"Literature is a luxury. Fiction is a necessity."
-G.K. Chesterton
"Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal and history only the particular."
-Aristotle
As (aspiring) fiction writers ourselves, it is impossible not to look up from our books and journals and screens and wonder, what is the damn point of fiction anyway. It is one of the odder things in the world if you stop and think about it. Why do we, as a human species, have a need--not just a vague desire, but a need--to create stories and tell them in any form, whether that be a film, a novel, a play, a short story, a poem or whatever. Why did the ancient Greeks need myths and onstage drama? Why do we need to read good books and go see good movies? Is it simply to inject some escapist fun into the empty spaces in our lives that punctuate the time when we're working and sleeping? Is "real life" so dull that we need a fabricated version of it to get by?
I don't think it's mere escapism. It's easy to escape into the world of Twilight, but not so much into Dostoyevsky. Like the David Foster Wallace quote we explored in class, I believe that fiction tells something about the human condition that can, for some peculiar reason, be only expressed (or closest to being expressed) through story rather than explicit statement. If the human condition is that of a journey, The Lord of the Rings expresses it so much better than if you stated "the human condition is that of a journey." If the human condition is that life is essentially meaningless, it is expressed far better in The Stranger than in the statement "The human condition is that life is essentially meaningless." What is it about fiction that makes things stick with us? Why is the fabricated so much more real than reality?
A side note: if we accept that all good fiction is philosophical in this sense (as in expressing the nature of the human condition), where does the value of entertainment come in? Part of why we love good stories is because they are entertaining: they amuse and frighten us, keep us in the dark and astound us with shocking revelations, give us characters with can sympathize with and ones we hate, and then feel sorry for. Fiction seems to be the point where philosophy and entertainment intersect and it seems to be that the best fiction is the kind that blends the two. A philosophy essay is smart but not entertaining, a dumb romantic comedy is entertaining but not smart, and the best is a keen balance.
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ReplyDeleteVery interesting post, Kate. Fiction takes us through imaginary experiences that can become so revealing and enlightening. There is so much that we don't understand in life and cannot be told. We have to figure it out, in our own feelings, beyond language. Writers can give us a sort of experience that can capture something close to that and bring it out. We will come across stories that we've never known before, but they are always going to have that human aspect to them that we can relate to. No matter what the story is, it's always going to have the potential to be turned into our own experience that we can learn something about ourselves in.
ReplyDeleteThat's my initial perspective at least.