Fiction brings experiences that the reader would have never expected to have.
Brent Jones
by Brent M. Jones
Fiction enables us to step into a new reality where all our beliefs can be set aside, and we can meet new people who inspire or even terrify us when we read.
Will fictional characters and experiences influence our self-identity? I think they will. Do they play a role in the narrative of how you see your life story? Again, I think they do. Does fiction have any redeeming value? Will its influence raise or lower our intelligence? There is plenty of evidence that it increases it.
Numerous suggestions exist on how to increase intelligence, but one common one is hanging around with intelligent, educated people. You can talk to them about a wide range of subjects and new ideas, and you can gain different perspectives. It sounds a lot like opening a book of fiction.
"Fluid intelligence" is the ability to solve problems, understand things and detect meaningful patterns. In today's world, fluid intelligence and reading go hand in hand.
The first time I read William Faulkner’s fictional story, As I Lay Dying, it took me by surprise. I expected to enter a unique storyline and learn about the people in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, during the 1920s. Yet the conversation's language, tone, and sound were a surprise. The way the characters spoke to each other was different than anything I would ever have expected, and I knew I was in a different place. The way the characters interacted and sounded contributed to letting me see life differently.
I read Lia Genova’s book, Still Alice, because I wanted to learn more about what it was like to have Alzheimer’s disease. I hoped to never experience this for myself and saw this story as a way to understand the condition further. The story did much more than I expected, as I learned but also felt the impact of the disease. When Alice, a linguistics expert, began to lose her words and thoughts, I felt how hard it was for her.
Einstein suggested, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Neil Gaiman is a writer of fantasy and fiction, and in his book The View from the Cheap Seats, he wrote about attending a meeting for fiction writers in China. In previous years, China didn’t allow fairy tales and fiction in their schools, so he was surprised to learn of this invitation. He asked an official what had changed and was told, off the record, that they had toured all the big companies they did outsourcing work for in the United States and asked those they met what they read. The resounding answer was science fiction. The officials then began to understand the connection of invention with creativity. (I guess it took a random event for them to figure this out.)
Einstein also said that creative imagination is the essential element in the intellectual equipment of the true scientist and that fairy tales are the childhood stimuli to this quality. I guess the Chinese officials didn’t read that before their trip.
There are good and bad guys in fiction, fairy tales, and horror stories. For some, the “Force” in Star Wars might represent the goodness in the universe, but what about that goodness? Will it reaffirm our beliefs while seeing them as an element of a fictional plot; does it make the fiction more believable? The bigger question is, can we really step out of our world, or are we just going always to view things through the lens of our experience?
Random events in books free me and leave me thinking I have escaped concluding my lens of experience.