INTERVIEW – The academician and professor emeritus at the Collège de France publishes Literature pays! (Ecuador), a plea for reading in which he defends the virtues of an activity that does not experience any “productivity gain” but remains essential.
This article comes from “Figaro Magazine”
LE FIGARO MAGAZINE. – In your book Literature pays ! you try to justify the usefulness of literature by borrowing the language of economists. Why ? Is it necessary to adapt to the times to convince people of the immemorial benefits of literature? ?
Antoine COMPAGNON. – Literature pays ! was the title I gave to a back-to-school conference at HEC. To convince these young men and women, who were preparing for careers in business, banking, administration, and commerce, not to give up literature and reading. I wanted to show them that literature brought a certain number of benefits, that we could make a cost-benefit analysis of it.
The starting point is still the idea that literature and reading are part of those rare human activities in which there has been no progress for millennia. In reading, there is…
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