Pamela, thank you for the inquiry into fiction. How does it work? Why does it move us? Ahhh...the liberation conferred by the art of the storyteller and imagination!An additional offering to enhance the joy of reading: Ayn Rand's colorful lectures "The Art of Fiction."Julia
From: pam...@well.com To: friam@redfish.com Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2010 16:27:30 -0400 Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Best 10 Fictional Works When I hear someone say "I never read fiction," I'm a little saddened. It comes to my ears like "I never look at art." When one starts getting all hairy-chested about the greater value of non-fiction over make-believe, please be reminded of the books you pull off your shelf to make room for new ones. They're often of the genre of "The Coming Crisis of 1981." Valuable in its way in 1979, but not so much later. Literature lasts, which is why so many of our choices here have been oldies. Why do we read fiction? Any number of reasons, but one major reason is to help us see--often, see anew. So one of the things that separates literature from a pleasant afternoon's escape (of *course* I read thrillers too; I like pleasant afternoons of escape) is that literature does make you see anew. It does all sorts of other things too, if you're sensitive to its techniques. One of the best ways of teaching yourself about those techniques is James Wood's "How Fiction Works." Wood is a staff writer on the New Yorker, and a passionate reader. He's not going to teach you how to write a novel, but he'll certainly teach you how to read one better. He's deliciously opinionated, but makes his arguments lucidly and persuasively. It's a small book, and I often toss it in my backpack for the subway, open it at random, and start to think as I read it. Pamela "How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere." Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans" ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
