Is there any point to fiction?

[Atomic]

Well, if anything, literature has trained my brain not to consider joyless, death-obsessed fanatics like Jesus and Buddha enlightened, so I guess it was useful for something.

But certainly not as death-obsessed as Plath, Dickinson or Poe?

[First thoughts]

To start with, I can't really agree with the idea that we have to look for a "point" to everything.
What's the point of fiction? In the same you can ask what's the point of life? It could be merely to propagate our species, It could have no meaning at all or it could be countless other things we haven't worked out yet. But really what's the point in asking, all we can do is try to get along as healthily and as happily as we can.
Aside from the question of whether it's even worth asking, i think there are countless "points" to fiction.
It can have whatever meaning you ascribe to it; it could be a comfort and an escape, a means of learning about lives other than your own, a warning of what might happen, an interpretation of what already has, an experiment to see how things would play out in a world drastically different from our own, or just one of the tools we use to pass our time as happily as possible.

There seems to be one major thing you judge very differently from myself that could be a cause of our differing opinions. You see a great distinction between fiction and non-fiction. That you can only learn from something that is definitely true, and lessons learnt from something made up are meaningless. What are thoughts and ideas if they are not something we have made up and created? Are you saying you can't learn from anything anyone says unless it is first written down in a so called "non-fiction" book?

Now, there is a certain class of fiction which is just the same old story churned out to match certain criteria and to sell copies - I can see no point in this type of fiction other than as an escape and distraction from the world, or a means to temporary entertainment.
But, the majority of fiction can hold a lot more than that. Fiction can be just the same as a conversation you would have with a real life person, except in fiction their thoughts and ideas are often entwined with metaphor and imagery and have been written down so as to reach a wider audience. They also might present opinions contrary to their own in such a way as to highlight the fallacy in them.
There are endless lessons to learn from these works of fiction, it is a medium unconstrained by the speed of response needed in a conversation, and by the limited amount of stories and characters available to "non-fiction".

You seem to admit the possibility of learning from "non-fiction" but why should any of this be more true? People have always exaggerated to make themselves look better, plugged the gaps in their memories with stories overheard from others. And Science books - no true scientist would claim his work was "true", it is only ever the current best guess, instantly overturnable when a better theory turns up or more evidence comes to light.
I don't see such a clear boundary between fiction and non-fiction as you seem to base your argument on.

there should be no sense of people applauding you and encouraging you to publish or whatever, it should be like, hell's bells, you need some help, we're gonna do what we can for you, but you're a mess. And that's what I find weird about the society we live in: that people don't think, Christ, you're seriously whacked, someone needs to sit you down and try and sort you out, we put them on the stage and say, you're great, you're a genius, and then talk about tragedies when those people throw themselves out of windows.
:-(

Now, i strongly disagree when you try to claim any work from these troubled people is worthless. Just because someone takes drugs or eventually kills themselves, it doesn't make their opinions or their art any less valuable. I do agree however, that we should try to help them before we start hailing them. The trouble is, that often the people with the best imaginations, the people most open to the world, with the most to give to it, are also those who have let down their defences and are most vulnerable to it. Their art makes them vulnerable to the world, and often curing them means removing their art.

I've seen this idea reflected in many of the greatest authors, artists and poets, but a recent interview with the musician Pete Doherty sums it up pretty well. I don't know if you know about him, but he is an English musician and poet who has struggled against drug addiction and been thoroughly villanised by the press as a consequence. He makes it clear the only way he thinks he can give up his troubles and addictions is by giving up his talent and ceasing to write:
"All the songs I write deal with sadness, emptiness and disillusionment. Now, I seek happiness, but I do not want to sing. I want to live. If I stay in music, I just want to play guitar in a band. I hate the pressure, the stress of being at the forefront, in the spotlight. I give a small drop of my blood in this life night after night and I kill myself with it, I cannot go on like this forever, I'm trying to kill myself, I feel it. It killed my friend Amy Winehouse, she turned a tremendous weapon against herself. I certainly have a smaller calibre weapon, but I still have to stop. People want everything from me, they want me to be the essence of my songs. But it is a self-destructive essence. "

There may be countless troubled people such as you have described who have been helped in time to save them, potential Hemingways who have slunk away into office jobs. And anyway, if you assign so much of an arts worth to the artists lifestyle, how do you know you are not mistaken? From your comments about Jesus, I assume you hold the New Testament highly, but would this opinion change if it came to light Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were raging alcoholics?

[PrinceMyshkin]

To start with, I can't really agree with the idea that we have to look for a "point" to everything.
What's the point of fiction? In the same you can ask what's the point of life? It could be merely to propagate our species, It could have no meaning at all or it could be countless other things we haven't worked out yet. But really what's the point in asking, all we can do is try to get along as healthily and as happily as we can.
Aside from the question of whether it's even worth asking, i think there are countless "points" to fiction.
It can have whatever meaning you ascribe to it; it could be a comfort and an escape, a means of learning about lives other than your own, a warning of what might happen, an interpretation of what already has, an experiment to see how things would play out in a world drastically different from our own, or just one of the tools we use to pass our time as happily as possible.

There seems to be one major thing you judge very differently from myself that could be a cause of our differing opinions. You see a great distinction between fiction and non-fiction. That you can only learn from something that is definitely true, and lessons learnt from something made up are meaningless. What are thoughts and ideas if they are not something we have made up and created? Are you saying you can't learn from anything anyone says unless it is first written down in a so called "non-fiction" book?

Now, there is a certain class of fiction which is just the same old story churned out to match certain criteria and to sell copies - I can see no point in this type of fiction other than as an escape and distraction from the world, or a means to temporary entertainment.
But, the majority of fiction can hold a lot more than that. Fiction can be just the same as a conversation you would have with a real life person, except in fiction their thoughts and ideas are often entwined with metaphor and imagery and have been written down so as to reach a wider audience. They also might present opinions contrary to their own in such a way as to highlight the fallacy in them.
There are endless lessons to learn from these works of fiction, it is a medium unconstrained by the speed of response needed in a conversation, and by the limited amount of stories and characters available to "non-fiction".

You seem to admit the possibility of learning from "non-fiction" but why should any of this be more true? People have always exaggerated to make themselves look better, plugged the gaps in their memories with stories overheard from others. And Science books - no true scientist would claim his work was "true", it is only ever the current best guess, instantly overturnable when a better theory turns up or more evidence comes to light.
I don't see such a clear boundary between fiction and non-fiction as you seem to base your argument on.




Now, i strongly disagree when you try to claim any work from these troubled people is worthless. Just because someone takes drugs or eventually kills themselves, it doesn't make their opinions or their art any less valuable. I do agree however, that we should try to help them before we start hailing them. The trouble is, that often the people with the best imaginations, the people most open to the world, with the most to give to it, are also those who have let down their defences and are most vulnerable to it. Their art makes them vulnerable to the world, and often curing them means removing their art.

I've seen this idea reflected in many of the greatest authors, artists and poets, but a recent interview with the musician Pete Doherty sums it up pretty well. I don't know if you know about him, but he is an English musician and poet who has struggled against drug addiction and been thoroughly villanised by the press as a consequence. He makes it clear the only way he thinks he can give up his troubles and addictions is by giving up his talent and ceasing to write:
"All the songs I write deal with sadness, emptiness and disillusionment. Now, I seek happiness, but I do not want to sing. I want to live. If I stay in music, I just want to play guitar in a band. I hate the pressure, the stress of being at the forefront, in the spotlight. I give a small drop of my blood in this life night after night and I kill myself with it, I cannot go on like this forever, I'm trying to kill myself, I feel it. It killed my friend Amy Winehouse, she turned a tremendous weapon against herself. I certainly have a smaller calibre weapon, but I still have to stop. People want everything from me, they want me to be the essence of my songs. But it is a self-destructive essence. "

There may be countless troubled people such as you have described who have been helped in time to save them, potential Hemingways who have slunk away into office jobs. And anyway, if you assign so much of an arts worth to the artists lifestyle, how do you know you are not mistaken? From your comments about Jesus, I assume you hold the New Testament highly, but would this opinion change if it came to light Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were raging alcoholics?

It's not that I agree with every word you wrote here (which I do!) And it's not that it's so lucidly expressed (which it is!). It is, I believe, the general tone of civility in your response. Unlike some, you don't appear to need to win the argument at any cost. Bravo!

[Heteronym]

But certainly not as death-obsessed as Plath, Dickinson or Poe?

Oh no, these three don't come close to the grand morbity of Jesus and Buddha's philosophies. Being humans who accepted their humanity, their exploration of death is a mere product of their own mortality. Jesus and Buddha were men who put death on the center of their way of life, an impossible, superhuman level of perfection and purity imposed on ordinary men to render their lives stunted and incomplete by depriving them of the simple pleasures of life, and punishing them with fantasies of horrors if they failed to attain said perfection.

I'll take a melancholy drunk in Poe's work to a saint eating roots in the desert. I know which one is more human.

[dark desire]

Hi!

Congratulations for having reached to this point in life that you feel like this. I agree that written word is a total nonsense. Everywhere. It is a stage and it is a performance which intends to make you think that there is no stage and it is reality - a reality different from your own reality.

The other day I was reading this introductory book on literature. The author, a professor of English literature somewhere in England, mentions reasons why to read literature and all of them were at best outdated and at worst pure nonsense.

Having said all this, I now ask you to bring your attention to all the fictions that you have been told and you still believe in. Jesus is one. Democracy is another. Education is third. Of course they have not not been told to you as systematically as a work of fiction tells the story. You believe that it is real because it works out well for so many people, however, in fact it works because people hopelessly follow these things; if you will look deeper you will see that all these things have as many flaws as they have triumphs, they make people suffer as much as they help people in their lives. You might want to argue that economic survival is served by these things. But what is the meaning of this survival if everyone has to die in the end? Then you might say family and procreation and continuation of the species and I will say nothing good has come to this world without the creation of an equal bad.

You will find it difficult to see my point here and honestly this is not even MY point. Read Roland Barthes and you will understand what I am talking about here. For the time being, till the completion of my argument, you can assume what I am saying is true.

Some people are gifted to see through all the imposed meanings till the very source of human suffering. The imposed meanings of what and how things are, are often the source of great suffering. The entire feminist argument is based on this.

If you can see beyond everything you are taught, you will see that a human being always tries to find meaning, it is something deeply rooted within us. Your attempt to find a point of literature also looks like an effort in the same direction. But the world is absurd and it provides no meaning. None is possible whatsoever unless you strive to create it yourself or you deceive yourself to believe something because it is convenient.

meaning is one of the greatest enigmas of human existence that ordinary people so easily take granted for. They find meaning in every ridiculous thing - the discoveries of science and technologies, public struggles thousands of miles away from where one lives and so on and so forth. An artist tries to find it in all life around. Existentialists believe that no meaning exists (I am an existentialist myself). Yet they explore the dimensions of existence in their entirety.

You will agree that there is a lot of preaching in the world today. Even Christ, Buddha and Mother Teresa had their doubts but today everyone seems to know everything. In such times, literature provides the questions, the doubts, the doubts that matter. Barthes once said - Literature is question minus the answer. Do not theorize this because it is also on the reader to see the doubts rising within as one reads. Why writers write is a personal question to the writer and will have answers different for every writer. Literature can provide questions within a person if the person is open to questioning the world.

Till now you have always looked for a moral of the story, what is the message of the story. You have always reduced a writer, an artist to a moralizer. Oscar Wilde has aptly said - "No artist has ethical sympathies. Ethical sympathies in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style."

Stop looking for morality lessons of how you should be from either life or literature; only then you are living, only then you are a person of your own making.
Do you feel like questioning your own existence? Read the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. It might be a difficult thing to read. But try it.

A man who decides that his life is over is a far more substantial person than one who waits for death and disease to decide his fate. An even more substantial one would be one who would not care about his death. That is how most good authors live (I am not making this a rule). One fine day if they take their life, what is the big deal about it?

[dark desire]

I think it is pointless to theorize about something you feel is pointless.

As for my own response, which is in fact one to a post that theorizes about something which its writer feels is pointless, I view it as a complete and utter exercise in futility. As a matter of fact, the 142 seconds it took me to write it constitute the worst waste of my time since I tried to teach my ex-wife to parallel-park.

DH

futility of attempts to find meaning is one of the central themes of existential writings. Have you not read any of those?

[dark desire]

When I first read your initial post, I was appalled too like many others here. But then I realized that you are articulating things so well. A person who actually believes what you have written would never write this.

So there was enigma in your writing. I am happy and proud that I could see it. But there is a lot that is right in front of your eye and you are not seeing it.

Your happy life has become meaningless while you tried and even enjoyed extracting meaning from everything you could read. I envy you for all that you probably have read. I am way behind you in reading. I am a person of technical education. Back in my concluding years of my education I blamed my education too. The flaws in technical education were easier to see, I suppose, than those in literary education.

Your crisis is having too much meaning in your life. Under so much meaning, your existence is highly burdened. I am sure a lot of people look at you with utmost positive regard. While I am not telling you to destroy that, I ask you to challenge it. Whoever thinks positively of you, ask them for what they truthfully think of you and you will find an answer that does not match what your own experience of yourself is.

This should bother you. More than anything else. It is all these perceptions about you to which you cater to all the time that have taken you away from having any pleasures of your own - one of the reasons why you do not enjoy literature.

That voice, that self within you that has come out so eloquently in this post is otherwise suppressed in your happy life. Now I am not preaching you anything. I am just asking you to embrace the crisis that your life is. Throw it out on people. Ask people in your life about things that do not make any sense to you, things that baffle you. You need to pay more attention to your life than to literature and books and even writing and your theories. The way you had the courage (or stupidity) to ask this question on a literature forum, you need the same in your life.

Life has no meaning although this is not your present experience. You live for a lot of things even if they do not make much sense to you. If you will move your life a little bit closer to the edge, a place from where the edge is visible, you will see how everything, including literature will come to life. Even your creative writing will spring to life. People might end up calling YOU a crackpot and to your surprise you may like it too. I did.

It has been fascinating reading this thread that exists because of your creative effort. One advice - Read Roland Barthes. His writings are beyond the realm of meaning. With your experience, you will be able to understand him.

Now I will read this thread beyond your second reply. :P

[Declan]

I'm not sure how one comes upon the idea that writers are flops as human beings. I wouldn't be confident enough to say that about any human being. Maybe a remorseless murderer. A flop as a human being? Those writers were loved by worthwhile people, so the writers weren't flops to them. That word flop! It's something I don't ascribe to, writers or otherwise.

Another part of your idea appears to me to relate to how factual writing is more truthful than fictional. Any writing that attempts to be more than a very, very basic report of simple occurences involves personally-charged judgements - that's a perspective, and there is no difference with how that is employed between a writer of history or a writer of fiction. If there's one thing the literature that's out there shows, it's that the more talented minds, when it comes to writing, veer towards fictional writing, since the majority of eloquent writing is fiction or poetry. It seems to let the imagination go at life more freely, which seems to let more truth in, compared to more tightly-reined, less imaginative writing that adheres less to insight and more to the basic reporting.

Fiction is well worth reading: it gives pleasure and gives lots of other extremely plausible, reliable viewpoints on life. It doesn't require analysis to see the rich, elegant perspectives offered have their golden grains of truth. The writing with something original to say rises to the top and is intelligently appreciated.

Beautifully written fiction and poetry that only the talented, insightful few can write, doesn't need any defending. The beauty of the things are their own defence. This whole argument, I don't know if there's any water at the bottom of this particular well.

[dark desire]

"Life has no meaning save the one you give it" is a quote I like.

I guess you are trying to find out what meaning You can give to Your life.

Anyways, let's try and move this on: I've gone beyond thinking reading fiction is pointless to realising that it's daft to expect too much from it and that that's the pointless bit. I guess I get frustrated 'cos it's such a trumpeted thing whereas I see it mostly as distraction and in many cases the work of people who haven't even begun to figure out the basics about living a happy human life, which is generally all that anybody wants. Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway - I don't give a monkeys that they had a way with words, they were all flops as human beings as far as I'm concerned.

Can you tell me one person who succeeded in figuring out the basics of living a happy human life? On the same point, why don't you give it a shot considering that you believe such a thing as "basics of living a happy human life" exists?

Though, having never met them, that may be a little harsh: perhaps they were lovely, kind people in person and the suicidal tendencies and substance abuse could have been...nah, there's no excuse for that:

There lies your very own personal fear of death.

not if you're making yourself out as a purveyor of wisdom. But then are they? And are people even looking at them in that way? I just can't separate the author from their work, and if the author's mind is one that dwelled in hell, I don't really feel much of a need to follow them there, through their words.

I have never read a book by Hemingway, Joyce, Woolf or Plath that said or even hinted that they were purveying wisdom. On the other hand, consider everything that has been preached to you through books (or otherwise) under this Oscar Wilde's quote:

A moralizing man is a hypocrite, a moralizing woman is plain.

Religion was not been established by its founders to moralize man into happy living. Those who ruled the houses of religion after the passing of the prophets used religion to establish power (that was the point of religion and it is largely the point of religion even today). Religion was meant to liberate. Everyone who thinks of a larger social order without actually contributing to it in a very visible way is a hypocrite deceiving himself.

You have to look for your own wisdom (I don't believe such a thing exists though and I think you will agree), your own way and that in a dashing style and not in dull mundane abstract rules.

By the way, I have utmost regards for all the four writers you mentioned above. They had beautiful experiences and I am grateful that they looked for words to express them. I place that hard work above any conquests by the Napoleons and Genghis Khans of this world.

And what are words anyway? Mere utterances and sophisticated grunts that stand in the place of thoughts and feelings, always at least one or two steps beyond the impulse behind them. I guess it's the impulse that interests me. The tree behind the apple - and the ground beneath the tree.

It's a pity indeed that your words always lag behind your impulses. Have you ever considered this to be an outcome of your over-analytic habits?

Sheet: maybe I should make up a story and put all this in the mouths of characters and see if I can't work it out that way. ;-)

I doubt if you can put this much hard work. But if you can manage to do that I assure you that you will not need this discussion thread at all.

But, c'mon, the distraction hypothesis has gotta be worth looking at - though maybe not here.

After a certain age everything every man does on earth is to distract himself from from the certainty of his death. Your frustration stems from the beautiful completeness of your distraction away from your own eventual demise.

Who among a literary community wants to stand up and say, yep, I just read to get away from my own inner-being 'cos I don't know what life's really for? Who wants to admit that their intellectualism is just mind games to keep their mind busy from seeing what their mind is really like?

Why should one do that? To prove something that solely exists in your mind?

I read - sorry, tried to read - a book on critical literary theory the other day - but, I swear, every page I turned to all I could find was gobbledygook dressed up in fancy sentences and the only thing I got from it - from every single of the varied authors and contributors - was, man, these people need to get a life.

How did you come to the conclusion that they do not have life? From your own lack of understanding of their work?

Imagine that that's what turns you on, tossing over and making up theories about something so abstract as another man's fleeting fictions and dreams. It boggles the braincogs.

It must have felt really nice getting to vent your frustration like this! But be a little aware of what you are talking man! You criticized the purpose of reading literature, you criticized Nobel Prize winners, then you go on to criticize cultural critics.

I am curious why do you care so much about literature and all this? Why did you read critical literary theory? What made you pick that up while you so clearly hate literature? And ultimately what made you write that long initial post on this thread? I am sure it is more than a Creative Writing MA submission.

[Declan]

Dark Desire, if you think it's more than a creative writing submission, you should say what you think it is, otherwise you leave the reader hanging for no reason. If you don't say it because you've no clear idea yourself or you think the idea you have is paranoid, then why mention your suspicion in the first place, as to why the thread-starter made the initial long post?

[dark desire]

Declan,
The idea is that Rubsley is confused and he has more on his mind than he is saying. I am provoking him to come up with something deeper inside him instead of his superficial judgments and arguments. I think there is more to him than these 60 something posts express. If I write what I think, that will undo the intent of my post. Wait till he responds.

[Declan]

We're all confused and have more on all our minds than we say. I liked your intial response to him, when you said he couldn't have written that thread in that way if he really believed what he was saying, as there is an aspect of thoughtfulness and logical clarity to his expression. That's a good point; you really pointed out the strength of his writing.

[Declan]

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[Declan]

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[kelby_lake]

Another part of your idea appears to me to relate to how factual writing is more truthful than fictional. Any writing that attempts to be more than a very, very basic report of simple occurences involves personally-charged judgements - that's a perspective, and there is no difference with how that is employed between a writer of history or a writer of fiction.

I agree. It is delusional to think that non-fiction is more truthful than fiction simply because it purports to be so. Writers of fiction are ironically more truthful because they believe that they are pretending. The comfort in being able to deny the truth of their work allows them to write more truthfully.