The most complex lesson the literary point of view teaches—and it is not, to be sure, a lesson available to all, and is even difficult to keep in mind once acquired—is to allow the intellect to become subservient to the heart. What wide reading teaches is the richness, the complexity, the mystery of life. In the wider and longer view, I have come to believe, there is something deeply apolitical—something above politics—in literature, despite what feminist, Marxist, and other politicized literary critics may think. If at the end of a long life of reading the chief message you bring away is that women have had it lousy, or that capitalism stinks, or that attention must above all be paid to victims, then I"d say you just might have missed something crucial. Too bad, for there probably isn"t time to go back to re-read your lifetime"s allotment of five thousand or so books.