Why I Don’t Like Novels – a theory about the meaning of life
Among educated circles, perhaps more in the realms of the humanities rather than the sciences, emphasis is put on reading fiction. I understand this to an extent, but reading fiction strikes me as an awfully inefficient way to spend your adult time. Explaining why will require me outlining some of my ‘theory about the meaning of life’ (for want of a better phrase).
How people ought to spend their time
I think time-use falls into two broad categories – think of it as a spectrum. On one side you’ve got time invested for enjoyment, on the other time invested in furthering yourself (improvement). So when I went to watched The Dark Knight that was a pretty much purely on one side of our spectrum. When I studied bankruptcy law it was basically on the other side. I live a pretty lucky life, so most things I do involve both. I’m writing this post mainly because I enjoy it, but I also think that I’m making myself and the world better in my own way. I go to work to put something on my resume and in my bank – but also because I enjoy what I do. So most things I do fall around the middle of our spectrum.
Now let’s imagine a vertical axis called ‘magnitude’. The higher the dot, the better it is and doing its thing. The lower the dot, the worse. So when I do something like cutting my nails, I’m doing it not because I enjoy it, but rather to ‘improve’ myself. But I really don’t get a lot of furthering done with that time, so the dot goes low on the graph. Alternatively, if we take something like walking on the rocks at the end of the breach, we get a different result. I walk at the rocks because I enjoy it, and it happens to be my second favourite thing in the world. So we’ll place that dot really high. See how this is working?
At the end of the day you get a sweet-spot on the graph. The ideal thing to do with your time is something that falls in the middle and at the top. Something which you like doing, which improves you and something which does a lot of both Things to avoid are things which fall into a bottom corners.
Back to Novels
Novel reading on this graph is a poor performer. Ask first where it’s falling on our spectrum in terms of improvement and enjoyment. Some argue that being able to tell a story is a critical skill and that reading helps us learn to construct sentences, use grammar and spell correctly. While this is true, I’d argue that novels actually intentionally mislead us about the world. When we interact with others or hear non-fiction stories we learn how others will act and react. This is very useful because, combined with inductive reasoning, we can have a go and predicting the world around us.
Fictional stories pretend to be on the same playing field, but they’re really deceiving us. If we were to read/watch a lot of Jane Austen we would build a picture of how men should act and how women will respond when they act that way. But to try and apply that in reality will lead invariable to disappointment. So I think reading fiction actually inhibits your knowledge of the world rather than improving it. All fiction is really good for is escapism.
How much you enjoy escapism is really a matter of taste. But I think in the 21st century there are far better methods of escapism than the novel. If you enjoy immersing yourself in a fictional world – choose a digital interactive world populated with other people. That way you can get fictional settings with non-fictional human contact. The novel is simply a relic from a previous age of fiction and story telling. We can tell stories in better ways than that today – we don’t need novels anymore and we shouldn’t want them.
I think that alot of people in this world spend their time with useless things, but it makes them happy. I have a relative that spends his countless hours on the computer playing games over the internet. It actually caused him to stay in college for around a decade. I believe that if it weren’t for the video games, he could’ve graduated years ago. It just brings into questions, “What is more important and what he thinks is ‘improvement’?” His definition of improvement has different meaning than your improvement. To you, it was a waste of time, but to him, he achieved his goal of being Master ring leader level 86 or whatever
Graduating was self improvement, but not as important as videogames. Self-improvement is subjective.
Also, I’m not much of a reader, but I did start reading a couple books as of late. Not because it was forced on me, but I found myself actually liking it. Strange idea, right? Novels nowadays are relics, but there are a large percentage of people that don’t even use the internet or like using the computer. Relics they may be, but a way of life for some.
Cheers,
E
emiliobasa said this on Wednesday 23 July 2008 at 2:04 pm |
Thanks for the reply. I actually approve of online games as a good form of escapism. I think he’s better off escaping into a virtual world inhabited by real people than a paper one inhabited by characters.
Also I’m happy with taste. I do read novels that I really enjoy – because I really enjoy them
Btw can you link back you your blog? I haven’t figured out how to get from a user name to a page yet1
Greg Sadler said this on Wednesday 23 July 2008 at 2:27 pm |
As a published novelist, I would have to say that realism is a key factor in deciding what effect novels have on human understanding. Some novels escape into fantasy, others escape into sensitivity and deeper relationships. It took me many years to understand the difference. There is a threshold that both reader and writer have to cross to get this right. For example, if your story is about super heros doing fantasic stunts, you are escaping into fantasy. If it is about ordinary people suffering from unjustified abuse, you have to let the characters expess their unique angst in their own terms. Surprisingly, they will do it through your subconscious mind. Look up my recent book “Faces” if you have free time. The Composition process was seventy five per cent subliminal reaction to a painful historicasl event.
Dan said this on Wednesday 23 July 2008 at 9:23 pm |
I’m not sure much of a distinction can be maintained between the super-hero character example and the ‘ordinary person’ character example. If anything the super-hero is better because it is obviously fictional, hence the potential to be deceived is less. An ‘ordinary person’ in a book is just as fictional as a fanatic character, except it’s pretending not to be.
Let me give an analogy. You know that the capital of Italy is Rome, but you don’t know who taught you that or where you were at the time or when it was. During our lives we experience a vast amount of stuff. When reflecting we might think ‘people in situation A do action B’, but we won’t be able to remember if that is based on a fictional story we’ve read or based on actual events.
While an author may try and make a character ‘real’ what they are really doing is trying to make a character ‘believable’. Often these are different ideas. At best fiction gives you a second-hand account of the world.
Greg Sadler said this on Wednesday 23 July 2008 at 11:26 pm |
Fiction is art, to say fiction is without purpose is to say that art is without purpose. Fiction as art is not designed to convey factual information, nor to provide you with the minutiae of individual lives or beliefs as ‘forums’ do. Great fiction like that of Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Attwood, Shields, Ishiguro, Mishima, Seth, Rushdie, McCarthy exists as an entity beyond it’s creators. Their books are the blueprints of the world, critical lenses through which one may examine anything from politics to ones own sense of self. The ability to read is the ability to examine, to dissect, to create, it is no suprise that the worlds’ brightest have always been the worlds’ best read. On a final note if we were to all be online inhabiting fictional characters, relating to other fictional characters, when would we ever relate to ourselves and that which actually surrounds us?
efficacy said this on Thursday 24 July 2008 at 6:34 am |
I disagree with your first sentence because it’s an obvious fallacy. Compare: “Elephants are animals, to say elephants have trunks is to say animals have trunks.” You can jump from a specific to a larger category and say that the entire larger category is as the specific.
I agree that, historically, (most of) the best and the brightest have been readers of fiction. But times are moving on. 500 years ago most highly literate members of society where the clergy. Does that mean people today should become members of the clergy to qualify as highly literate?
If a person inhabits a fictional character than the character is no longer fiction – it’s the person. Also, to say what ‘actually’ surrounds is pretty context dependent. I think this blog is a genuine and actual part of my surroundings. A digital chair is just as ‘real’ as the one you’re sitting on.
I guess an overall theme here is that art is trying to be a ‘lens’ or a ‘mirror’. That’s useful, but why not just cut out the middle man? For instance, why would I watch The Matrix when I could just read one of Descartes Meditations?
Greg Sadler said this on Thursday 24 July 2008 at 7:45 am |
Making a character believable is much different from making one realistic. The distinction involves the way the author presents compelling evidence. Believablity implies a soft attitude toward facts and evidence. Realism implies a hard grip on genuine evidence taken from tangible sources. Spiderman may seem to run up the side of a building. But Flem Snopes always walks through the doorway and searches around for an elevator or stairway while he gets distracted by a lovely young girl and forgets what he came for. One is fantasy, the other realistic. One is illusory to a point of childishness, the othor authentic to the point of tragedy. In realism, the characters inner soul drives the plot, often into distraction which is the way life happens. If you do not believe this, try running up a wall.
Dan said this on Thursday 24 July 2008 at 3:30 pm |
What I’m questioning is the distinction between something which is appears to have a ‘hard grip on genuine evidence taken from tangible sources’ and something which actually does. In your example is might be believable that Flem could wark into a lift and get distracted by a lovely girl – but does that actually happen? It seems like something that might happen, but is that a reality?
There’s also a point to be made about frequency. Event X might happen, but only very rarely in real life. Yet a ’story’ will have X happen on every page.
Thanks for reading a commenting – it’s interesting to read what you think!
Greg Sadler said this on Thursday 24 July 2008 at 11:02 pm |
More on an interesting topic. Consider the difference between biography and fiction. In the former, you gather facts, such as, letters, stories, photos and you weave them into a story. But to be honest, at the end of each paragraph, you need to write a disclaimer stating in so many words that you can never know what another person was doing or thinking at any point in time. You can scarcely remember what you were dong an hour go. On the contrary, in fiction you leap into the moment, you make no disclaimers, you tell what a character thought and felt. If you are wrong or right, it doesn’t matter too much just so long as you convey the genuine evidence from tangible sources.
Personnaly, biography is not more difficult but impossible!
Dan Sakach said this on Tuesday 29 July 2008 at 3:16 pm |
“If we were to read/watch a lot of Jane Austen we would build a picture of how men should act and how women will respond when they act that way. But to try and apply that in reality will lead invariable to disappointment. So I think reading fiction actually inhibits your knowledge of the world rather than improving it.”
I have to disagree wholeheartedly with that final line. In fact, I tend to disagree with anyone who thinks that there is nothing that can be learned from fiction, or that nonfiction is intrinsically better because it deals in hard facts. Here’s why:
Firstly, the idea that nonfiction books aren’t created to fit its author’s vision much in the same way that fiction authors shape the plot of their story to fit their vision is one that doesn’t take into account some important questions: Why these facts? Why in this book? Why in this chapter, following these set of facts? What view of the world is this author trying to sell? What interpretation of the facts does he want me to believe? Every author has an agenda, whether its explicitly stated or not.
Additionally, facts can be just as unwieldy as fiction. “Facts” and an author’s interpretation of said facts have just as much power as fiction to mislead – maybe more because at least with fiction, you know that that’s what you’re getting at the end of the day – fiction.
With fiction you know before you even open the book that what you are getting is an author’s personal view of the world and the people who inhabit it. The very best literature isn’t concerned with instructing its readers on how men should act and how women should respond to them. Anyone who reads fiction in such a way isn’t, I’m sorry to say, being a very good reader. Fiction is about giving you the chance to live outside of your own personal box – your own experiences, your own life – and get an idea of what it’s like to be someone else. For those who don’t believe in reincarnation, fiction is the only chance you’ll get at living someone else’s life.
This is more than just pleasure-seeking escapism. Several things can be learned from living in someone else’s shoes for a while. It teaches empathy, for one(an emotion that is incredibly undervalued), and a better understanding of the people who inhabit this world. Not only that, but you get a broader understanding of life. That’s what the very best of literature is – a mediation on life. The purpose of literature is to get you to think – about people, about circumstances, about life – all in a way that perhaps you’d never thought of before. That is the value of fiction and why, to my mind, I’ve always found it a productive use of my time. Anytime I can think about life in a way that I’d never thought of before or considered an experience in a way that I’d never considered before I think of myself as an improved person.
Sorry for the rant.
J.S. Peyton said this on Tuesday 5 August 2008 at 7:57 pm |
What I find conflicting about your notion that “The novel is simply a relic from a previous age of fiction and story telling. We can tell stories in better ways than that today – we don’t need novels anymore and we shouldn’t want them.” is that you clearly aren’t opposed to writing in general to convey information evidenced by the fact you created this blog in such a format. I then put forward to you that if you think this way about written fiction, should you not also think the same about conveying non-fiction in such a way? After all, there exist arguably more efficient and modern ways of recording information. For example, Scientists convey their research in written journal articles instead of some sort of audio/visual format for several reasons, which can apply to story tellers as well.
My point is, novels are simply a way of telling stories through written alnguage, allowing people to use their imaginations and create a percept of the story and fictional world in their mind. Watching a movie, or playing a video game does the same thing, albeit communicated to one’s brain through a different medium, but as it is more visual, less ‘imagination’ goes into filling in any gaps in the perception.
kaflooey said this on Thursday 20 November 2008 at 11:24 pm |
That’s an interesting argument, but I’m not convinced.
You’re right that I certainly see merit in the written word. It’s obviously humanity’s most powerful invention. It has a place – and a large one at that.
Re: non-fiction, I think that the written word has a place, but it isn’t the be all and end all. If you open a scientific journal as you suggest, you’ll find it loaded with graphs and math. Journal articles also usually come with spoken presentations and ‘posters’. Those methods are still pretty old school, but if you look at this blog post:
http://ourcognitivesurplus.com/2008/09/06/the-world-is-getting-better/
you can see multimedia used to present data in a truly amazing way. It still has written words, but they’re just one part of the bigger picture. I hope that this blog comes with useful pictures, videos and sounds when they’re called for.
So, even in the realm of science, someone trying to convey information with only written words is sub optimal. Admittedly my honours thesis does come with only words:
http://ourcognitivesurplus.com/2008/11/02/my-thesis-is-finished/
I wish there was another way.
Also, I think my point that fictional worlds tend to lie and mislead people still stands.
Greg Sadler said this on Friday 21 November 2008 at 10:49 pm |
Gregory Petfood; an entertaining read but I must object!
When one does weight training, just because you exercise on the leg press doesn’t mean you can ignore squats. Yet you propose substituting the fictional world of novels for that of gaming. As ‘kaflooey’ touched upon, a novelist supplies information from which the reader constructs the world; this requires imagination. In gaming this world is supplied, and instead the gamer is required to make strategic decisions (or merely point and click). Ask Caeser or Hitler whether imagination is important! Most would probably lament that the latter didn’t fill his days as the overbearing leader of a WoW guild.
There is little mental overlap in these activities and therefore one may not successfully supercede the other. And if we were to discuss the negative effects of gaming, radiation would be a good place to start.
I was baffled by your claim that fiction is deceptive in its potrayal of human interaction etc. I’ve read a reasonable amount of fiction and I think the interaction would be comfortably accounted for among the billions of people inhabiting the planet. I’m sure that Jane Austen dialogue may not work charmingly in your circle of friends, but in some parts of Canberra people communicate using an assortment of grunts and scratching noises (I won’t tell you where). Suicide bombing is fashionable (temporarily) in some extremist religious circles – that strikes me as being unrealistic.
Speaking of religion, isn’t it a deception? Yet millions subscribe to it, so perhaps a deceptive author is merely reflecting reality.
As ‘J.S. Peyton’ said above, when you read fiction you’re reading an author’s opinions. The only difference between this and philosophy is that it’s more engaging and less overt.
Besides, non-fiction is often embellished (or even worse when the author is Ishmael Beah).
Swift said this on Sunday 30 November 2008 at 6:17 am |