Thursday 31 March 2016

The Edge of Glory

If there's one thing you'll figure out pretty quickly by talking to me, it's that I love fiction. I love anything that is imaginary, made up, and with only a toe or two in the pool of reality.

The "first" novel ever written is a point that is very much up for debate and is only sort of the topic of this blog post. Western novels are already highly contested, and that's excluding half the world. I'm not going to weigh in on this argument - I'd have to do several years of research before I could claim to hold my own on the subject - but if I could go back to any point in book history, I would go back to the moment just before the first novel was written.

Once there, I would quietly start planting the idea of fiction in people's ears. I would go to whatever bar or bar equivalent they had back then and have conversations with the locals where I'd drop hints like "Have you ever thought of writing down your stories?" or "not everything has to be about facts".

I should mention that this is not just about my own selfish desire to read novels, although that is definitely part of it. I am honestly really interested in what it is that makes people invent stories and, furthermore, what makes people write them down.

If you think about it, fiction is not a straightforward idea. It reminds me of a middle school history class I was in when I learned that the concept of "zero" did not occur to people for a very long time. It's obvious to write about what has happened, and I even think it's obvious to embellish something that happened. It's less obvious to make something up completely from scratch. To dare to invent people, to write their lives and put words in their mouths - now that's bold.

There's also a kind of doublethink that is required in novel reading: a reader has to simultaneously hold in their minds the realities of the fiction world without entirely forgetting that they are sitting on the couch in their living rooms.

What's even more spectacular is how popular novels are. Like all things it depends on taste, but fiction sells. A sustained narrative that has been fabricated by someone with an overactive imagination is a magical thing. I like novels for much the same reason I assume other people do: I like things that do not adhere to the laws of the world I live in.

I'm not even talking specifically about the fantasy genre. All novels do this - they create a world. And that, to me, is the height of creativity and power.

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