Fiction's Value

 Why read fiction? Why write fiction?

I think Liberal Patriot's Seeing Each Other Across Our Many Divides gives a very good answer to these questions.

The article reviews Jennifer Haigh’s novel Mercy Street. I had not heard of the writer or the novel. I will have to track her down now that. I have read the review.

Haigh’s novels focus on working class Americans, a segment of America that’s much talked-about in politics but often overlooked. As she explained in an interview earlier this year, “That’s not really in fashion in literary fiction today, I think simply because most writers of literary fiction don’t come from that kind of background.”  

Pick up one of Haigh’s novels and she’ll transport you to a part of America that’s often overlooked not just in literature but also our broader culture, including politics, even though the working class vote is far larger than the college-educated vote. 

I have tried to work the same area. I think the rejections of my story "Colonel Tom" have to do with my lack of being in fashion.

As to how the review answers the questions as stated:

Narratives like the one Haigh tells in Mercy Street open new possibilities to see and understand each other across divides in ways that political analysis and advocacy doesn’t. There’s something about the current media and political culture that is zero-sum, cutting off possibility of empathy, or understanding the views of another even if you don’t share them.

That works for me.

PEN's CAN THE WRITTEN WORD MAKE A DIFFERENCE, AS GLOBAL THREATS MOUNT? has a different take:

Salman Rushdie elevated this point eloquently, saying, “A poem will not stop a bullet. A novel cannot defuse a bomb. But writers can still sing the truth and name the lies. We must work to overturn the false narratives of tyrants, populists, and fools by telling better stories than they do—stories within which people might actually want to live.”

I have no problem with this viewpoint. I am not sure they are even incompatible.  

sch 5/27/22