Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirabell
steep claim. can't say I agree.
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I'll take one example straight off the top of my head.
The book that I've just read,
Myra Breckinridge deals, in part, with the fluidity of human sexuality and sexual behaviour (and, indeed, gender). Which is a pretty heavy subject, made funny and fun by the writer, Gore Vidal.
Now Vidal has written, at some length, non-fiction about that same subject. But perhaps the telling point is that
Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings is currently not in print in the US or UK, whereas a novel that has had the wonderful boost of being banned, is.
Many more people will read the novel than will/have read the non-fiction. Some will even read the novel because they've seen the film.
As another, slightly different example: Olivia Judson's
Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation is a work of non-fiction. It's about evolutionary biology. But what it does is to use a very creative (and fictional) method of explaining its subject. Judson writes it as 'Dr Tatiana', an agony aunt answering letters from insects and birds and animals who are bemused by their particular sexual habits.
The book has sold quite well. Primarily (bit not exclusively) to people who are complete laymen in terms of the science of evolutionary biology. But would as many people have read it (or would the people who it was aimed at have read it) if it were not packaged in a way that is essentially fictional (and anthropomorphic, indeed)?
Fiction can stretch and create in a way that is not obviously easy in non-fiction, because it doesn't have to play by the same 'rules'. That is not to say that one is more important or 'better' than the other.