People who don't read fiction

Avoiding other works in your chosen artistic field(s)

(I realize my first post there is not saying I've never read fiction at *all,* of course -- I do think it's strange not to never have -- but that for whatever reasons tastes and preferences can change.)

i think what the orig. poster MEANS is not 'ppl who don't read fiction' as that's , yeah , pretty much everyone; rather 'ppl who read, and seem pretty bright otherwise, but don't read fiction'. those ppl are creeps.

xpost yes Mark stupid and scared, that's right. Your emotional literacy shames me yet again.

*I do read comics but I tend to think of that as something I do 'instead of' movies rather than novels.

i am pretty leery of saying that an inability to read ficiton is a symptom of self-absorption or lack of empathy or general dullness. there is often a correspondence tho.

xpost -- I was hoping Tom would say something! (Read that thread I linked, at least my first post!)

Tom - point taken, dumb generalisation. Intentionally missing out on the wonders of fiction seems an odd choice, though.

right. that i can understand. my question is more specifically who flat out do not read it. and i mean, among people who read. if 98% of people don't regularly read, this is about the 2% who do.

ned - for some reason i cant open that link. but yeah, again, it's not about tastes changing, it's about "nope, not me, never touched it and never will."

oddly, the person (coworker/boss) who made me wonder about this does just that. I'd say that's 99% of his reading. his opinion is that he likes to stay in reality. oddly enough, he'll watch fictional movies.

Also, practically speaking, I have a habit of dipping into books, putting them down and ignoring them for months, having several on the go, treating them like collections of 'bits': it is much easier to read majority non-fiction if these are your reading habits.

"i had too much to think last night" = a condition i slightly have to dodge, when i have a lot on work-wise or domestically

OTM

well i, I didn't mean to imply that I find all fiction dull, all the time. Don't give me any shit either, 'cause I'm not reading (at present) multiple books and hence no non fiction as I have embarked on a 2400 page odyssey of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu.

I've found that most people I meet that do read fiction read like, mysteries and horror novels.

More and more the value to me in a book is either information (non-fiction's metier) or pleasant company. That last category embraces fiction, but also includes essays, memoirs, poetry, history, popularized science or any genre where the author can develop a distinctive voice and a narrative method.

(In ways I think the impulse often codified as 'magical realism' -- but it transcends the particular range of Latin American writers who first got labelled with that -- reflects a larger impulse on the part of stuffy literary guardianship that prided 'realism' throughout much of the last century but which realized that they had driven themselves into a depressing cul-de-sac. I could say more but it would be involved. [Although here's something random to chew on = dull realistic fiction: cartoon rockism :: imaginative whatever-the-hell-works: cartoon popism?))

For the non-fiction people, what kind of non-fiction do you read?

I've found that most people I meet that do read fiction read like, mysteries and horror novels.
Isn't this also a guilty pleasure of a lot of serious writers as well? Maybe not so guilty. There is a certain craft within the genre formula to appreciate- a certain formalism!- which also helps sidestep the "life lessons" problem.

think fiction can capture 'reality' even better than non-fiction
Right, and often at some deeper level. When I get stuck dealing with reality at the more mundane level, I can't go to the deeper level, at least not for the somewhat extended length of time reading a novel involves.
(multi-x-post)

Jordan: a lot of history, some sports books, some popular science, the very occasional biography, some sociology and politics, the odd book on folklore and myth, some collections of essays and some multi-discipline stuff that borders on philosophy. I used to read a lot of music books but there doesn't seem to be much of a market for the stuff I enjoy in that field now.

This is INCREDIBLY OTM. Essentially the possibility of choices available now has increased, on a wider level, much more than has been the case in the past, and we as individuals are making our choices within that. This is why I think it's terribly hard to talk about a 'mainstream' culture in general as well, in that said 'mainstream' -- pick an area, a communicative medium, a social setting, whatever -- is just one subculture of many -- it just happens to be the one with the most relative attention, and fractures and reforms a lot, which gives it a certain fascination. But its existence does not and need not presume automatic familiarity to everyone, nor that all be required to be so familiar with it.

As for you, Ian, you are Rik the People's Poet. (I KID.)

Another thing: with fiction, I follow writers. It doesn't really matter what kind of story they're telling at the moment, so long as I like their writing and their style and their ideas. It seems like this would be hard to do with non-fiction, as an interest in the subject is more important than with fiction? This may be wrong, but I'm trying to get my head around the non-fiction readers' mindset.

But yes, there are a lot of books I buy on subject alone and then if they're excellent I make a mental note of who wrote them.

Today I will be mostly eating leftist movements.

Came across a critic recently who opined that the only fresh current fiction is either experimental or genre-based. I have limited interested in the first, and always prefer films for the second -- better 2 hours than 300-400 pages to find out who killed who or what will save the universe.

non-fiction ppl: do you like math
fiction ppl: do you like math

this fiction person does not like math.

Who was the critic?

then

UH. fiction can do all those things and often with quite a bit more force than non-fiction.

The only way fiction can educate or illuminate the world with more force than non-fiction can is by using the only technique that it has which non-fiction doesn't have: large-scale lying and misrepresentation about how the world works. When you read a work of fiction you are being told something about how its world works, but its world is not the real world, and the lessons, while they might be tempting to apply, cannot be trusted. Things "work" in fiction not because they "ring true to the world" but because they "ring true to their own world".

do you really want to argue w/ me that fiction cannot educate (w/ FACTS. FACTS.) illuminate or change the way one looks at the world?????????

i cannot believe this. really i cannot. but if you DO -- and i want you to consider this long and hard, babe, before answering -- then we'll have ourselves a little go.

The only way fiction can educate or illuminate the world with more force than non-fiction can
Chris, the exact content of your post- put differently, but equally well- is replicated somewhere in the new Gilbert Sorrentino collection The Moon In Its Flight. It is now my personal mission to make you appreciate Gil S, despite what Bearded Sam D told you.

I was a history major and had a couple of really good profs in college, the same can't be said for my education in literature. I think also I've always had a fascination with how things affect each other in the real world--the first books I remember reading were biographies, and imagining myself helping on the underground railroad or going to school with Laura Ingalls or whatnot.

I just feel that I get more out of a nonfiction book, that it's time better spent as well as being more enjoyable. Maybe I never properly learned how to read literature, but I just don't care about the characters and good writing only gets me so far. I feel like I learn real things when I read nonfiction. How much good those things do me is up for debate, but hey.

fantastic nonfiction authors off the top of my head: Carl Sagan, Jared Diamond, Jane Jacobs.

if each novel existed in a vacuum or something i might agree w/ lesser matsui. that not being the case, i don't.

also the movies and the media > fiction ppl disturb me. if the interest is in (saY) a deeply personal struggle against overwhelming & conflicting inner/outer forces, films & uh tv shows/newsmagazines cannot treat these topics w/ the same art and care and depth that a well-written novel can.

i'd also like to hear more about this 'cheap emotional manipulation'.

I learn how interpretations of others' actions can be conveyed within fiction, I think. Fiction does not explain a person, I feel, but it can provide an insight.

But Ned, what does?

at least, i am has a point, but i wouldnt be so (seemingly) paranoid about it.

Person who can't bother to give a name:
do you really want to argue w/ me that fiction cannot educate (w/ FACTS. FACTS.) illuminate or change the way one looks at the world?????????

This is not what I was arguing at all. I was repsonding to the notion that it can do this better than non-fiction.

I've typed out a longer argument and deleted it twice now because it was not entirely clear and didn't really answer the question. And I have spent too much time typing this already.

So I'll be overly pithy: Of course fiction can illuminate or change the way one looks at the world. But you're using lessons taught about one (fictional) world and trying to apply them to another (real) world and the rules that govern fictional worlds are not going to be the same as the rules that govern the real world, so the lessons and illumination will probably fail.

xpost:

it's also v good to know that non-fiction authors would NEVER misrepresent the world. that, is a relief.

If you misrepresent the world then it stops being non-fiction, do you see?

This is more my point: Fiction is written to make you feel as if you've learned etc., etc. A fiction-creator's job is to trigger that feeling, not to actually teach you about anything. It is when non-fiction writers trigger that feeling that you should start distrusting them.

I hate to get all fluffy-bunny on you here, Chris, but what is illegitimate about learning about feelings?

And that's fine! There's nothing wrong with reading fiction and getting those pleasure-centers stimulated, so to speak. The non-fiction pleasure centers are just different ones, with different approaches. The reasons why non-fiction doesn't really tell you anything about the world are completely different and much more depressing.

xpost

Sure they can. Renoir, Hitchcock, Fassbinder, Herzog, "Raging Bull," Kurosawa, hell, "Eternal Sunshine" for starters. "Miss Congeniality 2," probably not.

* Writers are liars who lucked a career out of their dishonesty. They make up stories ffs!

* They don't understand people nearly as well as they think they do, and that is why they became writers. Failing to make friends, they retreated into their minds and made up imaginary friends!

* They show off their literary knowledge. BFD, Zadie Smith, you can quote a ton of great works. I can use google too!

* There is rarely any realistic outcome to their novels.

*They write for revenge! They want you to hate the people they hate. This is disingenuous.

Exceptions I have noted:

Elizabeth Jolley

erm, that's it.

I read philosophical and psychological books, the latter preferably by psychoanalysts as many of these are also good writers.

Nobody was proposing an "all or nothing" verdict. Nonshitty A is better than shitty B. Happy?

Ian Riese-Moraine's diets

Today I will be mostly eating leftist movements.
"Desire is so voracious, I wanna eat your nation state!"

A lot of it goes back to my college days, when I didn't particularly care for the people who read nothing but "literature" and who had no interest in science, technology, aesthetics, history, philosophy - the things that interested me. I mean, I was sneered at for taking history classes in college. So, I came to despise the whole literary crowd.

I do read drama and poetry, though.

Would you like to stick to one line of argument for a moment? Once again, that has nothing to do with what I was arguing.

Anyway, yes, I am acting like fiction and non-fiction are two separate groups because we are discussing the differences between fiction and non-fiction and I am trying to tease out what is different, trying to suggest a few differences. I am not, in doing this, trying to suggest that there is a hard and fast rule, that there are no grey areas, etc.

I'm really wary about judging people who don't read fiction, because I suspect that they might actually be better at life than I am. I mean, people who don't read might not because their lives are much more exciting, right? I read partially for escapism, partially for entertainment, and sometimes I learn. (Mainly for the first two, though, because when I pick up a book because I'll "learn something," I tend to not get through it unless I like it for the other reasons.)

this fiction person does not like math.

WTF! This thread has some of the stupidest generalizations I've seen on ILX.

otherwise my travel to work isn't very long. and other times i'm
either working, or too busy reading LIFE. Not LIFE magazine, but like, life.. involving people. (Often
in text form a la online chat mind you)

Yes, more content-driven, though a style I don't like can put me off, and a style I do like can be part of the attraction sometimes. But I don't read primarily for an aesthetic experience. If I did, it probably would be odd not to read more fiction.

http://www.sandretto.it/immaginigruppo/museo/1132.jpg vs. http://nscully91.wazanet.net/PeterPan/Peter%20pan%20troupe.gif

I think it comes down to when I read fiction I can't just go for a ride, but I have to analyze and ponder as I go & the payoff ratio just isn't right.

So yeah, mainly history for me these days. The other thing being, I guess, that I've discovered that history is one of those places where the grand old style has stuck around, which is, when well done, my fav. literary voice anyway.

"Now, when Film gets good, Book is in trouble. Theoretically, it is not possible for a book to compete, aesthetically, psychologically, or in any other way, with a film. Of sensory perceptions it is well established that the most empathetic are sight and sound. It is for this reason that to see someone badly hurt, for example, hit by a car, bleeding, crying with pain, is a totally different experience from reading about it in the paper. ... What these new develoments mean in terms of the novel is something which seems so far to have been ignored in literary criticism and, at least consciously, by authors themselves. It has become evident that it is wasteful, pointless, and in terms of art, inexcusable, to write a novel which could, or in fact, should, have been a film. This ought to be a first principle of creative literature..."

I tend to agree with this asessment and I wonder how much contemporary fiction is actually left behind if you use his criteria. I think there's a certain desire to control the precise type of world that we explore when reading. The goal might be to immerse oneself in the 17th century French art scene, a leftist politcal movement of the early '70s, or the process of manufacuring a contemporary pop star. Whatever it is, these desires are more easily filled by film, TV, and nonfiction writing. Perhaps the problem with contemporary fiction is that the range of genres are still relatively small compared to the ground covered by nonfiction writing, documentaries or reality shows.

I would say 95% of the books where I have read a review are come across a new title and thought OMG I HAVE TO GET THAT!!! have been about nonfiction books.

Films don't use language? Aimless OTM!

While I agree, I think that's the point of AaronK's thread. There are people (witness various posters above) who VEHEMENTLY dislike fiction. They find it an affront.
I don't understand them either. I love fiction. Oh and I love maths. I don't like "math" though, weird American usage.

Such as:

People who don't jitterbug
People who don't quilt
People who don't like to smell their own farts

i do not understand this. can someone explain?

xpost

anyway, what iwas going at was, im not saying film is lesser than fiction at all, just pointing out a difference.

It's more like loving music but hating pop music, I think it's a valid question

i think its another level up. fiction is not itself a genre, it's an entire form. it's closer to not liking any music at all, or not liking painting as an art form. liking mystery novels or classics, or scifi is a specific interest, fiction includes all that and is much more broad than that.

My point was how the thread was presented. I mean, isn't the intent of the thread closer to

Taking Sides: Fiction v. Non-Fiction

ken c OTM here.

about the paintings & photography, yeah that looks pretty similar if you consider painting like fiction.

I like the sinker strategy- after all, it worked for David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

This should be an unexceptionable, even banal, thing to say but in a discussion between two arts establishment figures like M & B it had a radicalism to it that was (predictably?) not followed up in the interview. The whole subsidised arts/literary prize/tv arts milieu that M & B operate in is predicated on the assumption that what M said isn't true.

How can people think this (and I know they do)? Some of us just focus our attentions elsewhere. Funny how you don't hear this as much about other arts (except music, maybe).

Heterosexuality is good, it's primal, it's part of what we are.

In junior high/high school I read poetry quite heavily, and always resented the way "writer" would frequently be used to mean novelist, or at least fiction writer. (Watching public TV talk shows with writers at the time: almost always a novelist, almost never a poet.)

In general, I am tired of the implications that I can't be a whole human being, or a good citizen, without engagin with literary fiction.

Your accusations of fear are precisely the sort of insult aimed at people who don't especially care for fiction that I find tiresome.

I think it's a fear of having to sit through tedious discussions with people who think you have to read certain books and / or read them a certain way in order to be socially acceptable.

Aaron

It's just the French translation of "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?" from Merchant of Venice. I was referring to your statement that you are a human with honest heartful emotions.

Sorry, dude. My funny is malfunctioning or something.

Or "book" to mean novel.

OH SHUT THE FUCK UP. Good god, how are you still alive if you're going around sounding like such a douche bag? (hi adam)

That's cute that you've got enough time to read stories and glean them for meaning. You're quite the lil' puzzle solver there, buddy! But you're not a child any more, so you should realize that some people have no time for fiction and that doesn't make them less human. At some point you might actually realize that the time you spend in bed projecting could be better spent talking to people face-to-face. At the very least, you might be tempted to cut down on making so many ridiculous statements.

But then you'd lose the qualities that make me love you!

they are proud to be "non-readers", quite frankly it makes me sick.

WTF? Get over it. If they don't like to read, that's their business.

"reading is fun UNTIL YOU NOTICE A WOLF WITH DROOLING MAW BEHIND YOU"

as long as we're comparing two incomparable things, i'll say it's more like liking music but rarely if ever listening to instrumental stuff. i'm sure if a similar thread was started on ILM you'd get people saying that those who never listen to purely instrumental music are cowards, afraid of not getting it. and they probably are racist pigfuckers, too.

"reading is fun UNTIL YOU NOTICE A WOLF WITH DROOLING MAW BEHIND YOU"

I know! Also the one like four below it: "TALL STORIES: Libraries are fun!" Clearly the non-readers have cunningly positioned themselves INSIDE THE MACHINE and are subverting from the inside.

Or demonstrating the girth of your intellectual schlong on an internet message board, eh?