Re: Is fiction important?
Is people reading what they feel they "ought" to read really a new thing? I doubt it personally.
I would say though, anyone who is cowed from reading something they love by what others may think of it is doing themselves a disservice, and that applies whether it's a quiet love for Harry Potter or a secret stash of Chekov. If one likes what is popular, all well and good, if one likes a thing that perhaps others say one should not, others can take a hike.
Well, that's how I defend my liking for Sax Rohmer anyway, I certainly can't defend it on the basis of his writing or the content...
Similarly, life really is too short to read works one doesn't enjoy just because one feels one ought to. I mean, I hated Crime and Punishment, I may revisit it one day and have another shot but in the meantime I won't regret not having finished it. Something can be a masterpiece, and yet still not speak to a particular reader.
That aside, is fiction important? For the vast bulk of humanity, no, it isn't.
Is it important to me? Yes, absolutely.
Fiction is the closest thing to telepathy we have, it contains not literal truth but truth for all that, or sometimes delight in artifice, or shifting truths and fantasies, or things I lack the skill to name. It's full of worlds, by entering them we enrich our own, and ourselves too.
Well, those of us who care for it anyway. Others just read as a form of entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with that. Most people don't read unless they have need to though, and I doubt that was ever different or ever will be.
Regarding the opera, many men go either because their female partners like it and they're keeping them company, or because their company had tickets and they're entertaining clients. Frequently, they have literally zero interest in the work itself. Similarly, corporate boxes at sporting events are full of men with no interest in the sport in question. Galling for those who are interested but are priced out, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
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