Literature, and a way of seeing

Literature can lend one perspective, draw the world back in right proportions, lets you see things for what they are, and at times, in their full glory, beauty and mystery. What I call 'literature' here may not be the well-regarded everywhere, but just where in their by-the-way notes, the author reveals their wonderful way of regarding the world, and in that, teach you another angle, making you more in some sense.

What makes me gush so is a couple of stories I read from Wallace Stegner’s Collected Stories. First two. Just first two as of now. And both as lovely and soft and beautiful as new falling snowflakes. 

Picked as of a whim, having yet to read his Crossing to Safety, I am utterly delighted by these stories. Many people write well and amazingly, but only few have a way of seeing or regarding the world which is amazing. So absorbed and absorbing, graceful and gracious, simple, yet such words.

At times modern writing feels routine, like first drafts, or diary entries, or communication. But there is another order of writing, which is like a meta or a folded approach. Where perhaps after many many iterations, the author would have seen something in the world worthy of words. And that is what he notes in a few pages. He saw the world unfolding, the edges, the nooks and crannies which somehow give perspective to or define the whole underlying world. 

Many people can write well and beautiful but few people can see the world beautiful. And write such that the world itself is lifted above the everyday world for you to gaze on, think through and sort of absorb the phrases and words that lift the world so. 

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Here's hoping to keep meeting great writing.