I just came across this wonderful quote from Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin.
Literature can stop my heart and execute
me for a moment, allow me to become
someone else.*
This is truly fiction’s greatest gift—the chance to crawl inside another being, poke around his consciousness, feel what it’s like to “be” that individual. Often it means changing age, gender, race, or nationality. No other medium does this so completely.
Fun Book Club Exercise
Is there any one particular fictional character you most enjoyed “being”? Or a book that carried you most completely into the mind of its primary character?
*From “The Decade We Had,” Week in Review section, New York Times (12/2709)