Fiction is real.
During Thanksgiving I had a conversation with an elderly uncle who is a very intelligent man with a logical and analytical mind. He said something at dinner that left me at a loss for words and now, months after the fact, out of nowhere, today my answer just bubbled up to the top of my mind.
He was telling me about the books he was reading: biographies and memoirs and histories. And then he said that he didn’t understand the value of fiction. Sure, it’s fun for a moment, but none of it actually happened, it’s all pretend, so what’s the point? Why bother? It doesn’t matter in the real world.
I have no doubt that this question has already been answered thousands of times over hundreds of years, most likely a significant number of them coming through college freshmen essays in their English 101 classes.
But I’ve never read any of them, so I genuinely didn’t know how to process what he’d confidently stated that night over turkey.
Here is what I think now:
From his offhand observation, I am assuming that he thinks that real things that really happened are valuable to humanity and deserve being documented so we can remember their real life impact and learn from them. (I don’t know if that’s actually how he feels, I am just speculating and putting words in his mouth for the sake of formulating my own response)
So naturally, by that logic, if a story was simply dreamed up from a writer’s imagination (or, less charitably: it’s just a bunch of lies), then it never made any real difference in the real world and is basically just an entertaining distraction but not actually valuable to greater humanity.
The response that teenage students around the world have already expounded on in their first semester English/Literature/Philosophy essays and which only occurred embarrassingly delayed to me today is:
Fiction is real.
Maybe the names are fake and the specific actions didn’t literally happen in the order they’re portrayed, but the broad strokes of who those characters are and how they responded to their situations? Dude, that’s all real. Those are humans in action, doing what humans do, reacting the way humans react, feeling what humans feel.
Every character and scenario, no matter how fantastic, is grounded somewhere from the author’s life. Not like it’s necessarily straight-up autobio, but there’s some kernel of truth that the writer draws on when they’re inventing characters and settings and stories— even if it’s not directly from the author’s own life! They draw on the experiences of their friends and colleagues and enemies, they follow the news, they read memoirs and biographies and the embarrassingly oversharing Facebook updates from their former classmates who they haven't actually spoken to in 25 years. They take all that real life fodder and distill it into a brand new story, kind of like making up an analogy to explain a million other events and reactions that really did take place- even if it’s a story about an alien species in space! The actions and reactions of those inhuman characters are still, deep down, based on human exploits and feelings. The writer uses fiction to share the truth of human emotions and experiences.
Luke Skywalker isn't real, but the anguish he feels when he realizes that his enemy who represents everything he is fighting against is his own family history, and that he must choose whether he'll follow in those footsteps or literally throw himself down the terrifying chasm of the unknown? That's real. The lifelong love, loss, perseverance, and devotion that Carl and Ellie Fredrickson shared in that devastating five minute vignette that opens the animated Pixar movie Up? Real. So fucking real. I just re-watched it not even five minutes ago for the sake of including a link to it here and I had to call in Matt from the other room to hold me afterwards so I could sob into his shoulder while he reassured me that we have a good many more decades to go before we have to worry about living through Carl's grief that's inevitably waiting for whichever one of us is unlucky enough to outlive the other. But it will come some day. Because that's life. That's real.
So, yeah. My uncle is right, made-up stories did not actually happen in real life, which sounds inconsequential when compared to the real impact that real people actually made through their real actions in the real world.
But if you cock your head to the side when you look at it, fiction can kind of be like real life times ten, times fifty, times one hundred. Fiction crams in and condenses so many more real lives (ten, fifty, one hundred of them!) than a single dry biography has the room to contain. Fiction is maximized real life.
The point of fiction is to take the fruits of many, many different real lives, purée them in a blender, and pour them back out into a refreshing story smoothie that gives you an original taste of what it means to be a human. Our wants, our needs, our motivations, our strengths, our weaknesses, our compassion, our cruelty, our drive, our love, our heartache, our betrayal, our healing- that’s all real, baby. It may be delivered through fiction, but it’s as fucking real as your own life.
And THAT’s what I’ll tell my uncle when I see him at Thanksgiving this year 😤
EDIT: I like my uncle! Please be kind in your comments ❤️
Comments (33)
BEAUTIFULLY explained! 🥺🥹🥲💐👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Y’know, frankly, what a delightful post about a relative at thanksgiving that wasn’t about someone being a Bad Person at a Family Gathering. Hooray. And also zombie yes I totally agree with you and try to spend as much time having fictional adventures in real life as possible
I learn a lot about history from fiction, as well as; The Poisonwood Bible comes to mind, as do some of the works of Amy Tan. I’d never sit and read a history book about those eras, but a fictionalized story? You bet.
I get told all the time my personal story is unbelievable fiction, what with all the times I have been hit with/by cars and/or trucks and the times I stopped robberies in stores I worked at. And the one time I got caught in an unauthorized change of government that didn't go through in Africa... Yes my life is stranger than fiction.
[Carl and Ellie OMG (tears) Too close to home. ] Great essay.
Totally agree with you. Also, imagination is important in and of itself. As Robin Williamson put it, we make art to "print a spell of glory on our blinks of lives."
(Warning, I'm going on a ramble) I read this with great interest based on the first paragraph because I have what feels like exactly the opposite opinion of your uncle. Except for reading 1st person essays and interviews, I read and watch less non-fiction than ever because fiction offers me a greater truth. Documentary (and its bastard child, reality television) is clearly fictional. Just watch any documentary on a subject you know well; it's missing context for how you experience it. It was watching documentaries and realizing they were highly subjective that convinced me to be skeptical of non-fiction in other formats (podcasts, books, magazines). Yet when I watch/read good fiction, I understand human beings in deeper ways than I did before. In fact, the value in non-fiction (like, say, Oh Joy Sex Toy) is in seeing some make fiction out of fact. And when they do it honestly, incorporating what the reader/viewer knows is a subjective perspective, I learn about the people in the context of the facts. My favorite fiction has always been about regular humans (I enjoyed Peter Parker stories more than Spider-Man stories) rather than the fantasy worlds they inhabit. I believe this is the point you were making: we can find truth in fiction in ways we can't find it in non-fiction. Non-fiction has characters, perspective, unreliable narrators, imposed dramatic structure, and more tools of fiction, it is just less honest about how it uses these to tell a story. Thank you for your non-fiction reporting, it's some of the rare non-fiction that feels true.
Exactly right. Fiction isn't reality, but it can be True in ways that reality doesn't do well.
But also, it’s ART. The concept that art has no value is a baffling one. I’m not surprised it took so long for this response to bubble up to the surface. I would have been flabbergasted to hear that stance, too.
As someone who started writing recently, I can tell you, you nailed it. And I can add another thing: Amidst the true actions and emotions, no matter how fictional the setting and characters, lays (conscious or not but I'm betting on conscious!) something to be learnt: a lesson, a tool, sometimes the path you shouldn't take all explained so you actually see it and choose something better. Any story has this, fiction or not. Also, history is very important, no doubt, but so is imagination and fiction is the food it prefers in my opinion.
Going full librarian - we talk about windows and mirrors theory. Stories give us windows into the lives of people not like us, so we can grow our ability to empathize and understand others. It also gives us mirrors into the lives of people like us, so we can feel seen, understood and not alone. Your early work, even though it was nonfiction (but in the way that autobio always becomes slightly fiction, as it gets a little cleaned up for good storytelling's sake) was a very crucial and influential mirror for me as a queer person! But fiction can provide really in-depth, useful mirrors and windows because authors can experiment and find nuanced ways to show us a specific experience. Everyone is different, and for some folks the real windows and mirrors that they need are delivered via a fiction format. Real life is messy, but a fictional story can share experiences in a controllable and multifaceted way.
Oh, I love that analogy! (And I’m very honored my early work played a role in your developing queer identity 🥲❤️)
👏👏👏 agree with comments above, what a neat thought experiment to explain why we love fiction so much. Had to copy this into my journal : “Fiction is maximized real life” ❤️
This reminds me a couple months ago, an 80yo colleague at my non-profit org (recording and lending audiobooks to disabled and elderly people) saw a documentary about fantasy and discovered this whole world, books and movies/shows, but also music, video games, role play, cosplay etc. And he couldn't fathom how this fiction about not real life was useful. But sf and fantasy are useful to me because the step to the side into another world helps me comprehend more how our world works and my values; like tolerance and stepping up against fascism from HP (with all its fault) and the higher classes needing to be entertained by lower classes people suffering in Hunger Games etc etc. Fiction helps to leave our world for a while, but not in a brain rot way, and come back to face it.
Yes, exactly! Fantasy and Sci-fi repackage ago-old human issues into a scenario that lets the reader see with fresh eyes!
"Those are humans in action, doing what humans do, reacting the way humans react, feeling what humans feel." - okay but the counterpoint is that Dan Brown exists :)
Haha, of course an author’s skill will be judged, but I do believe that even the most unrealistic character/action/story still comes from a seed of truth, that there really ARE people who think and behave in ways that are “unrealistic” to ME but… they exist! (I say this, having never read anything by Dan Brown, so I genuinely have no opinion on his work!)
Absolutely this. I would've also been floored to hear someone confidently state fiction has no value.
Upon further reflection, I think it was kind of the equivalent of somebody who eats SUPER healthy who doesn’t understand why people would put something UNhealthy (like a rich chocolate cake) in their body- what purpose does that serve? It’s not doing anything practical for your nourishment! But obviously: cake serves another purpose, beyond basic body nourishment.
So this has reminded me of a book I've been reading – "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert. In it, she talks about some interviews she did with musician Tom Waits, where he described songwriting as "[making jewelry for the inside of other people's minds". Gilbert extrapolates that out to all creative endeavours, including fiction: it's all intracranial jewelry-making. Nobody needs jewelry to live, but every society has created it because humans love beautiful things. So even if your uncle were right – even if fiction were just fun for a moment and didn't matter in the real world – it wouldn't matter because beauty is its own reward. Joy matters for its own sake. Fun is an end in and of itself. Pleasure doesn't have to be meaningful. Fiction is real, and it is meaningful, but even if it weren't, it would still exist because we simply enjoy telling and being told stories. Anyway "Big Magic" is really good and I recommend it so far.
Intra-cranial jewelry making! I love that!!
The ancient Greeks had theatre, which did not originate then and there. Storytelling (as opposed to histories, such as Homer's epics and the story of Gilgamesh, which may be closer to the truth, looking at the odyssey with a side eye) have been with us as long as we've had language and children. I can see uncle's point, but he's missing out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_ancient_Greece
I was just thinking of how Greek fiction, Greek mythology and stories, does have impact on real life, with the neo classic architecture, rediscovering medical stuff (which originated from the Arab world I think), all the retellings we still enjoy today, etc.
Hell with Tgiving. Send the old boy a postcard now w/ your (abbvtd) thoughts, and a thank you for getting you rolling
I can kind of understand your uncle's viewpoint, if only from my own neurodivergent perspective. Right or wrong, some folks' brains put a hell of a lot more importance on the real and literal. There's little room for analyzing fantasy and metaphors when reality is already so complex and jampacked with stuff to dissect! I get it, I really do! Believe it or not, most of the books on my shelves are memoirs, biographies, and other non-fiction stuff, I (generally) prefer watching history documentaries and educational flicks over fiction. Why? The foundation of lore upon which they stand is already established in my mental database, and the hoops I have to jump through for further understanding are far less challenging. That doesn't mean that I'm lazy for leaning away from fiction, it's just that it takes more conscious effort to get into those stories so naturally I only fall toward the most compelling of them. Conflictingly, I *love* the art of storytelling because of all the reasons you've mentioned, but all of that is constantly going through my mind whenever I engage in fiction! Whether I realize it or not! Tl;dr - Perhaps it's not an intentional, judgmental choice your uncle is making, but the result of a lifetime without needing to wonder why he doesn't enjoy fiction. ♥️
Same, most of the books I consume are ALSO nonfiction, which is why I was stumped in the moment to defend fiction. I, too, prefer to consume true (or: true-enough) stories because it does appeal more to me knowing that these people and things really, truly did exist.
Your uncle sounds like a piece of work; I'm glad you found an answer for him. To me, fiction, like all art, has a lot of different purposes. It can be comforting in a crisis, it can be enlightening and uplifting, it can unite a generation in, say, rooting for a couple of hockey players, it can bring friends and lovers together, it can be breathtakingly beautiful, and much much more It can also distract and misinform, it can reinforce stereotypes that are detrimental to society at large, and much more. But yes, art in and of itself, _is_
Oh, and those biographies and memoirs and histories? Definitely include pure undiluted fiction. The victor writes the history books. Biographies and memoirs are tinted one way or the other; they can't not be, because they're written by humans ..
AND! Fiction has often shaped reality: just look at how the fantasies of a Jules Verne informed the dreams of engineers and astronauts... Fiction lets us dream and aspire, and boy does that spill over into "real" life!
Absolutely this! My partner pointed out that Sci-Fi is an especially good example of fiction becoming reality, partly because someone dreamed a "What-if".
YES Also, since I tend to freeze in the face of these things and neve rknow what to say, all I can think is "empathy!" Fiction gives you so many lives and so many viewpoints through which to help understand the world and the people in it 🤗
Yes this !
100% You tell 'im, Erika!