Why do people read fiction?

I once told someone that I had written a novel, and she said, "Oh, I don't read novels," in that oh so condescending way. And I answered, "What do you read?" "Oh, I read non-fiction. My shelf is filled with lots of non-fiction that I can curl up to after the end of a long work day." "I see," I said with a smile as I thought, "That is me with my novels."

If you exclude my science, health, and psychology books, my major reading pool is from the genre of literary fiction. For me, non-fiction is supplementary reading; it fulfils a specific role: to inform me of the facts of an issue. For the life of me, I cannot imagine my life exclusively on the non-fiction realm. I think I can even go as far as to say that if I had two books covering, for the most part, the same issue, except that one is a novel and the other is a non-fiction literature, I am pretty sure I would read the fiction first. Even James Frey's memoir/novel was suddenly more appealing to me once I found out that there was quite a bit of fiction in it.

Why do I read fiction and why do I prefer it? Fiction is not an escape for me, even though it certainly can serve that role sometimes. Fiction allows me to interact and engage reality in a way that I cannot do for non-fiction literature. Consider my reading of two books with a somewhat similar issue. Reading “As Nature Made him” by John Colapinto, a non-fiction, I was so consumed by the pain and trouble of the main character to really engage the issues as much as I would like. But reading "Middlesex" By Jeffrey Eugenides was different. Knowing that it was a novel, a creation of another mind, allowed me the chance to create. With "Middlesex", each sentence was not set in stone. I could question why a sentence was written a certain way or even why the story was written a certain way. This allowed me to readily dissect the issue of the story, to see the role of each player, and to see how the characters could have acted differently to ensure a better outcome. However, with non-fiction literature, I cannot play as much (at least, my mind thinks so). Fiction allows me to read non-fiction in a more productive way.

I would like to think that there are some people who feel the same way as I do. If not, why is there a genre called Creative non-fiction, non-fiction that reads like fiction?

Fiction writers create something from what already exists (yes, even in sci-fi books). And I read fiction because it gives me permission to create as well. The writer may see his/her world as blue, but I am allowed to see it as periwinkle blue, or blue with a splash of lavender. With fiction, I am not just watching (as I feel that I am with non-fiction), I am also a participant, a fellow creator. As a result, I too have responsibility for the life of the book. With fiction, I am not limited to the point of view of the writer. I can disagree, I can acquiesce, and I can do a mixture of both. The result is that the book exists on a richer level in my mind.

Reading fiction more readily promotes a crossing-over--a chance for the reader and the writer to exchange parts of their worlds, which gives you a slightly different story world, and one that is grounded in the world of the writer and the reader. It is no wonder that any particular fiction has a somewhat different meaning to each reader.

Fiction is an all-access pass to the reality that a book addresses. If the writer’s world is a scary or troubled one, the fictional world gives one a shield that still allows one to explore the full breadth of it.

There you have it--this is why I read fiction.







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