Musings on fiction
I've been musing on this for quite some time, and it got stirred up again by another friend's recent post on the ins and outs of the fiction realm. I guess I'll finally put it here so I can mentally shelve it.
I read and watch a lot of SF and fantasy. It's almost everything I read, and other than crime dramas, it's about all I watch, from Heroes to Stargate SG-1. Meanwhile, whenever those lists of classic must-read novels come out, I've read maybe three entries -- all during secondary school, kicking and screaming. Every time I pick up a book, it's speculative fiction, that arena of worlds that aren't this one; it may be light and fluffy or deep and dramatic, but it's all set in some imaginary place.
I sometimes feel like this lack of grounding in The Classics makes me under-educated in some way, like someone would look down on me for it. Then I look for why I'm so deficient. I'm not lacking in intelligence or reading ability, certainly... I have a decent amount of interest in human interactions, as evidenced by my favorite stories being character-driven. Even when I write my own stories, however, they're set elsewhere, not here and now, despite the fact that the characters and their problems would fit in quite well in the modern day.
I think I finally hit on the reason a little bit ago, though: I read for escapism. I want to be entertained, not edified about "the human condition". I know what the human condition and hardships are like... hell, I've lived through my own life-altering drama. That means I don't want even more of it when I read. I want to take a break, pretend I'm in another world where you can make the problems go away with a modified phaser blast or a dimensional portal. Reading about the sordid and somewhat depressing lives of 19th-century ladies who are condemned to loveless marriages or tragic death just doesn't appeal. Shakespeare knew how to really engage his audience, but plays where everyone ends up dead aren't my idea of a good diversion.
I think that's part of why speculative fiction has such a huge following in the public. We don't want to explore High Art and Literature, we want to relax and de-stress. We want to identify with characters whose problems are easily defined, if not so easily solved. We want to be diverted by those elaborate imaginary worlds, pretend we could live there instead, or perhaps even add on to it a little; that's not nearly so daunting as creating a new world, for the non-writer, but it's nearly as fun. It's make-believe for adults.
I sometimes wonder why people feel I should be reading The Classics, but given that I don't like to read a book simply to have read it, and no one has really given me a reason to other than "as an insight into the human condition", I suspect I may never really understand it. I read for fun, others read for culture. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
I read and watch a lot of SF and fantasy. It's almost everything I read, and other than crime dramas, it's about all I watch, from Heroes to Stargate SG-1. Meanwhile, whenever those lists of classic must-read novels come out, I've read maybe three entries -- all during secondary school, kicking and screaming. Every time I pick up a book, it's speculative fiction, that arena of worlds that aren't this one; it may be light and fluffy or deep and dramatic, but it's all set in some imaginary place.
I sometimes feel like this lack of grounding in The Classics makes me under-educated in some way, like someone would look down on me for it. Then I look for why I'm so deficient. I'm not lacking in intelligence or reading ability, certainly... I have a decent amount of interest in human interactions, as evidenced by my favorite stories being character-driven. Even when I write my own stories, however, they're set elsewhere, not here and now, despite the fact that the characters and their problems would fit in quite well in the modern day.
I think I finally hit on the reason a little bit ago, though: I read for escapism. I want to be entertained, not edified about "the human condition". I know what the human condition and hardships are like... hell, I've lived through my own life-altering drama. That means I don't want even more of it when I read. I want to take a break, pretend I'm in another world where you can make the problems go away with a modified phaser blast or a dimensional portal. Reading about the sordid and somewhat depressing lives of 19th-century ladies who are condemned to loveless marriages or tragic death just doesn't appeal. Shakespeare knew how to really engage his audience, but plays where everyone ends up dead aren't my idea of a good diversion.
I think that's part of why speculative fiction has such a huge following in the public. We don't want to explore High Art and Literature, we want to relax and de-stress. We want to identify with characters whose problems are easily defined, if not so easily solved. We want to be diverted by those elaborate imaginary worlds, pretend we could live there instead, or perhaps even add on to it a little; that's not nearly so daunting as creating a new world, for the non-writer, but it's nearly as fun. It's make-believe for adults.
I sometimes wonder why people feel I should be reading The Classics, but given that I don't like to read a book simply to have read it, and no one has really given me a reason to other than "as an insight into the human condition", I suspect I may never really understand it. I read for fun, others read for culture. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.