with George at his
bedside but we were also at the bedside
of the Dwarven Lord Thorin as he
breathed his final breaths dragons
dwarves hobbits utter make-believe not a
fact in sight furthest things from facts
to be sure celebrated science fiction
and fantasy writer Ursula K Le Guin said
that a novelists business is lying
novelists business is lying and in a
world of fake news why would anyone want
to concern themselves with lies even
beautiful ones like the ones in The
Hobbit especially on their deathbed
after all we’re a society that reduces
the power of beautiful lies the
beautiful lies of story with that common
English phrase it’s just a story it’s
just a story it’s made up the child is
terrified by something like the great
you know the big bad wolf we will say to
them don’t be afraid it’s just a story
but the fear that the child feels is
real emotions are real we used to think
of them as this ephemeral thing
somewhere outside of ourselves something
that we could sort of wish or will away
but what neuroscience is teaching us is
emotions are visceral they are
physiological what this means is that if
a story makes you cry you are really sad
if a story makes you laugh you are
genuinely happy I’ll think about that
for a second that made-up thing just
made you feel something real if I go to
a Stephen King adaptation on screen and
am terrified it doesn’t matter how
ridiculous that murder clown might seem
by the light of day the terror that I
feel while watching it is real it might
just be a story but it’s a story that
produces real fear a New York Times
article has noted that the brain when
we’re reading does not differentiate
largely between events that we read
about and events that we would actually
experience in both cases real or read
the same neurological regions are
stimulated story like bards bow shoots
out an arrow of stimulus and when it
hits its target our response to the
imaginary is anything but now it’s not
just emotions that are real when we read
or watch or experience a story it’s also
the pleasure of that experience that is
real we have a phrase that we use we
want to curl up with a good book there’s
a connotation of intimacy like that book
is a good friend or a dear loved one
that’s an odd thing when you think about
it that we would talk about something
that we say it’s only a story by saying
we really want to curl up with that
thing and enjoy the pleasure of
experiencing it but we don’t talk much
about the pleasure of reading at least
not in a valorized way to talk about the
pleasure of reading when you say if
reading is pleasurable that’s a lower
form of reading the best forms of
reading are the reading of deep meaning
books with deep meanings and so we treat
are good books I really enjoy a good
book have you read any good books lately
we treat our good books like The Good
Book
we read sacred texts largely for deeper
meaning and we read a lot of other books
that way as well we have trained
ourselves to believe that this is the
best form of reading that there is and
yet the dollars and cents of the
publishing industry insofar as fiction
shows the lie of that statement the
number one fiction genre is romance we
want to feel love number two crime
thrillers you want to feel a sense of
danger or maybe the mystery of it all
numbers three four and five are my
wheelhouse
science fiction fantasy and horror
depending on what list you look at
literary fiction the fiction of deep
meaningful ideas is in so much trouble
financially in the UK right now that the
British government is looking at
subsidizing it so we say we want to read
for deeper meaning for the stories that
change the world but we often read for
what makes us feel something what brings
us pleasure it’s tough to want to teach
about reading for pleasure or for
feeling it’s easier to talk about the
deeper meanings the things that might
change the world but it’s not that the
reading for pleasure the reading for
feeling doesn’t change the world it’s
just that it changes it differently then
mounds and mounds and mounds of deep
meaning books might do the stories that
are really really deep at some
foundational level we read for the
effect of reading for the emotive effect
or the pleasure of reading we do get
changed our brain changes in those
emotional reactions and the change comes
individual by individual emotional
response by emotional response changing
my one’s story potentially one’s story
at a time
nevertheless it’s difficult to argue for
teaching beautiful lies for reading
beautiful eyes while the sciences are
looking for a cure for cancer there’s
always a sense in which it feels like
we’re not doing anything all that
important we’re not curing cancer in
this room I will often say to my
students and yet in his last year in his
last days on this very real earth Jorge
chose to live at least part time in a
completely imaginary world and that
experience of reading The Hobbit and
then once we were finished moving on to
the Fellowship of the Ring and he made
everybody who visited him during that
time read to him from those books that
experience more than any other that I’ve
had taught me that fiction is the
beautiful lie that lifts us out of the
mundane a good story can make us forget
that we are brokenhearted broken in
spirit or just plain broke
we might forget in the midst of a good
story that we are at death’s door and if
that’s all that story does then it’s
precious no stories can’t cure cancer
for the time being
neither can science so while we wait for
the cure
let us read let us watch and let us
change our minds one story at a time
thank you
[Applause]
my friend George was dying of cancer and
a friend and I decided that we would go
visit him once he had entered palliative
care this wasn’t the first time that
we’d gone to visit him and in the
previous visits we had largely exhausted
the sorts of conversations that happen
around a deathbed but our decision this
time was to take one of George’s
favorite books along and read it out
loud to him that intention was
challenged by George’s three roommates
the first of whom was watching sports on
television the second who was listening
to hard rock on the radio and both of
them had the volume loud enough to drown
out the third a man who was plagued by
loud racking coughs we began to read but
the combined cacophony of television
radio and respiratory sickness
distracted us and we stumbled over some
of our words we mispronounced others
George lay there with his eyes closed
felt like he was concentrating perhaps
and I wondered if he had drifted off
into sleep and I wondered if he was
hearing what we were saying over the
discordant din of the room and then it
happened
George opened up his eyes and he said
stop read that last part again and you
can’t refuse a dying man his wish so we
did the dragon swooped once more lower
than ever and as he turned and dived
down his belly glittered white with
sparkling fires of gems in the moon but
not in one place the great bow twanged
the black arrows sped straight from the
strings straight for the hollow by the
left breast where the four leg was flung
wide in it smote and vanish
barbed shaft and feather so fierce was
its flight with a shriek that deafened
men felled trees and split stone smog
shot spouting into the air turned over
and crashed down from on high in ruin
Smaug the dragon was dead slain by bards
arrow and the words the language of
Tolkien’s The Hobbit was so evocative so
beautiful to George that it brought
tears to his eyes and it whoa whoa ville
illusion that that drown out the noise
of the room we were suddenly transported
to Lake town to see the dragon fall we
were with Bilbo the Hobbit and his
dwarven companions we were absolutely
there in that room with George at his
bedside but we were also at the bedside
of the Dwarven Lord Thorin as he
breathed his final breaths dragons
dwarves hobbits utter make-believe not a
fact in sight furthest things from facts
to be sure celebrated science fiction
and fantasy writer Ursula K Le Guin said
that a novelists business is lying
novelists business is lying and in a
world of fake news why would anyone want
to concern themselves with lies even
beautiful ones like the ones in The
Hobbit especially on their deathbed
after all we’re a society that reduces
the power of beautiful lies the
beautiful lies of story with that common
English phrase it’s just a story it’s
just a story it’s made up the child is
terrified by something like the great
you know the big bad wolf we will say to
them don’t be afraid it’s just a story
but the fear that the child feels is
real emotions are real we used to think
of them as this ephemeral thing
somewhere outside of ourselves something
that we could sort of wish or will away
but what neuroscience is teaching us is
emotions are visceral they are
physiological what this means is that if
a story makes you cry you are really sad
if a story makes you laugh you are
genuinely happy I’ll think about that
for a second that made-up thing just
made you feel something real if I go to
a Stephen King adaptation on screen and
am terrified it doesn’t matter how
ridiculous that murder clown might seem
by the light of day the terror that I
feel while watching it is real it might
just be a story but it’s a story that
produces real fear a New York Times
article has noted that the brain when
we’re reading does not differentiate
largely between events that we read
about and events that we would actually
experience in both cases real or read
the same neurological regions are
stimulated story like bards bow shoots
out an arrow of stimulus and when it
hits its target our response to the
imaginary is anything but now it’s not
just emotions that are real when we read
or watch or experience a story it’s also
the pleasure of that experience that is
real we have a phrase that we use we
want to curl up with a good book there’s
a connotation of intimacy like that book
is a good friend or a dear loved one
that’s an odd thing when you think about
it that we would talk about something
that we say it’s only a story by saying
we really want to curl up with that
thing and enjoy the pleasure of
experiencing it but we don’t talk much
about the pleasure of reading at least
not in a valorized way to talk about the
pleasure of reading when you say if
reading is pleasurable that’s a lower
form of reading the best forms of
reading are the reading of deep meaning
books with deep meanings and so we treat
are good books I really enjoy a good
book have you read any good books lately
we treat our good books like The Good
Book
we read sacred texts largely for deeper
meaning and we read a lot of other books
that way as well we have trained
ourselves to believe that this is the
best form of reading that there is and
yet the dollars and cents of the
publishing industry insofar as fiction
shows the lie of that statement the
number one fiction genre is romance we
want to feel love number two crime
thrillers you want to feel a sense of
danger or maybe the mystery of it all
numbers three four and five are my
wheelhouse
science fiction fantasy and horror
depending on what list you look at
literary fiction the fiction of deep
meaningful ideas is in so much trouble
financially in the UK right now that the
British government is looking at
subsidizing it so we say we want to read
for deeper meaning for the stories that
change the world but we often read for
what makes us feel something what brings
us pleasure it’s tough to want to teach
about reading for pleasure or for
feeling it’s easier to talk about the
deeper meanings the things that might
change the world but it’s not that the
reading for pleasure the reading for
feeling doesn’t change the world it’s
just that it changes it differently then
mounds and mounds and mounds of deep
meaning books might do the stories that
are really really deep at some
foundational level we read for the
effect of reading for the emotive effect
or the pleasure of reading we do get
changed our brain changes in those
emotional reactions and the change comes
individual by individual emotional
response by emotional response changing
my one’s story potentially one’s story
at a time
nevertheless it’s difficult to argue for
teaching beautiful lies for reading
beautiful eyes while the sciences are
looking for a cure for cancer there’s
always a sense in which it feels like
we’re not doing anything all that
important we’re not curing cancer in
this room I will often say to my
students and yet in his last year in his
last days on this very real earth Jorge
chose to live at least part time in a
completely imaginary world and that
experience of reading The Hobbit and
then once we were finished moving on to
the Fellowship of the Ring and he made
everybody who visited him during that
time read to him from those books that
experience more than any other that I’ve
had taught me that fiction is the
beautiful lie that lifts us out of the
mundane a good story can make us forget
that we are brokenhearted broken in
spirit or just plain broke
we might forget in the midst of a good
story that we are at death’s door and if
that’s all that story does then it’s
precious no stories can’t cure cancer
for the time being
neither can science so while we wait for
the cure
let us read let us watch and let us
change our minds one story at a time
thank you
[Applause]
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