Of reading and empathy

“I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don’t read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways. . . .  It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.”

John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

Right now, for what it’s worth, I’m reading Anthony Doerr’s extraordinary 2014 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See, which (in my judgment) illustrates John Connolly’s point about empathy with unusual power.