Feeling Known

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/george-saunders-just-wrote-the-best-book-youll-read-this-year.html?pagewanted=3&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130106&_r=0

So I've never actually written anything George Saunders has written. But now I'm adding him to my list.

"One thing is that you read them and you feel known, if that makes any sense. Or, possibly even woollier, you feel as if he understands humanity in a way that no one else quite does, and you’re comforted by it."

I think that is one of the essential functions of art, of books. We all hunger, deep down, for some sense of connection. The feeling that we are not alone in feeling whatever it is that we are feeling at the moment - lost, maybe. Confused and scared and maybe even despairing.

The fact that someone you have never met and probably never will can lift you out of that self-pitying stupor through a line in a book or a phrase in a song and make you "feel known" is a certain type of magic.

To feeling known.