Mario Vargas Llosa On Reading Trash

Literature should be read and enjoyed by everyone because it provides enjoyment, knowledge, and an escape from reality for its readers. “Why Literature?” by Mario Vargas Llosa and “on Reading Trash” by Bob Swift describe how important literature is to society and the people who read it. Literature while it is artistic in a sense is also a form of entertainment for the people who read it. Literature can show us a world of magic and wizards or tell a tale of courage while hunting down a whale. Through great literature we can get a better understanding of the world around us and discover a world that could never have been imagined. As technology advances the enjoyment of reading literature gets lost in the fast paced modern culture. In Spain, a recent survey revealed that half of that country’s population has never read a book (Llosa, 1). However, if people can read a book they enjoy they will be able to discover their niche in the world of literature. According to Swift, if you
Nothing teaches us better than literature to see, in ethnic and cultural differences, the richness of the human patrimony, and to prize those differences as a manifestation of humanity’s multifaceted creativity (Llosa, 2). Situations that people don’t normally happen to them can be described through literature. Furthermore, by reading about these diverse cultural differences readers can gain knowledge of cultures and situations that they have not experienced. The National Endowment for the Humanities says that every high school graduate should have read 30 great works of literature, including the Bible, Shakespeare, and Moby Dick (Swift, 1). These notable works of literature illustrate the various unknown cultures and environments that are unfamiliar to the readers so that the reader can acquire an understanding about the unknown literary