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Posted by Gerrit on 9/12/2001, 23:59:48
Lately I have been wondering about why one should read fiction. After all why would you read something that you know isn't true? At the same time I know that I have been reading a lot of fictional work and often like the experience. I have been looking for rationalisations for this. Maybe a book of fiction really does have a hidden thread of truth in it that the reader has to unravel. But while this seems to be true in the sense that the process of putting ink on paper or entering keystrokes on keyboards is a very real process and that no story is utterly unreal it appears in the end to be an unsatisfactory explanation. Why would a writer need to hide something real inside some laborious maze of fiction? (Unless of cource it's for fun or fear of prosecution) However there is a recurring phase in our lives in which we accept fictional and maybe symbolic things to happen as a matter of fact and that is in our dreams even if we don't remember them very often. So could the state of dreaming be connected somehow to reading and writing fiction? For me in any case there is a proximity in time between the two; my favorite reading time for fictional work is always in the evening. And in reading fiction my awareness of the environment is very much reduced. Also there could be a similarity in function. Having a good night's rest can work towards the solution of a problem just as reading fiction can kickstart the understanding of something which you didn't understand before without exactly telling the solution. This seems true of poetry as well as prose, the difference being that in poetry even the structure of language itself becomes dreamlike, open for association.
So what do you think, is there a connection?
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Posted by Lale on 10/12/2001, 2:50:41, in reply to "Awake and dreaming"
It is 2:45 am in Paris, I am awake and dreaming. I will go to bed now and while falling asleep I will think of your question. Some thoughts are coming to me right now but it is too late to expect them to turn into words.
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Posted by Lale on 10/12/2001, 15:41:06, in reply to "Re: Awake and dreaming"
At some point in my childhood, I don't remember when, a teacher told me that the definition of fiction was "happened or could happen". I got stuck to this definition and with the exception of science fiction and fantasy, I read everything thinking that it happened (maybe with variations, maybe exactly) or it could happen, it is possible, it is conceivable.
fiction noun [mass noun] literature in the form of prose, especially novels, that describes imaginary events and people.
invention or fabrication as opposed to fact: the president dismissed the allegation as absolute fiction. [in sing.] a belief or statement which is false, but is often held to be true because it is expedient to do so: the notion of the country being a democracy is a polite fiction.
-ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense quotinvented statementquot): via Old French from Latin fictio(n-), from fingere 'form, contrive'. Compare with feign and figment.
non-fiction noun [mass noun] prose writing that is informative or factual rather than fictional.
-DERIVATIVES non-fictional adjective.
science fiction (abbrev.: SF) noun [mass noun] fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.
legal fiction noun an assertion accepted as true, though probably fictitious, to achieve a useful purpose in legal matters.
"Invention or fabrication as opposed to fact". It doesn't say "it is likely, it could have been real". One day I told my mother I was writing short stories and she said "you mean you are making them up."
Yes, I am making them up, or I am making up some parts and some other parts actually happened. I may intertwine what really happened and what I am making up. Also, what really happened takes a different life with my narration. It is like listening to a friend when she is telling you about an accident she witnessed. The accident is real. She is telling you how the two drivers, the passersby, the police officers behaved or said. It is fiction. It is her fiction even though she has seen and heard everything she is telling you.
An author, while writing fiction, might use a scene from here, a sentence from there or disguise a real person in one of his characters. What is true and what is a lie?
Here is something to consider: movies. I consider movies "fiction within fiction" or "dream within dream". Someone makes up something (writes a book, a screen play) then someone else (sometimes the same person) makes more stuff up to put it on film.
Some books/movies are truly dreamlike (fantasy; and we should also discuss the difference between fiction and fantasy). Sometimes we watch a movie and we say "it was bizarre", but we might have enjoyed it regardless.
Some authors (say Edgar Allan Poe, for instance) write their best stuff (but usually it is fantasy, not "could happen" kinda stuff) under the influence of opium. Talk about dreaming.
These ramblings are not even close to answering the question at hand, but as Anna says posing a good question may be more enlightening than the answer. I just wrote some of my thoughts to stimulate the conversation.
By the way, almost every science fiction book I have read in my early twenties came true (or partly true) now. Of course 1984 missed the mark but ...
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Posted by Anna van Gelderen on 10/12/2001, 19:43:36, in reply to "Awake and dreaming"
Dreams and fiction: that seems an infinite subject. But I understand what you mean by the analogy. Neither dreams nor fiction work by rational analysis. Both call forth images that conjure up other images, which then create unexpected associations, so that you suddenly see things with a clarity and an impact you had never experienced before. Great analogy! I will think about it some more and I will be back in a few days' time.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 11/12/2001, 16:43:47, in reply to "Awake and dreaming"
As I had said somewhere - I think in my piece on Plotinus - I prefer the term "imaginative literature" to "fiction." There seems to be a philosophical term for all this: "counterfactuals" - truths contrary to facts. But that of course fails to cover fairy tales, unicorns and gnomes. Because imaginative literature is NOT about truth and even not always about plausibility. When the ghost in Hamlet appears on the stage, the author and his audience strike a tacit deal: "suppose there are such things as ghosts, what then?" Or take the witches in ÔMacbeth,' or ÔAlice in Wonderland,' and all doubts and disbelieves are suspended - as in a dream.
However there is actually nothing dreamy about - mathematicians do this sort of thing all the time. The main body of higher math and most of its theorems are sheer fantasy and have no application in the real world. A mathematical "truth" therefore, must be something different than, say, Newton's law of gravity (which however we wouldn't be able to express without math - something to think about!)
I think we should agree on a very basic distinction: good fiction is ALWAYS a fairy tale. The reader who tries to get "truths," "great ideas," or worst of the worst "message" out of fiction, is completely on the wrong track. Such reader doesn't understand the first thing about imaginative literature. And so does every author who feels the itch to peddle in messages and opinions. It draws the line. (I had set up a little test on this bulletin board - a brief chapter out of Tolstoy's ÔPiece & War,' and the only response so far, as expected, completely missed my point.)
So ÔAnna Karenina,' ÔMadame Bovary,' ÔTristram Shandy,' ÔThe Golden Ass,' ÔDon Quixote,' ÔUlysses,' you name it, are first and foremost fairy tales. And fairy tales affect us the same way as classical music - by their interplay of leitmotifs, and the recurrence of hidden patterns and themes, the composition and structure of the various elements. Rabelais' ÔGargantua' is probably the purest piece of fiction, ever written. (And that's why I still consider Celine and Dostoyevsky second and third rate, Lale ;-)).
Stephen King, of all people, once compared writing fiction with an act of hypnosis. He is right. But hypnosis doesn't work without the capacity for empathy in the reader. Without empathy neither tragedy nor comedy work. But it is not the kind of empathy that feels sorry for the suffering hero(ine), but would rather storm the stage, shoulder the inapt actor aside and take on his role himself to walk an alien world from a parallel universe, regardless where it is leading to and be it to inevitable doom.
A great author creates a completely new world, an alternative world, but not in the utopian sense (even if that may have motivated him in the first place); a self-sufficient, complete, independent and sometimes (hopefully) wonderfully different world from our daily slog. The quality of such creation is the hallmark of his greatness. The great writer is competing against the author of the universe, and given the nature of things, there is a good chance that a real genius can do better. (Celine is only confirming that big papa had botched the job - we know that, so what's so great about that?)
So, is fiction escapist? You bet it is, and unashamedly so. And the party-pooper of a reader who feels bad about - go shoot yourself. We live only once, and imaginative literature, so far, has been our only chance ever to come in touch with alternative worlds.
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Posted by Lale on 11/12/2001, 21:55:48, in reply to "Re: Awake and dreaming"
I just replied to your "touchstones and tests".
I do not read fiction to get "truths" (as in "why JFK was really shot" ), "great ideas" (as in "how to solve the world's hunger problem" ) or a "message" (as in "never underestimate the power of ambition" ). However, besides the sheer pleasure of reading, I do expect to learn things. Something from another time, another place. I am aware of the fact that the info in fiction is not reliable, but if the guy says 17th century France, then I think his interpretation will be pretty close to 17th century France.
The last book we read was Louis Couperus' (Dutch) The Hidden Force, a book about 1900 Dutch colony in Indies. Now, we will soon be discussing that book, so I don't want to say a lot, but here is a bit: In the book some pretty bizarre (read "unreal", like Hamlet's ghost) things happened. And yet, I feel I have a picture of life in Java in 1900. I feel the picture I drew based on this book is pretty accurate. I think I have learned a lot about colonial Indonesia. Is that a crime?
Maybe it's something about being me: I do expect to learn things when I converse with friends, when I watch news on television, when I read the Literary Review.
I know I am diverting quite a bit from the topic but I also want to say this: When I read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, I didn't learn anything but I was not dissappointed, it is one of my all time favourite books. Because I value originality as much as knowledge.
Then, when I read humour (such as Dave Barry) or sarcasm or sarcasm and humour together, I also do not expect to learn anything new. I expect to laugh my head off or see some of my own criticisms of behaviours, rules and regulations put into words by someone who can put them into words. I all need to do is to agree, and read it out loud to my friends.
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Posted by Gerrit on 12/12/2001, 0:50:10, in reply to "Re: Awake and dreaming"
Lale, Michael and Anna thanks for your prompt replies to my suggestion about dreams and literature. The topic seems to offer some food for thought :-)
Michael you impress me with your familiarity with all the names of authors and works of imaginative writing. Also I see in your contributions that you have a great skill in empathy which no doubt comes in very handy when reading literature and which may in fact be a central skill in reading literature as human beings almost always take the focus of attention in literature. Even so I believe that imaginative literature is not so much about creating alternative worlds as it is about author and readers entering a dreamlike state in which conscious thought is dropped for a while and letting pieces of reality join and fragment into imagination. Creating an alternative world and escaping reality is in comparison a much simpler task. On the internet there are large communities of people spending hours a day inside game-worlds and I really can't believe that escapism is a very good quality in a book.
In your paragraph about mathematics I feel that you are mixing up imagination with fantasy. Imagination is a good thing in mathematics, without it you can never extend mathematics, but fantasy is fruitless because in the end you can never prove a fantasy. Actual applications often come later on, but this is true for science in general and when they do come it's a nice reward for the imagination.
With Lale I seem to have in common that I expect to gain something by reading a book. If not immediately then perhaps later on and I feel gratitude to an author if it does. I don't think, Lale, that dreamlike is a proper description of fantasy books. The reason I say this is because I think fantasy is much to contrived to be like a dream. A dream comes unsolicited and is not manoeuvred by the dreamer. Sometimes though it's irresistable to take your brain for such a ride. Because movies take in the visual senses they can be even more demanding. It's funny what you say about 1984 not coming true. I thought that the whole point that Orwell was trying to make was that it shouldn't come true. When I was reading a review about Brave New World from Aldous Huxley that I did many years ago I was struck by the clear depiction of some inadequacies that still exist in our present day societies. Science fiction at its best I think.
I am not making a lot of sense anymore I think and it's best to stop for now. Back to you.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 12/12/2001, 6:40:05, in reply to "Cont: Awake and dreaming"
Not to start an argument or some sort of futile academic exercise - but I think when I quoted King I made it clear that hypnotic interaction between author and reader is taken for granted. However that would be a matter of medium, not of content. And when I used the term "complete" (i.e. at least the illusion of completeness) regarding the creation of "alternative worlds," then, in my opinion, does this point to a much more difficult task, than merely hallucinating or dreaming.
Keep in mind, that an author has to put a lot of himself into his fiction to make it work - his experiences, even hard research. If it is a real good author, then the average reader catches only a fraction of all the clues, hints, innuendos, motives, and fictional facts. A great novel, like Nature, is infinitely richer than the reader's dream trudging along after the author's trail. (If it happens to be the other way around, then it is time to put the book down and look for something better, or start writing yourselves.)
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Posted by Anna van Gelderen on 12/12/2001, 13:00:26, in reply to "Re: Awake and dreaming"
I am going to digress along a little.
Nowhere is it decreed that there is only one correct way to read fiction. All reasons for reading are perfectly legitimate, whether they are escapism (Barbara Cartland), the urge to learn, or whatever. Like Lale I want to get something from the book, though not necessarily factual information. I read for the same reason that I travel: I want it to enrich my life. Neither for me is primarily a means of getting away away from anything, for I am quite happy where I am.
I read a lot of science books too and for the same reason; they enrich my life, but in a different way: by rational analysis, by providing me with factual knowledge. The beauty of fiction is that it often provides you with new vistas and unexpected perspectives on the truth through metaphor, symbol, analogy (here's the connection to dreaming again - back on topic!). Good literature to me means that the use of imagery etc. is not too obvious, but subtle and insidious, so that after you have finished the book/poem you are left wondering why exactly it had such an impact on you. As a result a whole train of thought is set in motion and the book occupies your mind for a long time afterwards - just as an intriguing dream can haunt you in the daytime.
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Posted by Lale on 12/12/2001, 13:56:57, in reply to "Re: Awake and dreaming"
This is why I read, to enrich my life.
I also travel to enrich my life. Travelling is something very hard for me. But I do it to enrich my life.
Enriching one's life is very pleasurable.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 12/12/2001, 16:01:09, in reply to "Re: Awake and dreaming"
What happens between the reader and the book in his hand is private - no argument, but there is also the author. He spent an immense amount of a unique life and all the efforts his talent could muster to create a new world. This deserves more of the reader's respect and attention to the author's motives, and (to a lesser degree) intentions.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 12/12/2001, 18:27:24, in reply to "Re: Awake and dreaming"
You ask: "I think I have learned a lot about colonial Indonesia. Is that a crime?"
Its not a crime, Lale - but what you really learn about, is the author's creation, say of Java in 1900. When Tolstoy wrote his enormous epic on the Russian war he literally walked the battlefields and interviewed the veterans. But does this make his book any more real or informative? Well yes, it informs you about Tolstoy's Napoleonic war - it is his fairy tale, and Napoleon an arch-typical hobgoblin to the bone. (And Kutuzov being the wise wizard.)
Tolstoy had that thing with "telling the truth" - it was one of his obsessions. He loved to walk about with a collapsible soap box and lecture people on his pet ideas. But the moment he came back to his senses and the artist took over, we are in a completely different world. It is a planet with features that seem to look very similar to our own world, but the atmosphere is so much cleaner, it smells, it tastes, the horses body temperature fills the morning with mist, and everybody (except for the wizard) is endowed with perfect eyesight and notices things no common mortal would ever care to notice.
All the same it is no less a fairy tale than ÔAlice in Wonderland.' It is true - when I read the bivouac scenes I felt sympathetically reminded of my own experiences in the special forces; I felt it was very real. Yet there is a glow on the scenes in Tolstoy's book which has nothing to do with the grime of days under camouflage, sleeping in a draughty bag 3 feet under the snow, bone hard frozen boots in the morning, and the prickly fir-twigs leaving bloody scratch marks on your dried out skin. ÔWar & Peace' is different after all.
It is what Tolstoy the artist (not Tolstoy the preacher) has added to it: his sense of balance, honesty to the physical detail, his timing, the rhythm of sensual perceptions, the recurrence and interplay of leitmotifs, the almost musical coda. Or take Flaubert - another "realist." He took enormous pains over his work - he literally made it a study to look at the reflection of coloured glass in his door. It took him days to get it down to his own satisfaction. And yet - with all the meticulous observation and attention to detail, the book is "just" another fairy tale.
(For starters, consider the fact, that Emma sleeps with her husband in the same bed, but apparently he never even notices once her absence when she is away with her lovers. Big flaw in a "realistic" story! For a fairy-tale it is exactly what the doctor ordered. I mean the hero's unconquerable sleep in a critical situation which actually requires his undivided attention, is indeed a genuine fairy-tale motive, almost a cliche. There is more of this kind in Flaubert's book.)
So, it is certainly not a crime to "learn" something about the French middle class under Luis Phillip, or the Napoleonic wars, even from Tolstoy's book, but it comes for a price - you are missing out on the novel's good stuff. It is the same as if you take the score sheet of a Mozart symphony, just to learn how to copy out the notes, without actually bothering about the music. And I really think, especially when an author went to great length to make the miracle happen, that he deserves better, than a tone deaf reader.
Reading is not just educational - it also requires education; the right kind of education; an education that seems to have vanished from our curricula for quite some time. It's a shame, because it is a real loss of culture. I look at my bookshelf, I look at Amazon's reviews, and I feel sad - those giants did live for nothing; in the end it seems, it was in vain. On a personal note: I was bred in the school of "new criticism" (long ago - those were the days) and basically I am still ascribing to their principles, with one important exception:
One cannot ignore the author. The text alone won't do. It adds an additional dimension to the explanation of Don Quixote, to know that its author was a crippled veteran in his sixties, when he began composing his book, and that he had been held in slavery during the best years of his life. It helps to understand the poor hygiene of the period and the coarseness of customs and cuisine, to make head and tail of the music in Cervantes' score.
But this is knowledge you don't gain FROM the book, you have to bring it TO the book, to fully appreciate the sound of this old instrument, that is no longer been played these days.
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Posted by gerrit on 14/12/2001, 21:50:50, in reply to "Re: Cont: Awake and dreaming"
Michael, I still don't see that creating an alternative world is a basis for literature. I read science fiction novels from Iain Banks now and then for example. He creates astounding imaginary world with incredible detail and no doubt a lot of work. Even though I like his books a lot I don't consider them to be literature.
Dreams might seem cheap, but I am not so sure about that, they can only work with components that you accumulated in your waking activity.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 15/12/2001, 3:08:20, in reply to "Alternative worlds"
I think you want to go through my little exchanges with Lale on "Awake and dreaming" and "How much of fiction is history" and you get the idea what "alternative world" means in good fiction.
SF and "Fantasy" cover only a small part of the subject. Also take the 3 minutes it takes to read the chapter I recommended in the "Touchstone" message. It is kind of a practical demonstration.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 18/12/2001, 15:58:25, in reply to "Alternative worlds"
Just noticed that I had posted my Dante review on Lale's page (further down) - maybe you want to read that - a veritable example for an alternative world, and a very consciously alternative world for that.
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