Taking Sides: Fiction v. Non-Fiction

Martin, I was an English major (so I'm thinking primarily of English professors). I don't mean to be as argumentative as I'm sounding, if that makes any sense. Or if I am turning this into an argument, it's not one I actually take very seriously.

IPOW is quite open about it! She's got her live-in and her non-live-in.

I'm on a fiction buzz at the moment, having just finished and greatly enjoyed Margaret Attwood's "The Handmaid's Tale".

But I'm a fiction man through and through. As evidenced by my lying streak.

I can't do it. I will have to take a closer look at any book she suggests, before I plunge into it. I have too many things I really would like to be reading.

It's a rare piece of fiction that has me interested enough to read. Off the top of my head, the only fictional books that I enjoyed enough to remember are "Catcher In The Rye", a few by Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, the Illuminatus! trilogy, Ham on Rye, Fear And Loathing... uh.... Nothing else is springing to mind except "The Fuckup", which I read basically for the title and cover design (but I did enjoy the book, too).

What about non-fiction narrative? Duh, I don't think its existence was even mentioned in this book I was looking at.

good point. what is fab about a non-fiction book like CV Wedgewood's "The King's Peace" is the way it cracks along with the pace of a novel ONLY IT'S ALL TRUE.

ned total OTM for me w/r/t mathz.

Maybe you were just high?

My girlfriend tends to prefer nonfiction. Lately she's been enjoying Jonathan Franzen's Freedom but also says she can't wait to get back to "learning something."

It seems like a lot of people who dislike fiction think it's a waste of time to read about a made-up world. But to me this suggests a weirdly puritanical attitude that reading should always be educational. Aren't the inherent pleasures of fiction -- a well-drawn character, an expertly constructed narrative, a beautifully crafted sentence -- sufficiently enriching? Or does the preferrer of nonfiction not even recognize them as pleasures?

I'll admit, though, that in some ways I identify with the PoNF. For one, I like my novels to have a bit of social realism or cultural commentary in them. And in addition to the pleasures outlined above, part of why I do read fiction -- which is almost always of the "literary" bent -- is to become conversant with certain cultural works. Which is probably more foolishly dutiful, in a sense, than reading merely to learn stuff about the world.