Nnyhav makes a powerful point in saying:
I find fiction indispensible to forming a coherent view of the world (novels in particular, since they're such catch-alls).
What I have discovered, alas late in life, is that
writing fiction does this more profundly than reading fiction. The art and skill in the writing is in my view less important that honesty hitched to effort. When it work, Gablriel Marques writes (Introduction to "Strange Pilgrims"), then it is the closest a human can come to expriencing the feeling of flying. And when it doesn't and one persists, he warns, it can do you even physical harm. An uncannily accurate portrayal, but what is this truth founded on? And what are we flying through or in, to extend that metaphor?
It is probably that soup of history and its reflection in our subconscious which manifests in the unpredictable and sometimes magic ways in which an author connects the historical and the biographical when writing fiction. I wrote an essay once to explore this process that is posted on
janmbali@blogspot.com.