In a recent article, one of my best friends, Noa Gendler, argued that we ought to be mindful of ‘what’s really going on’ in literature. It is ‘immature’, she suggests, to be swept along by ‘veiling language’ which prevents us from seeing characters and narratives for what they really are.

In essence, Noa argues that we should approach certain characters as we would if we encountered them in real life, scrutinised under the lens of contemporary opinion. We should, she suggests, see Romeo and Juliet primarily as obsessive adolescents rather than legitimately impassioned lovers; we should see Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert foremost as a reprehensible murderer and rapist, rather than as a man deserving of our pity; and we should see Jack Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty as a narcissistic, reckless, misogynist and not the compelling hero of a generation.

Every reading Noa proposes is a valid interpretation of the characters in question and each exhibits some skill in stripping characters and narratives to some kind of essential core. But I strongly disagree that this is the most desirable approach to fiction. It undermines the texts by diluting their emotional impact. It relocates powerful fiction to the sphere of real life when in fact the principal triumph of such fiction is that, for a moment, it allows us to escape real life, to enter an emotional landscape which supersedes everyday boundaries and our limited individual experience.

The romanticising elements of powerful texts are not a ‘trap’ to be avoided. It is the primary triumph of good literature that it is able overcome our ordinary, rational responses in such a way that the love of Romeo and Juliet is profound, Dean Moriarty is compelling, and Humbert Humbert invites our sympathy, despite these characters’ substantial, condemnable and self-destructive flaws. It is not enough to identify how these characters are flawed; the more important question for readers to answer is how, in the face of their substantial flaws, we still develop some kind of emotional attachment to them.

By using the term ‘veiling language’, Noa implies that, behind these authors’ characterisation and narrative, there is some essential, objective truth to be discovered. I would argue that what she calls ‘veiling language’ is in fact the opposite; it is revealing, opening up more meanings and deeper ideals than the prosaic, factual solutions that she offers. It is language which gives license to multiple, often paradoxical readings, and it is the responsibility of the discerning reader to confront paradox and to feel emotions in spite of the hard facts, rather than boil an event or a character down to a single, deromanticised reading.

It is a remarkable achievement that, on some level, Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert accrues our sympathy, even though he is a paedophile. In Lolita, Nabokov facilitates a response to him that allows us to embrace a far more varied palette of emotions than we might feel if he were a real man, whose actions were reported to us on the news.

Nabokov challenges us to test our moral limitations, to explore what is right and just, and to experience emotions that it might otherwise have been impossible to experience. It is not naive to be absorbed by literature in this way; we do not engage fully with Lolita if we dismiss Humbert Humbert as only, or even primarily, a ‘murderer, kidnapper, and rapist’. To best appreciate good literature, a reader must allow themselves to be fully consumed by its romanticising influence and to feel strong emotions in the face of what might ordinarily seem reasonable.

I believe we should approach literature equipped with a wishful idealism, the suspension of disbelief and a readiness to be captivated by authors precisely as they intended. To be a discerning reader is not solely about awareness of a character’s flaws. It is about engaging with him or her emotionally in spite of them, and allowing ourselves to be swept away by emotions which go above and beyond, and sometimes fly in the face of the hard facts.

Noa calls such a romantic reading ‘immature’. I would contend, however, that it is immature to approach literature with such cynicism. It is more valuable and more captivating, as a reader, to lay aside our cynicism and learn to be gullible again.

@bret_cameron