Poetic Justice

"...good literature is disturbing in a way that history and social science frequently are not. Because it summons powerful emotions, it disconcerts and puzzles. It inspires distrust of conventional pieties and exacts a frequently painful confrontation with one's own thoughts and intentions."-Martha C. Nussbaum

I started reading Nussbaum's book Poetic Justice this week, a short work on the novel's importance in developing moral faculties and informing political and social policy. As we've been reading Infinite Jest critically, some of the things which we've been doing really resonate with the importance that Nussbaum sees novels as having. Many of the things that Wallace asks us to confront in IJ are disturbing and unpleasant, but they challenge us to look at ourselves, the novel and society in new ways. Anyways, if you are an avid reader and have not read Nussbaum's book and have some extra time this summer or in the far distant future, I recommend it- I think her work articuates the importance of the novel that avid readers intuitively feel.