The point of reading fiction?

[patrick_mcmurray]

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Your question could and should be expanded to: what's the point of art? In my opinion, there is none. It's not something you appreciate or learn from...it just exists. Beyond that, I'd argue that it is fundamental to human life, and happiness.

--GA

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Yes, I totally agree that the question could be expanded in this way.

But in what way do you consider it to be fundamental to human life and happiness?

[Georgia Avenue]

Well, I'm not much of a philosopher, but, simply: Art has always been around in human culture. We get something out of it which has never been replaced, and many of the arts have remained fundamentally the same. We don't get information out of it, and we aren't made better, more moral people by it. Sick people feel a little better after exposure to art, and sad people feel happier. So you could say that it is as fundamental to human existence as, say, love and a family, or some kind of religion, or war. Maybe there's a sociobiological explanation, but I don't put too much stock in those re: anything.

There's a basic difference between art and entertainment, right? You can be entertained by a cockfight, but a novel has an effect different in kind, not just degree. The reader feels connected to something larger than themselves, or the single-minded madness of a crowd...

How this works, and what it does to the reader/observer, is too much to get into, and quite possibly just nonsense. But even though this is kind of a circular argument (humans need art because humans have always needed art because they do) perhaps you can agree that the central place of some kind of art throughout history speaks to its necessity for everyday life.


It might be helpful to read this article , or this book.

[Runkmud]

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I think your post was very interesting on its face. But, I am curious what it says about someone who would ask what I perceive thier question to be - "why should I dream?" I think that is probably even more interesting

I don't read a ton of fiction because I am always so busy but I think the mind has an incredibly strong need to fantisize and fiction books are a great way to do that (although non-fiction books can do the same thing - e.g., Into Thin Air can place you on a mountain top in a deadly blizard fighting for your life).

I strongly believe that brilliant and creative thinking comes from the fantastical part of the mind and not the logical part (I argued this in an interesting thread in the science forum a few months back). I would bet all my money that fiction books do a better job of helping someone think creatively than instructional type books ever could. I believe that knowledge (although sometimes neccessary) is often the great killer of creative thinking and it is often someone new that steps into a situation that has the best ideas and/or the ability to pull them off because they are not constrained by all the standard issues - i.e., they are too stupid to know better and so they just dream and do.

There are also great lessons and things to ponder in fiction. For example, take the book "Of Mice and Men" where it taught us about the "best laid schemes of mice and men" and it taught us the value of not being practical (in the scene when the men blow a month's pay in town). Take the book Shane where it taught us that one cannot escape their inherent nature or their past. The list is of course endless. I would think these lessons are easier to convey in fiction because of the artistic license fiction grants.

Also, some believe fiction is valuable simply because it is fun to read



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Thanks for gifting me with the answer I was not able to articulate, to a fantastically phrasesd question.

At the risk of seeming simple, fiction rocks because it takes you on a fantastic journey that, perhaps, could not be experienced if it wasn't fiction.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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I have read very little fiction over the past few years because I find it difficult to see why I should spend time studying something that isn't real...

...is there something that we can learn from fiction?

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As a youngster I wasn't encouraged to read fiction, in fact your words sound very similar to those of my parents i.e., "that fiction isn't real and therefore there isn't anything to learn." Instead I read encyclopedias and similar stuff, especially the first volume that was usually given away for free at the supermarket. As a result I was very good at understanding all factual things that began with the letter "A", but my emotional connection with people and ability to empathise with others was underdeveloped.

By the middle of my college years I became a voracious reader of fiction, but when I started I felt so far behind. What I learned was that good fiction is the best way to get into the mind of others and see the world through their eyes. In other words, you learn what people think and how people different than you relate to the world and their circumstances.

If you are going to read fiction you might as well try to stick to the good stuff. Good fiction will change the way you perceive others and change the way others perceive you.

For example...

By reading good fiction I learned the many different reasons people fall in love, fall out of love, and stay in love.

By reading good fiction I learned how different types of essentially ordinary people cope with life uncertainties and challenges.

By reading good fiction I learn that there are many ways one can deal with the hardships that sometimes comes as a part of life.

By reading good fiction I was able to put myself in exciting times and see the way people lived in eras I would never understand otherwise. Great examples would be the Patrick O'Brien Aubrey-Maturin novels or Larry McMurty's novel "Lonesome Dove".

Right now I'm reading Shelby Foote's massive non-fiction trilogy on the American Civil War, but I'm glad I also read the Shaara historical fiction trilogy first Those books really put me into the mindset of the era.

Read good non-fiction, but read good fiction too. You won't regret it.

~ Rick

[gurgeh]

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However I guess my real question is this: is there something that we can learn from fiction?


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Do you learn less from made up hand examples in 2+2 books when they are fictional hands, made up to illustrate the authors' points? I doubt it.

Reading or watching fiction is for a lot more than pure entertainment, as many have done well in pointing out already. We learn directly, but we also learn vicariously. This can be bad without direct experience to verify or reject fiction in terms of its believability, but the point stands. The best books and movies get at something we know, make us think about something more, and do it in an engaging way (e.g., Annie Hall, Dune, Memento, Catch-22, etc.).

[entertainme]

Take for example the book My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a young man who is a very gifted artist and also an Hasidic Jew.

Though I have no talent of this nature, I understood for the first time what it might be like. (There's a part in the book where he can't stand to stay at the showing of his work because with each painting sold it's like they are selling a piece of his life.)

Great insight into what it means to be part of this small religious community and the conflict resulting from his art.

I sought out Picasso's Guernica.

So, I was exposed to things I probably wouldn't have pursued without reading this work of fiction.

On another level, think of the works of Ayn Rand. There aren't real people who live their lives to the letter by her philosophy. Through fiction, she was able to manipulate characters to demonstrate the implications of what she believed in. (For the record, I got half way through the Fountainhead and hated the characters. I finished it, albeit reluctantly)

Through great fiction we explore our reality, our beliefs, our hopes, our dreams, our nature.