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Why do you read fiction?

Fiction v. Non

Fiction is better for one reason. To me, nonfiction is always so..textbookesque. What experience I've had with it was boring. True, yes, but boring.
 
Coda said:
Fiction is better for one reason. To me, nonfiction is always so..textbookesque. What experience I've had with it was boring. True, yes, but boring.
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What a good way to put it!. That encapsulates why I'm getting bored with some recent material.
 
I read fiction mainly because I think most people are morons, and I get sick of their B.S., reading is a way to escape from them, at least in good books.
 
I read for escapisim of the self. But i tend to read classicis because I like to learn all the time. I like to learn about the human condition and human nature. I like to understand morals and scenarios. I like to learn how to make a better world. I like to know brilliant characters and thought processes. I like to know people that are better than most humans on the planet. I like to read fiction in particular because they have so much depth and spirit and have something that films could never have. :)
 
GreenKnight said:
But I get cross - no, I get livid - with people who look down on fiction slightly, and consider 'factual' books somehow superior. This seems to be missing the point in a spectacular fashion.

Reading a book should not always be about 'finding out something new'. What would be the purpose in that? Reading is about living. Fiction allows one to experience emotional and spiritual journeys that one would never have been able to undertake - never could have imagined taking - otherwise. They allow expansion and growth of that mysterious spark inside you that you call 'yourself'. Fiction is, in a very real sense, life itself.
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Hear, hear!

The world has become so obsessed with true stories it's become ridiculous - just look at the whole "da Vinci Code" and "Million Little Pieces" controversies. I'd even say that this is a part of a greater shift in society's thinking - another aspect of it might be the new rise of religious fundamentalism. In an increasingly complex world, we're balking and looking for easier answers. And what's more easy than the black/white +/- digital dimension of true/false? If book A is true and book B is just made-up (what is fiction but the art of lying convincingly?), book A must be better. And therefore, logically, if someone thinks book C is good, he/she will try to argue that it must be true.

This is, of course, rubbish. Fiction is the greatest tool mankind has developed for understanding itself. A discipline in which "true" and "false" does not really come into play. Anyone can write down a true story (though obviously some do it better than others); but it takes talent to invent something completely new. I read and enjoy a lot of non-fiction too, but partly for very different reasons.

I'm reminded of something Jeanette Winterson said in an interview:
I think questions of autobiography are always misleading because every writer uses themselves in their work, they use their own experience, they use what they observe, hopefully they use what they can imagine but perhaps thats less frequent than it ought to be. But really autobiography tells us very little. What we should be looking for is authenticity: if this comes from the centre of the writer, if it comes from a real place in the writer then that will show itself in the work. And I think its authenticity we should be looking at, not autobiography. Theres only so much the autobiography can tell us. But at present we are obsessed with writers lives, with what we think of as true life, with what we think of as the real story. There is no real story, the real story is in the fiction.
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You read fiction to stimulate your brain and open up whole nother worlds that you would never think of before. Its also a plus that it entertains you.
 
Why Fiction?

nwberenyi68 said:
You read fiction to stimulate your brain and open up whole nother worlds that you would never think of before. Its also a plus that it entertains you.
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:) I also read non-fiction stuff but it`s not the same!
 
To me reading fiction is escapism. It allows me the opportunity to have an insight into other people's lives, experience other countries, cultures, professions and gives me the opportunity to experience things that I never could in my own life.

But, apart from that, the quality of TV programmes is so poor these days, we have to find something to keep our minds alive!
 
I just now posted to this thread, and I cannot find my post anywhere, nor do I see the little white arrow indicating that I am one of the posters, so I shall try again. Forgive me if there is some redundancy.

As I read this thread, it amuses me to realize that the literary criticism and theory which I enjoy reading is a non-fiction which takes fiction as its subject: Umberto Eco's "On Literature" and Kundera's "Art of the Novel" and even, in its own way, Hemingway's "Moveable Feast". Biographies and autobiographies of the lives of novelists and poets is another example of non-fiction which gives us more insight into the world of fiction.

For me, the study of comparative religions is exciting. I imagine it to be similar to the chess enthusiast who studies hundreds of classic games.

Someone, in an IRC chat on philosophy, once asked where one might see compassion in the works of Camus. I expanded the question's scope to seek compassion in the history of philosophy. My search paused when I considered Plato's cave analogy in the Republic. That one person who frees himself from the chains of illusion, and escapes the cave into the light of day, feels compassion for those who remain in bondage, and returns to somehow effect their release. How similar this is to a bodhisattva, who intentionally retains some flaws so as not to escape the cycle of rebirth and enter Nibbana, but to be reborn once again into the world to aid all suffering sentient beings.

Consider the drama of a paragraph from one of Jefferson's letters to a friend, where he says "Just as no two people have the same face, likewise, no two people have exactly the same understanding of their religion." Hence, one billion Roman Catholics, means one billion shades of Catholicism, like some vast spiritual kaleidoscope.

Or, consider the drama for me, to find a passage in The Book of Revelation, which hints of the very pantheism which Christianity condemned, in Chapter 7, verses 15-17: "Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them ...."

The essential quality of such personal, subjective interpretation and deconstruction or analysis is that it becomes mine, my discovery and insight, and is no longer a passive experience but an active one, where I am the doer and not simply the observer.

But then, such experiences require much labor and preparation. Whenever we actively experience fiction, as opposed to being a spectator passively beholding, then the product of our experience, our insight, becomes non-fiction.

This reminds me of the opening pages of Sartre's "Being and Nothingness", describing the irony of human freedom, that we are free to do anything except relinquish our freedom, since the relinquishing of freedom requires a ceaseless exercise of freedom.

So, as the particular kind of reader that I am, I convert fiction into fact, and I convert fact into drama. A reader may be a kind of machine in these respects.
 
I read non-fiction because I want to learn about something. I read fiction so that I can disappear inside the magical world of the author's imagination. I can see things I've never thought of before, visit places I've never been to, meet people who I may love or hate and for a while get caught up in their lives. I can climb mountains or leap out of a plane with a parachute - all the things that in real life I cannot or will not do.
 
Sitaram said:
The essential quality of such personal, subjective interpretation and deconstruction or analysis is that it becomes mine, my discovery and insight, and is no longer a passive experience but an active one, where I am the doer and not simply the observer.

But then, such experiences require much labor and preparation. Whenever we actively experience fiction, as opposed to being a spectator passively beholding, then the product of our experience, our insight, becomes non-fiction.
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The second portion here shares something that we all tend to overlook. While a given fictional work may not be *true* in a literal sense, it can become *non-fictin* in that the reader can garner themes regarding philosophy, religion, manifestos on life, etc. To continue the religion analogy to an extent, the parables were stories that were told due to their simplicity. They were powerful for that reason, but most importantly, they conveyed an ultimate point by the teller, who tried to impress upon the people a given idea he wanted them to focus on. Non-fiction may recount the date at which something happened, but it cannot convey the emotional anguish of a Tom Joad. It cannot fully convey to the reader the intense emotions and faults of human beings as the fictional Karamazov brothers. Stating that life is suffering is one thing, to illustrate it through characters in probable situations is quite another, and is one of the more over looked strengths of fiction.

I also enjoy the part about how we become *active* participants in the reading. Researching past reviews on a work, taking a look at published articles on the net by scholars and students. All of those things are ways that we truly transcend being passive readers who just plod along to get to the final page. The Nabokov threads are a great example of this as certain passages and scenes were deconstructed and re-assembled again by readers. Points and potential themes were brought up with some evidence continuously. What was a simple passage in a chapter became a drawn out examination of intent, psychology, and overall human behavior. You don't have that kind of thing with most non-fiction works as the point is plain for all to see and debates over intent can be settled very quickly.

So, as the particular kind of reader that I am, I convert fiction into fact, and I convert fact into drama. A reader may be a kind of machine in these respects.
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While I've always read fiction, I'd say that my view of fiction has certainly increased. In other words, it is worthy to be near, if not above, non-fiction.

I'm intrigued by the Jean-Paul Sartre reference out of Being and Nothingness. If existence truly precedes essence, then it can be seen that we go from simplistic fiction or non-fiction and then advance to fictional works that are more complicated and that ask more of us intellectually and philosophically. When we become *active* readers, readers who are intrinsically involved in a given work, then we are truly showing what we truly are, in other words, our essence, which is our highest potential. So fiction can be a part of our essence, our higher development.
 
abecedarian said:
Non Fiction is one tool to use to learn about the world around us, and fiction is a way to discover and explore truths about ourselves.
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call me self-absorbed, but this kinda nails it ... i'm highly introverted/introspective and i've ALWAYS been drawn to the novel over non-fiction, which to me is means to an end, ie learning facts. i'm much more interested in the journey - the open-endedness of the novel, its intricacies, possibilities, the idea that it's a uniquely personal experience and i never know from page to page quite where it's going to transport me, emotionally ....
 
Simple: nonfiction is boring. :D
(I still have this mindset from an AP Bio textbook I used previously.)

Okay, okay, to be more reasonable. The thing is, while nonfiction tells, fiction shows. You can read all the world's nonfic books on the Middle Ages or World War II, but very few can actually demonstrate the life of the people of the time. They can state facts. Fiction can show what happened through the eyes of the people.

Ex: The Black Death was a terrible disease that wiped out a third of Europe. It was very contagious, spread through cities by the rat population that thrived on unsanitary conditions. The sickness generally lasted for three days: one of fever, one of sleep, and one of pain. Black welts developed on the limbs of the afflicted...

Ex: The city stank of death. I absently watched as they carried away my husband's body, his frozen face twisted in agony. With nothing left to do, I proceeded to burn everything that reminded me of him...

Nonfiction is great if you want to learn about a specific topic like physics or Africa. Fiction teaches you about life. It can have morals, or bring forth new philosophy. Nonfiction generally has the obligation of sticking to the facts. Fiction generally does not.
 
abecedarian said:
I think the tie between humans and fiction goes all the way back to creation. We've always used stories to convey truth, whether to children or adults. Non Fiction is one tool to use to learn about the world around us, and fiction is a way to discover and explore truths about ourselves.
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That was beautiful!
 
I read fiction to escape. To get lost in a story. To get to know characters and feel something for them. To have an adventure. To question humanity. To discover people, places and events not encountered in my own life. To travel. To learn.

To me, fiction captures a sense of excitment that non-fiction does not.
 
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