[Mirabell]

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.

This only says that a) Vidal may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, especially since very very very very few novelists are good theoreticians and b) that a novel has a higher potential to offend.

Banning means it offends.

Your other point, w/ the Sex book, appears to be about popular appeal and yes, I would agree that fiction, generally, reaches more people than 'non-fiction'.

If these two aspects were what you meant by

Fiction can allow ideas to be taken way beyond that which could be done in a non-fiction work,

I recant. Because then you are right, even if yr point verges upon the trivial. I thought it was about the ideas themselves.

But your point is good. As an educational tool, fiction has a great potential, inspiring people to think about stuff they would not have thought about themselves. How many people would pick up Butler and get their minds blown by that stuff and how many more will pick up Vidal? They will get their minds possibly less thoroughly blown, but still. An enormous potential.

This point is also illustrated by novels such as Uncle Tom's Cabin or What Is To Be Done.

Both rely on theory written before and do not contain ideas beyond theory in and of its time yet their influence is larger by far than most of that theory. They reached people, let's say Feuerbach, could not have reached. Slipped the bitter pill in sweet romance, so to say.