Why Do People Read Fiction -- Beyond For Entertainment?

Why do people read fiction beyond the simple reason that it is entertaining or diverting?

One reason might be to expand one's horizons -- to find out more about the world in a fashion that is less dry or sleep-inducing than non-fiction.

When I lived in England, my chief means of finding out more about the English and their country was by reading their novels.  And when I lived in Japan, I did the same thing -- this time Japanese novels in translation, including "The Tale of Genji," which took me months to get through. Fortunately, there were a significant number of excellent translations of Japanese literature, both classic and contemporary.

But another reason is to find out more about oneself.

"Teenage readers search for themselves in books," said Donna Frietas, an author of Young Adult fiction, in a recent New York Times book review article.

Teenagers aren't the only ones.  When I self-published my first novella, "Manhattan Morning," some of my friends who were kind enough to read it said it wasn't that interesting for them because they could not identify with my protagonist and thus did not find him interesting.  And, indeed, I soon began to realize that much (but not all) of the feedback that I received said more about the person giving me their reaction than it did about my book.

It is a revealing exercise and one that leads to a certain amount of self-reflection.

JD Salinger Viewed As White Male Canon Fodder

With the white population of the U.S. declining toward minority status, the country's cultural traditions are episodically under attack and perhaps nowhere more forcefully than with respect to literature.

It's time to revise "the canon" -- the prevailing list of great books that are not just mostly euro-centric, but heavily the work of white male authors, reformers contend.  The canon, while unofficial, is nonetheless highly influential, particularly when it comes to deciding what books children should read in school or be taught in college.

The latest assault comes from Ron Charles, a white male himself, who reviews books for the Washington Post. He seized upon J.D. Salinger's 100th birthday (Jan. 1, 2019) to bash the relevance of "The Catcher in the Rye," an iconic coming-of-age novel that has sold over 65 million copies since it was first published in 1951.

"We live in a world overpopulated by privileged white guys who mistake their depression for existential wisdom, their narcissism for superior vision," Charles said.

"We have met the phonies and they are us," the critic declared, apparently feeling it expedient to  signal his own personal virtue. More accurately, he might have declared that "he" had met the enemy and it was "himself". Just who are the "we" and the "us," one wonders?

Noting that the U.S. is experiencing a renaissance in young-adult literature -- a topic I have addressed in several earlier posts (search on the label "young adult fiction") -- Charles said it is "no longer tenable to imagine that the anxieties of a white heterosexual young man [Holden Caulfield]  expelled from an expensive prep school capture the spirit of our era." Today's "snarky young anti-hero" is more likely to resemble the black French Canadian boy in a forthcoming book called "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager," by Ben Phillipe, a black male born in Haiti,  he said.

But, as Clark's article makes clear, Salinger and his small set of published works aren't dead yet.  The New York Public Library, he noted, is planning a special exhibition of manuscripts, letters, books and artifacts for October 2019.  And once Salinger dies, the trustees of his literary estate could seek to cash in on the theatrical, film and television demand for his stories estimated to be worth as much as $50 million.

"Don't think it won't happen," Charles said, implying demand for the white-male literary canon still has legs.

As for "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager," the public will in due course decide whether it needs 65 million copies or not.

You Are What You Wear as Well as What You Read and Eat

 

Who are we? Or, if one is an author, who exactly is that character I am trying to create?

It's no secret that the attire people wear tends to define them. Think about what royalties and aristocracies wore in comparison to the typical attire of ordinary subjects or peasants -- and how a king could often easily disguise himself simply by exchanging his royal vestments for clothing worn by a commoner.

"Dress for success," used to be a slogan of the American apparel industry, aimed at urging consumers to think that their chances of getting a good job, or perhaps a promotion, depended as much on how they visually presented themselves as on anything else. There was, of course, some truth to it: we are all influenced by what we see and the values we associate with images.

Above left one sees a "new" Michele Obama, making her entrance at Brooklyn's large arena known as the Barclay Center. This was part of her on-going book tour -- a landslide success, by all accounts.

As explained by Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan, Ms Obama appeared, quite out of character it seemed, in a "shimmery yellow shirt dress with a pair of gold, holographic thigh-high boots." The boots, as per the middle photo, were from Balenciaga's 2018 runway show while the dress was shown by the fashion house for 2019.

What's the message here?  According to Givhan, Michele's outfit says the role of First Lady was but a chapter in her life.

"Obama's book tour is the equivalent of a rock concert, so she dressed like a rock star," the Washington Post critic said. "Whether the ensemble is flattering is beside the point."

When Michelle was in the White House, the public wanted "a picture of understandable elegance -- aspirational, but not beyond the average person's wildest dreams." In contrast, the ensemble shown above suggests wants to move on to something else -- "a celebrity, which carries greater value in the broader culture."

You are what you wear.  That's one way to build character. And, after all, Michelle Obama's book is entitled "Becoming."

Should a Work of Art Stand Apart From It's Creator?

In the previous post, I wrote about one aspect of a New York Times interview of black American author Alice Walker, whose most highly regarded book, "The Color Purple," while controversial, is generally considered solidly within the American literary canon -- along with titles such as "To Kill a Mocking Bird" (which I will turn to shortly), "The Great Gatsby" and "Catcher in the Rye." It won Pulitzer and National Book Award prizes in 1983.

The topic of this post is whether one does, or should, think less of "The Color Purple" if one comes to believe that Ms Walker has anti-Semitic leanings.

Or no matter how reprehensible the creator of a work of art may be, should the object -- in this case a work of fiction -- stand on its own once it has been launched into the realm of the public?

Similarly, should one revise one's views on the merits of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in the wake of the publication of "Go Set a Watchman?"

Arguably, "Watchman," written first, but released 55 years later, was turned into the far more morally uplifting "Mockingbird" over a two-year period with the extensive help of an editor looking for something that would be a lot more saleable.

"I was a first-time writer so I did as I was told," Lee said in 2015, explaining the evolution of her first draft, which depicted the key character, Atticus Finch, as a bigot, into "Mockingbird" where the same man was depicted as determined to see that all races were treated the same, in a court of law at any rate.

Did Lee sacrifice the truth (Finch was based in large part on her father) for fame and profit? Or is the truth not what fiction is all about?

The question is particularly pertinent in the case of "Mockingbird" because the novel has been required reading for vast numbers of American schoolchildren over the years since its publication. Is that because it is just a good yarn, or is it because it is viewed as having a message children should absorb? If the latter, should they now be made acquainted with "Watchman" as well?

These are questions I ask friends from time to time and the answers suggest that people want to find reasons to preserve things they personally like, and are far more willing to devalue things they personally don't like.  So far, there does not appear to be a dispassionate single answer.

(I've also written about "Mockingbird" and "Watchman" in earlier posts, which readers can find here and here.)

You Are What You Read As Much As What You Eat

Most readers are probably familiar with the expression "you are what you eat."  It can be taken either literally or figuratively: that the biochemical composition of your body changes on the basis of what you consume (possibly affecting your health), or that your diet reflects your values -- not eating meat because it is wrong to slaughter animals, rather than because it may be unhealthy.

Alternatively, perhaps you are what you read. That, at least is the opinion of one New York Times editor who, not surprisingly, deals with books.

At the moment, The Times is embroiled in a controversy over a recent "By the Book" column in which black American author Alice Walker, who most notably wrote "The Color Purple," is said to have exhibited anti-Semitism. This is because she listed as being on her bookstand a 1995 book by David Icke called "And the Truth Shall Set You Free" that includes material suggesting that a small Jewish elite, contemptuous of the Jewish masses, was responsible for the Holocaust.

Walker, whose only marriage was to a white Jewish lawyer, has been viewed as anti-Semitic on other occasions, in part because she has refused to allow "The Color Purple" to be translated into Hebrew on the grounds that Israel practices a form of apartheid with respect to the Palestinians.

In any event, Pamela Raul, editor of The Times' book review section, said Walker was chosen for an interview because that particular week's section was devoted to poetry and politics.

"She is both a poet and someone known to be very political in her work," Raul said, explaining that The Times does not choose people to interview on the basis of the views that they hold.

"If people espouse beliefs that anyone at The Times finds to be dangerous or immoral, it's important for readers to be aware that they hold those beliefs. The public deserves to know, That's news," the editor said. "The intention of By the Book is to be a portrait of someone through his or her reading life. What people choose to read or not read and what books they find to be influential or meaningful say a lot about who they are."

In other words, you are what you read as much or more than you are what you eat.

It's an interesting idea in part because if one is writing fiction -- and particularly fiction that doesn't rely heavily on plot -- the question of how one builds character is always present.

Why Is This Blog So Unpopular?

In case you hadn't noticed, nothing published on this blog "goes viral." Not remotely! No advertisers plead for space here to promote their products because the audience is so large and thus presumably commercially appealing.

Why is that?  Well, part of the answer might lie in a study Albert-László Barabási, who identifies himself as a data scientist, recently conducted in an attempt to discover what sort of books make the New York Times bestseller list.

He and a colleague analyzed the sales patterns of the 2,468 fiction and 2,025 non-fiction books that made the NYT hardcover bestseller lists over the past decade.

Well, this blog is nominally (and mostly) about fiction so let's start there.  What sells?  In a word, "action," or to put it another way, page-turners.  The top five best-selling categories are thrillers and suspense novels; mystery and detective stories; romance; fantasy, and science fiction.

I rarely write about books or stories that fall into one of those genres. There's nothing wrong with such books and possibly a great deal right about them. They are just not my thing.

I do stray away from fiction from time to time, mainly to write about political and social trends, and books concerned with history, law or political science are the second most popular genre on the non-fiction list. But biography, autobiography and memoir is by far the hottest selling category there, the two data scientists found.

So there you have it.  "Thoughts About Fiction" is one of the quieter backwaters of cyberspace, and rightly so!

Black Male Writers Experiencing "Extraordinary Moment"

Black male writers are experiencing "an extraordinary moment" of mainstream attention in the world of American literature, Ayana Mathis, a best-selling black female novelist, said.

If so, it runs at least somewhat counter to recurring assertions that American publishing is one of the strongest remaining bastions of white male domination in U.S. society.

"The last decade has seen a burgeoning multiplicity in America's literature, with gifted black men writing novels, poems and plays of great import," Mathis said in the Dec. 2, 2018, edition of "T," the New York Times Style Magazine.

Enumerating several top literary awards won by black male authors, Mathis said that "what matters here, what's more striking than the sums exchanged or the awards received is the intense focus on works by African-American men in America's artistic landscape, even as the problems of race and racial violence continue to plague the nation."

Indeed, one reads repeatedly that the attitudes expressed and postures taken by U.S. President Donald Trump have served to encourage White supremacist initiatives.

"Now in 2018, blackness is as lethal to black people as it ever was," Mathis said. "Even as African-American writing currently experiences unprecedented mainstream appeal and critical recognition, the focus on black expression has another, uglier face: a deadly obsession with black bodies."

In addition, some believe anti-Semitism is on the upswing in the U.S. at present as well.

"To be sure, there is much to celebrate, but these recent developments are not without complication," Mathis said, noting that a surge in mainstream attention to blackness and its literature isn't unprecedented in periods of American crisis. And it is possible that at least some "gatekeepers" (presumably liberal white males) expect black males to focus mainly on racism and oppression, she said.

"I wonder if, in the annals of history, this extraordinary period of artistry will find a name, or a unifying sentiment that codifies it as a movement," Mathis said.  Earlier in the article, she had pointed to the Harlem Renaissance that sprung up in the wake of WWI and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.