A decade ago, I would not have considered it worthwhile to write about the virtue of consuming fiction. Stories and narratives, whether spoken or in print, have been a hallmark of cultures across the entirety of human geography and history. But it has disappointed me to discover that many of my acquaintances simply do not consider fiction to be a critical component of an intellectual journey. Fiction is, by accident or by design, left out of many people’s reading lists.
To paraphrase one friend who explained why she stopped reading novels after college: “What’s the point of learning about something that didn’t happen?” This belief matches the current priorities of both public and private school systems, in which the investment of time and money is expected to produce immediate, lasting and tangible results. Setting aside the fairness of this expectation, it is a mistake to use it against fiction, as reading fiction does in fact produce long-term and concrete value, both mentally and socially.
Fiction builds and reinforces a reader’s counterfactual reasoning. It presents moral quandaries, social problems and hero’s journeys that prompt readers to meditate on how they would react to the same. Who is to say they will not find themselves in a similar predicament in the future? And even if a reader never experiences anything exactly the same in real life, spending hours with a character in crisis can build empathy that extends to unfortunate sufferers in our reality.
Sometimes authors are also able to illustrate arguments more completely and enticingly in narrative form. Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory argues for the resilience and the permanence of the Catholic Church by showing that it continues to live even after (and perhaps because of) the deaths of its martyrs and leaders. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky vividly critiques the flaws of soulless utilitarianism when his protagonist uses its tenets to justify murder. Voltaire in Candide provides an ultimately false, but nonetheless entertaining rebuttal to the idea that the world we live in is the best of all possible realities.
While any of these arguments could have been made in a nonfiction essay, they are more memorable in narrative form. It is difficult to generate suspense, sympathy or resolution without a plot, and thus arguments that relate to the lived experiences of real people are (perhaps counterintuitively) less feasible to make outside the medium of fiction. Thus, in many if not most cases, inclusion of fiction in an argument makes that argument simpler to communicate and easier to share.
This ease of communication is augmented by the fact that fiction is generally more permanent than nonfiction. While social science books and articles may be made obsolete by new discoveries, fiction is immutable. Charles Ryder will always have found new faith at Brideshead, and Dr. Weston will always lose his soul in the waves and caves of Perelandra. While it is true that adaptations in other media often make concessions to the audience they target, source material remains steadfast and constant. A reader doesn’t have to stay updated; the truth of a novel will never change.
Finally, reading fiction enables one to engage with a rich tradition both inside and outside the church. It enables one to get to the heart of a foreign culture’s history without leaving the comfort of an armchair. To read Victor Hugo is to know France; to indulge in Hesse is to discover Germany. A sure sign of a well-educated English speaker is the ability to casually reference Thomas Malory, William Shakespeare, Evelyn Waugh or G. K. Chesterton.
Many faithful Catholics even consider some of the “biblical novellas” contained within Scripture to be divinely inspired fiction. (Mark Shea wrote an excellent argument about this regarding the Book of Tobit for the National Catholic Register about a decade ago.)
By declining to participate in literary tradition, one leaves a massive amount of entertaining and enlightening wisdom on an easily reachable table.
It is true that most of us consume fiction in the form of television and movies, sometimes in copious amounts. Unfortunately, much of the fiction that is produced for mass consumption today is designed to addict rather than to enrich; it exists solely for the purpose of its own propagation. Proper fiction, like an enjoyable vacation, returns the reader to their own life once memories are made and lessons are learned. There is a denouement, not an endless chain of cliffhangers. While more popular forms of storytelling have value, they can sometimes devour our attention while offering very little in return—and thus should be treated with caution.
Perhaps the essay you are reading right now would be more impactful in narrative form. It would certainly take more time to write and would run the risk of becoming a hamfisted allegory. But in the future, when I am no longer trying to complete my dissertation and land an appropriate job, I may revisit and reframe these thoughts in that way.
I hope in the meantime you can find a novel you like. It can be a quick hundred-page read; it doesn’t have to be Kristin Lavransdatter or Tolstoy. But find something you can immerse yourself in, something you can care about. Worst case, when you finish and snap back to reality, you will have something to talk about. But maybe you will find a new truth, a new paradigm, a new solution. I wish you happy reading.
