Fiction is truer than fact: I mean that in great fiction we obtain the distilled wisdom of men of genius, understandings of human nature which we could attain—if at all—unaided by books, only at the end of life, after numberless painful experiences. I began to read Sir Walter Scott when I was twelve or thirteen; and I think I learnt from the Waverley novels, and from Shakespeare, more of the varieties of character than ever I have got since from the manuals of psychology.
I used to think that reading fiction was substandard compared with reading non fiction and that reading something that was not actually factual, historical or biographical probably wasn't the best use of my time. My educational background had huge holes and I've spent a lot of time trying to fill in the gaps.
I began some years ago to make an effort to read some of the classics that I'd missed - Dickens, Austen, the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell and others and then I branched out to try other authors who wrote fiction but whose books weren't considered to be classics as such. I've written in previous posts about some of these books and the impact they had on me and when I came across this quote on fiction by author Flannery O'Connor I realised that as I've grown in my reading capacity I've become equipped to experience so much more from the fiction I read.
Fiction isn't substandard unless you read rubbish and choosing fiction wisely can provide an experience which goes beyond mere entertainment.
I began some years ago to make an effort to read some of the classics that I'd missed - Dickens, Austen, the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell and others and then I branched out to try other authors who wrote fiction but whose books weren't considered to be classics as such. I've written in previous posts about some of these books and the impact they had on me and when I came across this quote on fiction by author Flannery O'Connor I realised that as I've grown in my reading capacity I've become equipped to experience so much more from the fiction I read.
Fiction isn't substandard unless you read rubbish and choosing fiction wisely can provide an experience which goes beyond mere entertainment.
We all write at our own level of understanding, but it is the peculiar characteristic of fiction that its literal surface can be made to yield entertainment on an obvious physical plane to one sort of reader while the self-same surface can be made to yield meaning to the person equipped to experience it there.
Flannery O'Connor
A Young Girl Reading by Jean-Honore Fragonard (c1766)
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