Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Kim McLarin: In Defense of Fiction
Usually the way it happens is this: I am out and about somewhere, at a party or a meeting or a fundraiser such as the one I attended for First Literacy (great organization, check it out). I meet someone ; we do the hi-my—name-is-and-what-do-you-do dance that Americans love to do. I say: “I’m a writer.” He (it’s usually a he) says, “Oh. Published?” I say, “Yes, published.” He says, “Oh, what kind of books?” I say, “Novels, primarily. I’m a novelist.” He says, “Well, I don’t read fiction. Much.”
I say ….well, what? What am I to say to such a thing, I ask you? That’s not rhetorical; I’m really asking you, dear reader, because I must figure out an appropriate response to this statement. Because I hear it all the time.
Part of the problem, naturally, is the tone in which the statement is delivered. It’s the same tone in which people who Don’t Watch Much Television or Even Own One routinely announce as much, usually at any given opportunity. (By the way, if you never caught an episode of Girlfriends, or The Wire, or Rescue Me or even Two and a Half Men [oddly hilarious], then, trust me: your loss.) What these people are really saying is that they cannot be bothered to read fiction because fiction, by definition, is unimportant and trivial. What these people are saying is that they do not read fiction -- fiction of any kind – because, as one man said to me once, “I only read things that are true and can help me.”
What, exactly is wrong with the deeply misguided, lamentable, and ultimately soul-killing contemporary belief that only stories which are “real” are worthwhile?
The real answer, which is difficult to get into at cocktail parties when the wine is flowing and loud music fills the air, is that one should read fiction because fiction teaches us what it means to be human. It's as simple and as wonderful and as powerful as that.
Fictions explains us to ourselves, and helps us make sense of the world. Why else have humans told stories since the dawn of mankind? (The power of myth, anyone?)
Good fiction -- serious fiction -- tells the truth about the human condition, except that it doesn't really "tell" you so much as brings you along for the exhilarating, discovery-filled ride. Picasso said that art is the lie which tells the truth. That's fiction.
Moreover, fiction, unique among the arts, allows one to step inside the experience of another human being. Photography, films (funny how you never hear people say, "I don't watch movies. I only watch documentaries because documentaries are real."), theater, even art are all exterior -- we're on the outside looking in. We may have our own powerful experience in observing, we may judge or favor or sympathize or empathize with the character up on the stage or on the screen, but we do not enter their consciousness in the way the reader does with a great novel in her hand. Anyone who has ever looked up from the pages of a novel by Morrison or Walker or Marquez or Steinbeck or Ellison or Orwell or Greene or Lessing or Baldwin or insert-your-own-favorite-here and felt the world shifted, known themselves different in some small but tangible way, will know this is true.
Maybe what I should say the next time someone tells me he does not read fiction is: "Really? Well that's a shame. Because you should, you know. You really, really should."
Kim McLarin is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels Taming it Down, Meeting of the Waters and Jump at the Sun, all published by William Morrow. She is a former staff writer for The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Greensboro News & Record and the Associated Press. She is currently on leave from her position as a writer-in-residence at Emerson College in Boston to write a book on Liberia. She is also the new host of Basic Black, Boston's longest-running weekly television program devoted exclusively to African American themes, shown on WGBH.
{extended}