What Fiction Means to Me

I’ve recently been asked by a student, of all the types of writing, why fiction? Why not non-fiction, or poetry? The truth is that I see value in all forms of writing, but my particular sensibilities drift toward fiction. Why?

I reject the idea that fiction is purely escapist. I think there are a fair amount of those kind of writers, and those type of readers. I have been one in the past and will probably be one at some point in the future, but the idea that fiction only provides a means to escape reality is an opinion held by those who do not, or perhaps cannot, take the printed word seriously. Serious fiction has a way of awakening the right type of reader to certain truths that stated otherwise, might seem absolutely absurd—like this blog entry is starting to sound kind of absurd…if I were any kind of fiction writer, I might be able to think of a metaphor or allegorical anecdote involving a chicken and a peacock, but at this point, I don’t think it’s possible because I’m still defining (by writing the truth of how I feel) my position.

Serious fiction is emotional autobiography; it may be a dream crafted to communicate a period of intense turmoil, joy, disappointment, fear, love, etc. An experience that has gestated in the writer’s subconscious. A good example is Tim O Brien’s The Things They Carried. Tim O’ Brien carried around his experiences from the Vietnam War until he was able to find a method to give them voice. The Things They Carried is a work of fiction, and it amazes me to this day that Tim O’ Brien a) doesn’t have children b) made up the story “On the Rainy River.” Many books of fiction have been written by individuals who have survived war (it seems the most literal example of an intensely emotional experience that I can think of right now)—A Farewell to Arms is one, For Whom the Bell Tolls is another. Someone learning to appreciate serious fiction (sometimes it’s hard to appreciate an experience like A Farewell to Arms because emotionally, it’s second, and just barely, to being kicked in the privates) might ask why didn’t Hemingway just give us the facts?

Maybe that’s just not how he was wired up. Maybe he spent so many years as a journalist, that he arrived at a certain contempt for what Bob Pope might call “truth unflavored.” I suspect that Hemingway, and all other fiction writers, just liked making things up.

The “facts” of our days are warped by our subconscious into dreams at night; so it probably goes with the writer of fiction. I imagine most writers, established and emerging, choose fiction because they see it as somehow more honest than truth. In most cases, the story’s probably much more interesting.

What do the rest of you think?

What are the arguments for non-fiction?

Poetry?