Reading room

More years ago than I care to mention, I dated someone who was in one of Northrop Frye's classes at the University of Toronto.

Frye, if you didn't already know it, was one of the most distinguished literary critics and literary theorist our country, and probably the world, has ever produced. He passed away back in 1991.

At the time, one of my friend's proudest moments was asking a question to which Frye replied, "Good question."

What I've always loved about Frye's literary criticism is that, unlike the deconstructionists of the period, you always had the sense that he loved nothing more than curling up with a good book. He'd just been smart enough and lucky enough to devise a job that would allow him to do that all day, every day, for the rest of his life.

I recall reading -- I think it was in "The Educated Imagination" -- about the fundamental role that literature plays in the development of a civil society. Frye argued that literature provided a kind of imaginative key to history -- so that you didn't have to actually experience a thing in order to understand it. Literature would provide that framework.

I though of Frye this morning while reading a particularly poignant passage from the novel I'm reading. It was about animal husbandry -- dog breeding to be precise. It was so beautifully wrought and so painstakingly crafted that I almost didn't realize that I was learning something.

That's what literature can do.

It can hit you between the eyes when you don't even realize you were looking.