Very little information is required to appreciate abstract painting like those of Mark Rothko. One doesn’t derive much information from them either. What one gets is pleasure. This is offered as a contrast to literary works. A lot could be said about what one needs to know to read a novel with profit, but that is not the emphasis here. Instead I look at the benefits two social scientists—Thomas Piketty and Pierre Bourdieu—derive from their encounters with literary works. There could, of course, be as many other examples as there are readers.