Writing: Must Writing Be About Empathy?

I do not think I buy the following argument from Thr Paris Review's How Do We Stop Repeating Ourselves?: A Conversation with Caren Beilin against empathy in fiction but I am intrigued by it. 

INTERVIEWER

Can you say more about your opposition to the idea that fiction has to be some great act of empathy? 

BEILIN

This idea that the imagination can take you anywhere—into anyone and anything—it thwarts one of the most basic things we learn as children, which is, Don’t touch everything!...I still see classes like “Writing the Other” listed in esteemed creative-writing programs. There is a lot of focus on the individual bound up in that idea, the individuality of this amazing writer with this special capacity for seeing, speaking from, or caring, but also the striking individuality of the characters themselves, this most sincere investment as them as people. I think of characters more as functions—propulsions, concentrations, knots of language. 

INTERVIEWER

Why do you think the academy is so set on this idea of empathy as the most important function of fiction? 

BEILIN

I think it’s hard to sell a humanities education. But if you could convince people that they’re producing empathy, spreading peace, making the world better, that could be something great for the catalog. 

I don’t think the world needs to experience empathy through literary form in order to get better. There are a few things I could say here, but maybe I’d just say the world needs more investigative reporting, and protections for journalists, in order to get better.

I can imagine a story with a character where empathy for that character could undercut the story or our understanding of a character. Not all characters need be likeable. I had heard for years about the greatness of  A Confederacy of Dunces, but when I read it I found the protagonist annoying. Finding empathy with that character would, I think, undermine the novel's humor. 

sch 4/8/22