Taking Sides: Fiction v. Non-Fiction

Is that, um, Robert Darnton? I read his stuff in a great French Revolution class I took in my junior year in college. Very interesting and, overall, very convincing ideas. Desacralization of the monarchy through underground tracts and all that.

The very same. Found this book of his by chance over in the UK used and thought I would give it a whirl.

I'm not saying that history is worthless. Far from it. I just suggest that you take what you read in history books with a handful a salt.

That said, my favorite historians are John Keegan, Robert Leckie and Barbara Tuchman.

But, although history repeats itself and we need to learn from our mistakes, it's our capacity to imagine that has made our species great. Hence, you're likely to find me curled up on a Sunday afternoon, with the latest Orson Scott Card, Greg Bear, or Robin Hobb Scientantasy novel.

Speaking of hawking books -- Ned, if you're interested in the early book trade, may I recommend The Nature of the Book by Adrian Johns?

Jack is of course right, but it's also the ability of a writer to make history read like an interesting story, if you will, that helps ground things. There will always be spin, to be sure -- but the alternate approach is either cold running down of statistics or presentation of original source material without any commentary.

when i was at university, i only read theory, cos i didn't have time to read much else. since graduating, i prefer fictiion.

I can enjoy reading certain works of fiction for some of their formal qualities, but I don't feel much urgeny about doing so.

But mostly it's a preference. I read for my enjoyment, not from some sort of educational or self-improvement intent. I guess close to 90% of my literary reading is prose fiction (and 98% of my comics reading is fiction), and probably three quarters of the rest is art books.

It's not just a matter of "notching up" knowledge. One of the things I like about reading non-fiction is that I can often make connections between what I am reading and what I have already read; or for that matter, I can make a connection between what I am reading and the world at large. I feel more passive when I read fiction. When I read non-fiction I feel that I am actively involved in relating it to questions that interest me.

As for reading for enjoyment, I think I genuinely enjoy non-fiction more than ficition, most of the time.

because they've just come back from another world? because they spent too much time lying on their backs in their room, alone?
its a bad generalisation Rocket, and based on anecdotal evidence i don't find it true. I do find non-fiction readers to be more dogmatic though...

Actually i'm in the middle on this one. I read half-and-half.

I'm not knocking fiction reading, really. Maybe I just don't know how to read it properly. But I've never felt that I gained much wisdom from it.

*

"People skills" is an ugly expression, I guess, but it seems to me that it should be one of the results of real psychological insight. I think it goes way beyond small talk.

i'm not so hott after all...

*doors hits me*

I do believe that fiction, in some ways, sheds light on new worlds and new ideas and new concepts - basically fodder for the imagination. However, I find that the same is true for lots of the non-fiction that I read, too.

I don't think that one can make any sort of generalization about how someone who does/doesn't read fiction has/lacks certain social skills. I do believe that if someone has lived a life where they've only read non-fiction and not interacted much with people, then yes, they might be lacking in some social graces - however, I think that might well be more a result of how they live and how they interact with people as children and then as adults - maybe their reading reflects a lack of interest in social issues/people issues/whatever you want to call them, as opposed to it being the non-fiction which makes them lack certain skills.

I could, of course, be totally off the mark with this. And, of course, there are some fields of non-fiction that are *very* people-oriented (some histories, authobiographies, and biographies, etc.) And there are some fields of fiction that tend to concentrate more on "non-fiction facts" than on character development and interaction and such (like some hard SciFi, some fictional historical writing, etc.)

So, there's my two cents - I'll now go back to reading a children's fantasy book, to be followed by some book about Ravens in Winter, by a naturalist *grin*

When I was a kid in elementary school, I was a good reader, but I didn't read most of the books that the good readers read, which were generally novels. I was attracted to non-fiction works of various sort, though I wasn't very good at finishing anything. When I was a teenager, I read more poetry than anything else, and again, fiction tended to take a back seat. What I read was usually "poet's fiction," with lots of upfront language play.

To be perfectly honest, I don't care much for people - but I have good social skills, so everyone thinks that I am social and caring and stuff. It's more that I am a dis-interested bystander who looks on the gossip and such in slight amusement and puzzlement. And my anti-social tendencies are very much reflected in the fact that I'd rather be reading than doing just about anything else - it's my way of retreating from the world, and it's a pattern that's been in place since first-grade, much to the dismay of teachers and parents and the few friends I had in grade school. Now, thank goodness, I can escape and read and not have to worry about not being social.

Anyway, there is a difference between reading in the social sciences and memoirs and stuff and reading the "hard" science/non-fiction genres. But I think that fiction is more "emotional" and the non-fiction is less so - but, then again, what about Holocaust memoirs and so forth? Hmmm...I need to think this through some more.

Some of my college professors could hardly get off the elevator without being hit by the doors. I find that sort of extreme otherworldliness a turn off.

Were you citing this as support for your argument, that fiction readers don't have great social skills? Surely college professors, unless they teach lit, are as predominantly non-fiction readers as anyone anywhere? Anyway, that's being preoccupied with intellectual matters I think, and nothing much to do with what sort (and I bet it's as true of mathematicians - more so, in the stereotypes - as of arts professors).

(haha "a poem is what a poet makes when he is passionately interested in something else", etc; y'know, picking up reality at the traces & so on)

& uh has anyone vouched for reading for pleasure/fun/etc as opposed to IMPORTANCE&suchlike? Nonfiction can be boring, badly-constructed & in general lacking epiphanies & etc.

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.