Perhaps the arts don’t run on logic?

This could be true of course, that the arts run on something more ethereal than the mere logic which governs us rude mechanicals. But we do think that this valiant effort does need to be examined using those, erm, logical tools.

The claim is that novels provide some slower time understanding of the human condition. We’re fine with that. The other claim is that we must not excise arts - literature - from the university system. We’re OK with that as a claim. But using the first to support the second does not work for us.

Novels exist, novels are read, wholly independently of whether there are university departments studying novels. After all, a PhD in gay love in Jane Austen (we are assured that this is something that has been done) changes the number who read Pride and Prejudice by not one whit nor iota. Well, except perhaps the specific student involved. That novels are delightful, possibly even important, parts of civilisation is not a justification for university departments of novels that is.

We thus put this idea among that, well done, well tried, doesn’t quite work pile.

Applying actual logic we’d note - as the piece itself does - that novel reading has declined as the university literature departments have expanded over this past century. Therefore the correct answer is obvious, close the departments and marvel as novel reading - that slow time manner of making sense of our world - increases. For studying a thing is not the same as the thing now, is it?

Tim Worstall