Is fiction important?

[titania7]

Aiculik,
I heartily agree with your comments about literature. It does depend on how capable the reader is of appreciating a book as to whether or not it is worthwhile. The same does indeed go for every form of art. To give one example, I went to see "Madame Butterfly" earlier this week. Although to me the opera was spectacular and fully engaging, I noticed that many people in the audience seemed to be bored. In fact, many of the men, who, it would seem, had been dragged there by their wives, were actually falling asleep. Considering the mesmerizing plot of this particular opera, it struck me as incredible that anyone could watch it without relishing it thoroughly. Why go to the opera at all if you don't really love it? Similarly, why bother to read books if you don't absolutely love literature? Unless the book is a requirement for school, it seems nonsensical that a person who would never be able to appreciate a good book should take the trouble to read one. Better for them to watch television or peruse fashion/entertainment magazines than to read something magnificent without appreciating its merit.

Titania

"If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue."
~Sir Peter Ustinov

[Beth]

Mon message est qu'il faut continuer de lire des romans car c'est un bon moyen de comprendre le monde actuel. Le romancier n'est pas un philosophe, ni un technicien du langage, mais celui qui écrit et pose des questions."

Mirabell, I'd really enjoy knowing what Le Clézio says here. Could you whip up a translation, please?

[kpjayan]

Originally Posted by titania7

It does depend on how capable the reader is of appreciating a book as to whether or not it is worthwhile

This would be an interesting angle.. Capability of the reader to appreciate literature. How will one reach this level ? When you start reading, do you start at this level of excellence to understand and appreciate the literature ? To me, you grow as a reader. Over the years, you develop these skills to appreciate good from the rest and that skills can not be developed overnight. Re-reading a book after a span of few years do give me a different perspective. Your knowledge , your reading habits, your thought processes change as you grow older. At each stage of your "reading career" , there is a level of understanding the fiction.

[nnyhav]

Originally Posted by Beth

Mon message est qu'il faut continuer de lire des romans car c'est un bon moyen de comprendre le monde actuel. Le romancier n'est pas un philosophe, ni un technicien du langage, mais celui qui écrit et pose des questions."

Mirabell, I'd really enjoy knowing what Le Clézio says here. Could you whip up a translation, please?

"My message is that it is necessary to continue to read novels because it is a good means of understanding the current world. The novelist is not a philosopher, nor a technician of the language, but s/he who writes and raises questions."

(my approx having not french but babelfish)
(but I disagree, the novelist may also be a philosopher and a technician of language)

[fausto]

Your approximation is good.

[Aiculik]

Originally Posted by Stewart

On the subject of the importance of fiction I'm reminded of this little snippet from Bernard Malamud's The Assistant (review here).

He asked her what book she was reading.
“The Idiot. Do you know it?”
“No. What’s it about?”
“It’s a novel.”
“I’d rather read the truth.”
“It is the truth.”

I remember how I once met my friend (a professor of French literature in grammar school) in the tram. And as usually, I had a book with me. She asked me also what I was reading. "Oh, The Idiot," I said. And she asked: "Which one?"
(yes, she tought I was speaking about the author, not the book. )

Originally Posted by titania7

Similarly, why bother to read books if you don't absolutely love literature? Unless the book is a requirement for school, it seems nonsensical that a person who would never be able to appreciate a good book should take the trouble to read one?

Well, here are some reasons which I was told - they read "for fun", that is, because of interesting story. They are ignorant of any other layer of the book, they don't care about symbols, language or ideas. They don't think about the book, don't analyse it in any way (I don't mean the way you do it in school, but personal).
Also, reading books makes you seem more educated, cultural, intelligent. Especially if you read "right" books. If a man above forty would confess that after high school he never read any novel, most people would think he's uncultural primitive. If he'd say he reads only manga, they he has some problem. But if he'd say that he reads Dostoyevsky or Proust... well, that sounds much better, doesn't it? That's often also the reason why people go to opera.

Originally Posted by kpayan

At each stage of your "reading career" , there is a level of understanding the fiction.

I both agree and disagree. It is true that you learn to recognize things that make book good. That you can learn skills. But skills are not everything. You can learn how to take great photos, you can learn to distinguish technically good or even great photo from bad one. Yet that doesn't mean you'd be able to judge photos as art, that e.g. Saudek's photos will mean anything to you.
During my study, there were two girls in my study group that always got A for their analysis and interpretations. Oh, they were amazing. You'd think - as everybody else - hey, these really love and appreciate literature! And, as everybody else, you'd be wrong.
All they did, as they told me themselves, was that they learned to find out what they were expected to find out. It never relly touched them. For them, it was all useless nonsense. Why they studied literature? Because they did like to read, but for them, literature was only entertaninment. Not art.

[Eric]

I applaud Aiculik when he says in #17:

The fact that someone knows his abc doesn't mean that they can read artistic texts. I see many people all around me - and some are real bookworms, mind you - that simply can't go below the most obvious, top layer of the book. They don't know what to think of the book unless they read the review or critic. And they often choose books because someone, somewhere said that this book is good and worthy, it's classic, it's in some canon or whatever. They ask the questions someone else told them to ask, find meanings someone else found in the text.

This is what I'm always battling ("ranting") against. The propensity of people not to think for themselves, not choosing their own books to read, but slavishly copying the trends, the critics, the gurus. What the Guardian and the NYT "tells" them to read. While I do like to see what is being read in the world (the world, not only London and New York), I try to go my own way.

At present, I've decided to read some Icelandic, Finland-Swedish and Swedish poets. For no particular reason - except that I want to. I could Google to see whether this is the trendy thing to read (e.g. Iceland, bank failure, read their poets), but I can't be bothered. A whim, just now, makes me want to read such things. Next month it may we be prose from a completely different country.

So for me fiction is "important", in the sense that it expands my horizons: geographical, psychological, stylistic. If you look at my list of my 50 favourite books on another thread somewhere, you will find that while half of the authors are common to most other people here, the other half are by authors that no one on these threads may even have heard of. For me, that is the right balance. Neither totally conforming to every trend conjured up by newspaper critics (e.g. a certain author was born or died a hundred years ago this year); nor, on the other hand, turning up my nose at serious and well-regarded writers.

But I must want to read the book, must be driven on to read beyond the first ten pages. I don't want to read through a 500-page novel just because there is pressure from critics, friends, TV, etc., to do so. ("Dostoevsky / Joyce / Mann / Goethe must be good, 'cos everybody says so.")

[titania7]

Eric wrote:
This is what I'm always battling ("ranting") against. The propensity of people not to think for themselves, not choosing their own books to read, but slavishly copying the trends, the critics, the gurus. What the Guardian and the NYT "tells" them to read. While I do like to see what is being read in the world (the world, not only London and New York), I try to go my own way.....

Eric,
I have a friend who is a philosopher and we have discussed this very issue: the tendency nowadays for people not to think for themselves. They read books that are recommended to them, have other people's opinions about the books, and generally don't allow themselves the--shall we say luxury?--of thinking. This isn't just about literature, either. In America, at least, we have become an entire nation of conformists. We let celebrities and fashion magazines tell us what to wear and TV talk shows have become the place that people turn to for input on everything from their marriages and dating lives to how to raise their children. In many ways, I believe that laziness is a factor. It's so much easier to go by other people's opinions than to create our own. I recently came up with my own term for what seems to be a growing epidemic--"cerebral sloth." The beauty of individualism has been replaced by the sheer boredom of utter conformity. Why should one read the same books everyone else is reading? I used to get so annoyed with the trend towards reading the books "everyone" reads that I made a habit of reading the LEAST well-known book by an author first rather than his most important work. If I liked the author, I would read his or her famous works after this. If I didn't, I wouldn't re-visit him or her.

Eric wrote:

.....But I must want to read the book, must be driven on to read beyond the first ten pages. I don't want to read through a 500-page novel just because there is pressure from critics, friends, TV, etc., to do so. ("Dostoevsky / Joyce / Mann / Goethe must be good, 'cos everybody says so.")

Eric,
I must feel a book has true merit to finish reading it. To be candid, there are many books I have left unfinished. If someone asks me if a book I'm reading is "any good," my answer is "Of course. It if weren't, I wouldn't still be reading it." Personally, I read because I have to. I need books the way I need water and food. There are times, in fact, that I become so immersed in a book that I actually forget to eat.

And pressure from anyone to read a certain book has a strange affect on me. Usually, I cannot bring myself to read the work, no matter what it is. I respond well to suggestions and recommendations. But pressure? No. In fact, everyone who knows me well knows that the best way to get me NOT to do something is to tell me it's something I have to do (or read, watch, hear, etc).

I don't really care how "important" a writer is. I could think a novel by Raymond Radiguet was every bit as magnificent as one by Dostoevsky. I wouldn't care what anyone thought about it, either.
We should all be entitled to have our own personal tastes in every realm of our lives. And we shouldn't have to argue about or defend our preferences, either.

Titania

PS I read your list of 50 favorite books. I wrote down a few of the names I hadn't heard of, because many of the writers you like (writers I am familiar with) are writers I like, too. Elizabeth Bowen and Katherine Anne Porter, for instance, are two of my favorite short story writers.

"The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity."
~Miguel de Cervantes

[titania7]

Aiculik wrote
Also, reading books makes you seem more educated, cultural, intelligent. Especially if you read "right" books.

Aiculik,
When I was younger I used to care somewhat about whether or not I came across as intelligent, cultured, or what-have-you. At this point, I honestly don't care. Don't get me wrong--if I seem to possess a certain level of erudition and if others consider me to have a good intellect, I take it as a compliment. But what I've noticed, nine times out of ten, is that people perceive other people the way the want to perceive them. Oft-times their opinion about a person has no basis in reality. This is because we judge current and future experiences according to the past. It's a human tendency that I'm becoming more and more aware of. For instance, if a man thinks that all women who are young and attractive are stupid, he will scarcely disregard this opinion even if he meets a woman who is reading The Brothers Karamazov and is capable of talking brilliantly about its plot, characters, and psychological implications.


I think I know what you mean by "right" books, also. Those are the books people buy to *put on their shelves* but actually never do get around to reading. And, if/when they do read them, often I think they just skim them, maybe read a couple a synopses or reviews so that they can talk half-intelligently about them.

Aiculik wrote:
If a man above forty would confess that after high school he never read any novel, most people would think he's uncultural primitive. If he'd say he reads only manga, they he has some problem. But if he'd say that he reads Dostoyevsky or Proust... well, that sounds much better, doesn't it? That's often also the reason why people go to opera.

Aiculik,
I have met men over forty who said they liked Dostoevsky, Balzac, and similar authors, yet, amazingly enough, they are rarely able to tell me which of their works they liked best. However, if I were to ask them, for example, which movies they've seen recently that they enjoyed, they will be able to name a long list .

In regard to the opera....indeed, it is a place people go to see and "be seen." I was never more aware of that than on Tuesday night.
Most of the people were incredibly snooty. I complimented one lady on her outfit and she looked me as if I had insulted her! And I wasn't exactly wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of blue jeans, either.

Aiculik wrote:
During my study, there were two girls in my study group that always got A for their analysis and interpretations. Oh, they were amazing. You'd think - as everybody else - hey, these really love and appreciate literature! And, as everybody else, you'd be wrong.
All they did, as they told me themselves, was that they learned to find out what they were expected to find out. It never relly touched them. For them, it was all useless nonsense. Why they studied literature? Because they did like to read, but for them, literature was only entertaninment. Not art.

Aiculik,
You've made a good point. Although I agree that people can learn, to a certain extent, to develop a love for literature, there are some temperaments/natures that will never see books as anything other than something to entertain them during their free hours. Most of the time, these people are incapable of deep emotions and are emotionally on the shallow side.

I, on the other hand, am affected too deeply by books. As a matter of fact, there are certain books I have read that actually had a traumatic impact on me, even though I liked them. Sometimes I wish I had a less sensitive nature, that I could be more indifferent towards things. Yet life without passion has no real purpose. And literature is one of my all-encompassing passions.

By the way, the idea that anyone could see books as "useless nonsense" makes me downright angry.


Titania


"Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm
beyond words."
~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[Aiculik]

Titania,

I'm also passionate for literature. Wherever I go, I have at least one book with me. This summer I wanted to sea and it seemed I'd have to go by train - for 19 hours. Then a cousin decided to join me and we went by his car. It was much faster - only 9 hours. And there I was, actually disappointed - I hoped I'll spend those 19 hours reading.

But my very best friend does not read at all. She says she can't understand how I can spend my life reading about made up people living their made up fates in made up world. Yet, she's far from shallow or incapable of deep emotions. But she expresses her emotions by music. In fact I think she finds me shallow and incapable of deep emotions, because although I like music, it's not essential for my life.

It is normal that people want to be liked and accepted, and that they therefore adjust their behaviour to be in accordance with the expectations of society and culture in which they live. Or rather, it is normal in reasonable limits. I do care what my partner thinks of me. Or my parents. And I'm even ready to make some compromises. I'm always questioning my opinions and I'm ready to change it if it's proved that they're wrong. On the other hand, there are few things that are essential for me, that are part of me and those won't change just because someone disagrees. No matter who that person would be.

One of the reasons why I read is that I can see the world through someone else's eyes. I'm not looking for "truth" in books, becaues it is just fiction. Neither I'm looking for solutions of my problems because they're not there. They're in myself and nowhere else. But seeing how other see the world and how they react to it makes me more sensitive... I'm often wondering "I never thought of this problem that way" and I'm comparing it with my own ideas, reactions and solutions... In a way, it's not just passive reading, but discussion with the author.

[titania7]

Aiculik,
I also take at least one book with me everywhere I go. It's interesting to note that your best friend, who does not enjoy reading, is a musician. I began playing classical music at the age of three, and, for most of my childhood, music was like oxygen for me.
I lived, breathed, completely existed for music. I didn't read nearly as much as I do now, simply because I didn't have the time to do so. I was unaware of how much I missed through literature because I had a relatively limited exposure to it. It is impossible to practice a musical instrument for 9-10 hours a day and find time for anything outside of the most essential things--schoolwork, eating, and sleep.
Music is still crucial to my life. But not more essential to it than books.

I agree it is normal for people to alter their behavior to be accepted by others, though I don't always agree that it is necessary. I don't have a partner, though I live with my mum and I definitely care what she thinks of me. As for friends, they know I am highly individualistic and I don't honestly care that some of them view me as "eccentric." Thankfully, they seem to like me anyway . What I find is that people care much less whether or not we share their opinions than whether or not we appreciate them, as people. Thus, I let the most important people in my life know how I feel about them frequently.

In regard to compromises, I am not very good at them. When a person has *completely* different interests than mine, I'm not really eager to spend a great deal of time around them. Time is a limited commodity, after all. I do, of course, question my own opinions. In fact, I change them frequently. But I always have to be the one to decide to change them. I am not persuaded towards a new way of thinking unless it makes sense to me personally. If this makes me appear to be opinionated, that is alright with me. I am the first to admit when I'm in the wrong, however, and I remedy the situation as soon as I am able to.

One of the reasons I read is also to see the world through another person's eyes. I may find some truths in books without consciously looking for them. I realize that novels, short stories, and plays are fiction. But every now and then a solution to a problem may pop up in something I read. I agree that the solutions to our problems are within ourselves--this ties in with the power of the subconscious mind which is far greater than most of us are cognizant of. What a book can do (yes, even fiction) is make us more aware of some difficulty we may be in the midst of or it can make us realize that we have not yet overcome a painful situation of the past. We can receive ideas for how to handle things through fiction. We can work through issues via a character in a book, for instance.

By the way, I love how you refer to reading as "discussion with the author." That is exactly the way I see it, too. Thank you for affording me the opportunity to discuss my thoughts and feelings on literature with you, Aiculik. I was hoping that there would be people here who felt as I do about it.

Titania

"Life must be a constant education.
People must learn everything, from
speaking to dying."
~Gustave Flaubert

[jackdawdle]

for solitary reverie and reflection it is. but for interoffice rapport? that sounds like group therapy. still if it works...who's to say

[Max Cairnduff]

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.

[Max Cairnduff]

Forgot to say, I don't read because it may benefit me, I read because literature is its own justification. If I learn something from it, that's great, but art needs no function to have merit.

The trouble with Sucher's approach is that it smacks a bit too much of the UK government's approach to culture as being a creative industry.

Art is not a creative industry, whether it makes us money as a nation or helps us be better leaders in the workplace is irrelevant to its value.

IMO and all that.

[nnyhav]

Originally Posted by Max Cairnduff

[...]
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.

Empathy. Each of us a world.

I think of writing as distinct from other arts in that it's made exclusively of language. It being the basis for our shared understanding of the world we, and the worlds others, inhabit.

(As much as I'd like to extend the thought, here and elsewhere, I have to devote my attention to a different sort of reading for now, of financial markets and the economy. Sorry. I'll be back.)

[Beth]

Originally Posted by nnyhav

Empathy. Each of us a world.

I think of writing as distinct from other arts in that it's made exclusively of language. It being the basis for our shared understanding of the world we, and the worlds others, inhabit.

I think that's a perfect summation of the importance of fiction. When we go into the fictional worlds of others, it's easier to make that jump into understanding of the people around us. And without the ability to empathize, we're toast.

[Jan Mbali]

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.

[Eric]

A lot has been written here since, but I first want to bring up a few things that Titania brings up in #28:

The pressure to conformity is increased as publishers booksellers become more populist and money-driven. If a narrower choice of books is sold dirt cheap by supermarkets, people will tend to buy what they see in front of them.

Language is also an incredibly important factor. I have some of the unfamiliar names on my list because I've read them in languages many Brits and Americans have never learnt. While most of Dostoevsky, Balzac and the Icelandic sagas are available in at least one English translation, very many books written in European countries, especially during the past couple of decades, are not available in English. So it stands to reason that if you can read two or three of someone else's languages, your choice is increased a good deal. Because in the case of, for instance, Swedish (which I read with ease), not only do I have access to lots of Swedish books but also to books translated into Swedish which are not yet available in English.

*

For me, fiction is important because, as both Nnyhav and Jan Mbali say, it helps you get a coherent view of the world. Fair enough. But if you only read things originally written in the USA, Britain and a few other English-speaking countries, plus a couple of French and Russian classics, where is your view of the thirty of forty countries of Europe, what makes them tick, let alone countries further afield?

If, for instance, you want to get beyond the clichés of plumbers, raving Catholics, anti-Semites and so on, little pigeonholes that Poles often get shoved into, Poland has a vast 20th century literature, with loads of authors to choose from. Nowadays, Poland is so "in" that the British TV comedy series Harry and Paul has a regular sketch (repeated with variations) about two Polish sisters running a takeaway coffee shop and their inept customer.

Thirty years ago, when I first got interested in Poland, there was virtually no information about Poland in mainstream Britain (except during the rise of Solidarity) and their literature was virtually a blank, except for some short-stories by Bruno Schulz, available in Penguin. Things have got better, but I think that British awareness of Polish literature as a national literature is still very circumscribed. That is one dimension of fiction I regard as valuable: opening foreign eyes to the national psyche and history.

Poland has had a particularly traumatic past, and I think that as well as reading huge history tomes, like those of Norman Davies, their authors, such as Konwicki (novels), Milosz (essays), Gombrowicz (diaries), plus more recent ones, can help an understanding. Poland is also linked umbilically to both Lithuania and Ukraine. This is also in evidence in works of fiction. Many leading Polish authors did not come from Warsaw, Kraków, or "Wooch" (Lodz, to you), but from outlying areas of what used to be Poland. Nor were they all Catholic - quite a few Polish authors had some kind of Jewish background.

So, Polish fiction, alongside poetry and non-fiction, can help you understand a largish country right in the middle of Europe, with immigrant communities spread throughout the world. That aspect of, in this case, Polish fiction is important for me.

[Max Cairnduff]

Eric, without disagreeing with any of your points (as I don't), I'm not sure what one can do about it.

One reader here or there won't make a difference to how much gets translated, translated books just don't sell well in the UK and thus those that do get to be translated tend to be the more obvious. We have no history here of reading Central or East European literature (to pick an example), so other than Pushkin Press who is bothering to translate it?

But learning a language to read literature is a hell of a goal, really to get to that level you need to live in a place for a while, immerse yourself, and that's a level of commitment most will struggle with. I speak fairly good Italian, but I still struggle to read novels, and that's just one country's literature. The prospect of learning Polish to read their literature is rather daunting. Sensibly, one would learn German, which would open their national literature and I strongly suspect would open up a huge wealth of Central and Eastern European literature in translation (to German) - that being their near abroad and all (to use that remarkably menacing Russian phrase).

But, learning German itself is a big ask, personally I don't even like the language. So, I agree with you, but I don't think it's a problem which permits of easy answers, save to buy more books from Pushkin Press perhaps.

[nnyhav]

Originally Posted by Eric

For me, fiction is important because, as both Nnyhav and Jan Mbali say, it helps you get a coherent view of the world. Fair enough. But if you only read things originally written in the USA, Britain and a few other English-speaking countries, plus a couple of French and Russian classics, where is your view of the thirty of forty countries of Europe, what makes them tick, let alone countries further afield?

People willingly circumscribe themselves, and their world, in various ways. Many don't even read (wait for the movie!). Most of those that do prefer nonfiction, and most of those remaining prefer nonliterature (see bestseller lists). For the minority of the minority, translation provides a more effective means of broadening horizons than does mastering other languages. We're spoilt for choice as it is.