Life and Literature: Continuities and Discontinuities

This essay calls attention, first, to some of the significant discontinuities between life and literature, living and telling. Perhaps foremost among them is the fact that while living takes place now, in the present moment, telling must await the passage of time. This element of delay, it is argued, underscores the potential importance of narrative: in the context of moral life especially, it can serve a kind of rescue function, allowing for a measure of insight often unavailable in the flux of the moment. These discontinuities between life and literature notwithstanding, it is maintained herein that there also exist deep continuities between life and literature, and that literature can illuminate life precisely because it articulates and binds those features of experience that reach for narrative. By spelling out these continuities, we open the way toward deepening our understanding of the narrative fabric of life itself.