David Foster Wallace, Reading, and Empathy

In 2003, David Foster Wallace sat for a lengthy interview with a journalist from the German television station ZDF. From what I can tell (read: after checking with Wikipedia) ZDF is similar to the American PBS in that it is a public service, arts oriented channel. The 84-minute interview covers topics ranging from American exceptionalism to the difficulty of literary translation. At the midpoint of the interview DFW is asked, “What is it that literature can do that other things can’t do?” and replies by forcing the question upon the interviewer. After some back and forth, the the interviewer raises the topic of loneliness and Wallace finally answers:

“Most of the friends I’ve got, and most of my friends don’t like to read, most of the friends I’ve got who don’t like to read find it A.) boring or B.) just kind of lonely and slow, and I just don’t get it. Because watching television for me, even although it’s easier, is much lonlier. Watching flat images on a flat screen, doing interesting things and often they’re very easy to look at, is very different from knowing what it’s like to be inside somebody else’s skin, or knowing what it’s like to be able to spend two hours with an author who somehow can make me feel like I know what it is. I mean, it just seems like a form of magic to me.” (53:15)

David Foster Wallace touches on the empathetic powers of literature which, he asserts, are unequaled in other forms of entertainment. The reader–unlike the television or film viewer–is able to experience unknown emotions by momentarily inhabiting the skin of the present characters. Because the reader must form a mental image of the characters and actions taking place in a novel, the people and emotions of the work become personal and individual. Even the best film directors and television producers cannot replicate the empathy experienced in the act of reading. (Video games may better illicit responses of empathy that traditional literature, but I am not prepared to dive into those water just yet. Going further, there are numerous examples of enhanced levels of participation in different forms of e-lit that would necessarily create new levels of experience and emotions)

Allen Bennett, English playwright and author of The History Boys for both the stage and screen voices a similar attitude toward the strength of literature (namely poetry) through the voice of his character Hector, an aging schoolteacher focusing on the humanities. In the most touching scene of the work, Hector has Posner–the gay, Jewish, outcast of the group of pupils–recite and explicate “Drummer Hodge” by Thomas Hardy then explains:

“The best moments in reading are those when you find a passage seems to have been written just for you. It’s as if a hand is reaching out and grabbing yours.”

For me, there is no greater image of the power of the written word: the author offers a hand of empathy, affording the knowledge that no pain or emotion is unique.