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Why read non-fiction?

You can teach anybody anything, as long as you teach it in a way they'd enjoy.

Author unknown, at least to me (or I've forgotten, but I'm paraphrasing anyway, so it matters not).

Cool link, Still.
 
Considering the wide gamut of subgenres and topics within the realm of nonfiction, I can't see why nonfiction can't be every bit as enjoyable as fiction. A literery diet should be just as varied as a culinary one. I know I need the variety, and find that often a good novel will lead me to further investigation using nonfiction to discover more about some interesting detail. Sometimes that process is reversed, and a travelog or memoir leads to a great novel or three.
 
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.
 
Sitaram is right, nonfiction can be just as dramatic and exciting as any fiction. I'm reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, and knowing the events actually happened, to real people, makes it a very dramatic memoir.
 
All non-fiction isn't "The Study of sub-soils in Outer Mongolia" etc. I read a lot of humorous non-fiction about people's lives. If it was fiction, I doubt that it would be nearly as funny. Human eccentricities are far more amusing than fictional ones.
 
Doug Johnson said:
Plus, some non fiction writers make up just as much stuff as fiction writers.;)


Yeah, but how many of them get to go on trial, gaining lots of great publicity just as their book-turned movie is about to hit the theaters:rolleyes:

You're right of course, DJ!
 
Just as you said abc, fiction often leads to research in non-fiction. In the Nabokov threads, reading about the author himself leads to better understanding and a richer enjoyment of his works. Especially in someone as complex as Nabokov.
 
alfinge said:
Why read non-fiction?:confused: Fiction is so mush better! :)

I don't know, non-fiction can be written in a better way than fiction at times. Not every fiction book on the great depression is as well-written as The Grapes of Wrath. For every Grapes of Wrath, there is probably ten others that are boring and that most non-fiction textbooks put to shame.:cool:
 
alfinge said:
Why read non-fiction?:confused: Fiction is so mush better! :)

Not better, just different. I love reading non-fiction when I want to learn something (usually history or science).
 
well, i would read non-fiction but only if i had an interest in it. i would really read science non fiction. interesting.

like fiction, you can relate to it because its true.

suppose you really have to have an interest in it,

bill bryson,he writes good non fiction!
 
I was not a big fan of non-fiction until last year I read a few books that I really enjoyed, Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything was one :)

I also really liked Devil in the White City by Erik Larson and The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester.
 
Ronny said:
I also really liked Devil in the White City by Erik Larson and The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester.
Oh! I have that in my TBR stack. Glad to hear someone else really liked it a lot!
 
Thanks! No, I hadn't seen those threads. Very informative and interesting. :) I think I'll move it up several notches in the pile. :cool:
 
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