"Literature is about as unnecessarily necessarily as tableware or ironed shirts"
About this Quote
Literature, Bichsel implies, lives in the same paradox as forks and pressed cotton: strictly speaking, you could get by without it, and yet a life without it feels vaguely unfinished, a little uncivilized. The joke is in the phrasing, “unnecessarily necessarily,” a Swiss-watch bit of contradiction that refuses both high-minded reverence (Literature will save us!) and utilitarian contempt (What’s the point?). He lands instead on a stubborn middle truth: we don’t need novels to stay alive, but we need them to recognize our lives as more than survival.
Tableware and ironed shirts are telling choices. They’re domestic, habitual, quietly performative. A fork is a tool, but it’s also manners; an ironed shirt is warmth plus presentation. In both cases, the “unnecessary” part is exactly what signals membership in a shared world - a willingness to do more than the bare minimum, to honor routines that make strangers legible to each other. Bichsel smuggles literature into that category: not a luxury item for elites, but a daily technology of attention.
The subtext is a rebuke to cultures that demand immediate usefulness from art, as if value must clock in and out. It’s also a rebuke to art that inflates itself into priesthood. Bichsel, a writer associated with pared-down, deceptively simple prose, defends literature by shrinking it - not diminishing its importance, but making it ordinary enough to be indispensable. Like setting the table, reading is one of the small ceremonies that keep the human in human life.
Tableware and ironed shirts are telling choices. They’re domestic, habitual, quietly performative. A fork is a tool, but it’s also manners; an ironed shirt is warmth plus presentation. In both cases, the “unnecessary” part is exactly what signals membership in a shared world - a willingness to do more than the bare minimum, to honor routines that make strangers legible to each other. Bichsel smuggles literature into that category: not a luxury item for elites, but a daily technology of attention.
The subtext is a rebuke to cultures that demand immediate usefulness from art, as if value must clock in and out. It’s also a rebuke to art that inflates itself into priesthood. Bichsel, a writer associated with pared-down, deceptively simple prose, defends literature by shrinking it - not diminishing its importance, but making it ordinary enough to be indispensable. Like setting the table, reading is one of the small ceremonies that keep the human in human life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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