Kenneth Burke considered great imaginative writing “equipment for living,” and for Saul Bellow poetic and philosophical words were a “poor boy’s arsenal.” Kafka declared that literature “breaks up the frozen sea inside us.” (What a mess that would make.) We now know, thanks to Allan Bloom, that reading the “classics” is the only defense against the closing of the American mind and that — courtesy of Alain de Botton — Proust can save your life. A modest question arises, however: If great literature is so great, why is it that if you act on anything great literature tells you about life, you’re in big trouble? I mean, big trouble.—lee siegel