[...] A second later, control has been reasserted: "Her face still streamed with tears, but she was soothed and comforted and entirely herself as she rose to her feet and began straightway to occupy her mind with the announcement of the death—an enormous number of elegant cards, which must be ordered at once.' Life returns to busyness and routine after the tearing of death. A commonplace. But the selection of that adjective 'elegant' is subtle; the bourgeois order stirs to life with its 'elegant' cards, and Mann suggests that this class retains faith in the solidity and grace of objects, clings to them indeed.

This tutoring is dialectical. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turns makes us better readers of life.