Is literature pointless?

Bongi D D M Radipati | Wednesday September 3, 2025 10:26

If I also said to someone that there is an intersection between literature and the interdisciplinary field that combines medicine, psychology, biology, chemistry and computer science, in short, neuroscience, they would probably say that my head requires to be examined. Here is why they would be correct in wondering about the state of my mind. Our superficial understanding of literature bears no connection with our visual perception of what we regard as technology. And given how we may regard or use literature, it is hard to see the interconnection between it and our neural system.

In our time, we perceive technology as “gadgetries of steel and silicon.” In the past, we perceived technology as “contrivances of copper, bronze and tin.” But if one were to peer into literary inventions, in effect, the history of literature, from ancient Mesopotamia (2300 BC) to Elena Ferrante (a pseudonymous female writer of the 20th century), and even to the present, one would be wrong to confine literature to a limited space that does not extend to what technology does. That is the error that Angus Fletcher in his book, “Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature,” seeks to correct. Repeatedly, Fletcher shows us that to be human is to have material, emotional, and mental needs. Literature meets those needs by having utility and everyday usefulness: of inspiration, upliftment, amusement, resonance, empathy and knowledge. Significantly, particularly for the academic cadre, literature’s drama, films, essays, fiction, and poetry, can be seen, read, understood, and debated beyond any specialist’s criticism or her professional disquisition, into the muck and mire of life itself.

Through 25 works of literature, “Wonderworks” is a fascinating and sweeping literary work. With a storyline that is engrossing, examples that are easy to understand, grammar that is digestible, and references that are commonly known, it is an enjoyable book. From the onset, “Wonderworks” addresses the question of what makes a work of literature great. It answers this question by considering the craftsmanship of the selected work itself and the neural responses that are ignited by that particular work. These neural responses could be suspense, courage, fear, incredulity, admiration, novelty, etc. “Wonderworks” shows us the wonder (or in today’s common expression, awesomeness) intrinsic in every great work of literature. (The book’s title could thus be “Awesome works” and it would have still conveyed the same ideas.) As we read and ponder about the varied and timeless works discussed in the book, it becomes clear that, never has literature ever set out to corral us into adopting certain behaviors or ethical conduct or common values or even aesthetic choices. The point of literature has been, and continues to be, to support our differences by offering us its utility, special pleasures, benefits, and enlightenment that are valuable and unique only to it.

“Stories” are the nub of all literature. In the book’s 25 different stories, we get the real feeling, the artificiality, and the doubt or disbelief that are woven with all kinds of stories. Through stories, we also learn how the power, impact and landscape of literature is more broad and more vast than any human timeframe, any culture, and any country. Recently, an international travel company reported that 62 percent of young travelers want to visit places that are associated with the novels they have read. The report summarized the phenomenon as Generation Z (those born between 1997-2012) and young millennials (those born after 2012) “turning fiction into flight plans.” While this is a cute string of words, from it, one thing is clear: The point of literature is that it operates alongside our practical world, our fancies, and our consciousness, and it has managed to keep an incredulous eye on us and our entire human affairs, all the time.

Fletcher’s book succeeds in identifying and discussing some great literature. Great is an overused and tiring adjective in literary circles but in this rendition care has been taken not to use it casually. Still, elsewhere it has been suggested that another way to identify great literature is to see if it is part of the enduring conversations of the past 3,000 years, the figure which is essentially the timeline for ancient civilizations such as that of Egypt. (It is conceivable that anything older than this period may be lost to humanity.) In any event, those who pay attention to these matters will acknowledge that all great literature was worth writing and is consequently worth reading because it can trace its roots to the conversations of the ages. In other words, great literature and its consumption emanate from practical acts - of conceiving, creating, producing, and discerning - for a considerable length of time. It is thus an exercise in mind and emotive engineering.

As I read and re-read the book with each time noticing more, I did not get the impression that its author sought to advance any prescriptive way of experiencing literature much less to champion its cause. But I discerned an ostensible wish that given the recent treatment of literature, perhaps it was high time that literature was accorded the respect and awareness that it previously enjoyed. Since the 1990s and early 2000s, almost everywhere, there have been crimes against the humanities. These crimes were the neglect, underfunding, undermining, and contempt against these disciplines that study the arts, language, history, culture, philosophy and communication. Not all readers, but a good number of them may say that those acts were excusable because, for all sorts of reasons, the humanities had become useless, frivolous, irrelevant or wasteful. This is preposterous. The humanities, whose substantial portion is constituted by literature, were, during that time, misunderstood and thus their value diminished. It is a relief that through tentative steps, including Fletcher’s own epiphany and book, interest in the humanities is now slowly becoming evident and students’ enrollments in the discipline are reportedly showing signs of increasing.

Angus Fletcher has studied and has degrees in both neuroscience and literature. He therefore writes about them in this book from a position of familiarity and some deep insight. His ambitious book, partly enlightening and partly feeding our foundational need of storytelling, is ostensibly about the history of great literature. Yet, profound and long unresolved questions about the human psyche animate it, and thus justify its wide appeal and universal acclaim.

Angus Fletcher, Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2021); 464 pages; Amazon: USD23.06; Exclusive Books: Unavailable; UB library: Unavailable.

*Radipati is a regular Mmegi contributor