Classic literature is a time machine ... for us, not the writer

Readers who have cringed upon finding decidedly dated passages in classic novels have a new balm for the soul.

In the New York Times, novelist Brian Morton discusses a college student who gave up on Edith Wharton because of anti-Semitism in her writing.

The student’s sentiments weren’t a surprise to Morton, who also directs Sarah Lawrence College’s writing program; the subject changed to time machines in literature instead.

And that led Morton to a realization: that books are time machines, yes, but not one that transports the author to us; it’s the other way around.

You don’t have to think of, say, the n-word in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as being invited into our world, let alone embraced in it.

Rather, we as readers have been sent to a time when that careless usage was a cruel reality — one that we can and should fight to keep out of modern times.

Read Morton’s essay in the Times here.