Reading Fiction

We love to read fiction, just as we love all sorts of narratives. Why is that? Let's start with considering fiction as a type of narrative.

What do the terms narrative and fiction mean?

Use the WWWebster Dictionary on-line to look up narrate. Notice the etymology (derivation or history of the word) connects it to the Latin word for to know--gnarus. We also learn that it means to tell a story. If we look the word story up, we find it relates to history (note the embedded word), which also traces itself back to Greek terms for knowing. When we consider the full range of ways of "knowing" that are often conveyed with narrative structures or "stories," we can perhaps see the scope of the idea of narratives: histories, genealogies, scientific methodologies, biographies, journals and logs, essays, myths, legends, folk tales, parables, jokes, and, finally, of course, all sorts of fictions--short stories, novels, novellas and many other imaginative works with narrative elements.

What is the core structure of narrative?

• All narratives involve events presented or conveyed in time order.

One dictionary of literary terms defines narration this way:

Narration: One of the four types of composition. . .; its purpose is to recount events. Although narration may exist by itself, it is likely to incorporate considerable description. There are two forms: simple narrative, which recites events chronologically--as in a newspaper account; and Narrative with plot, which is less often chronological and more often arranged according to a principle determined by the nature of the plot and the type of story intended. It is conventionally said that narration deals with time, Description with space. (Holman and Harmon)

Fictions, which is where most introductory books on literature begin, are a type of narrative which is, at least in part, "made-up" or fabricated by the imagination.

But this is also where it gets complicated, however, as Robert Scholes points out in his book, Elements of Fiction (1968) . Fictions can be "made-up" stories, but they also can contain both "truth" and "fact." He says, "Fact and fiction are old acquaintances. They are both derivatives of Latin words. Fact comes from facere--to make or do. Fiction comes from fingere--to make or shape." As he says, doing and shaping seem like ordinary ideas, not likely to gather "overtones of approval or disapproval." But he says, through time "fact" has done quite well, rubbing shoulders with "reality" and "truth," while "fiction" "is known to consort with such suspicious characters as 'unreality' and 'falsehood'" (Scholes 2).

He goes on to argue with great wit that a fact has no existence once it has been "done." "A thing done has no real existence once it has been done. It may have consequences, and there may be many records that point to its former existence. . . but once it is done its existence is finished. A thing made (such as a fiction), on the other hand, exists until it is decayed or destroyed." Thus he makes "fictions" outlast the facts!

Things done require histories to be told--events happen and then the stories are fabricated to narrate them. As Scholes points out, "Fact, in order to survive, must become fiction." Obviously, he means a fiction which is as faithful to the "facts" or "things done" as possible.

We also need to force ourselves to stop thinking that things made from imagination are not true.

Scholes wants us to see that fiction is narration that is capable of being "very factual, maintaining the closest possible correspondence between the story and things that have actually happened in the real world. Or it can be very fanciful, defying our sense of life's ordinary possibilities" (3). Thus Scholes sees different narrations falling on a spectrum from history to fantasy.

History // Realism // Romance // Fantasy
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Taking these two extremes as the opposite ends of a whole spectrum of fictional possibilities, between the infrared of pure history and the ultraviolet of pure imagination, we can distinguish many shades of coloration. But all are fragments of the white radiance of truth, which is present in both history books and fairy tales, but only partly present in each--fragmented by the prism of fiction, without which we should not be able to see it at all --Robert Scholes, Elements of Fiction, 4.

Therefore, it is no wonder when we read stories we tend apply this spectrum as expectation or schema, and use it in the process of making sense of what we read. We think, "Aahh, this story is 'realistic' and therefore 'good' or this other story is 'fantastic' and therefore great 'escape' from the constraints of my 'real' daily life."

We have, though we may not realize it, these four grand schemas for fictions already running through our minds. (For more on "Schemas" go to Daniel Chandler's Essay on "The Active Reader" <http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/ED10510/active.html> where he discusses "schema theory" and reading. Here is also his page of links for schema theory. <http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Functions/mcs.html>)

We have also created a category called "nonfiction" narratives by which we mean news articles, biographies, histories, some science writing and so on, which claims such fidelity to facts that we no longer want to think of it as intertwining imagination, but, of course, it does. Now, new genres of fiction even claim to be "nonfiction novels."

Fiction or Nonfiction Narrative: controversy

In the past few years, a new authorized biography of President Regan has caused great debate because the author has chosen to include fictional characters, especially one who observes Reagan and narrates the story. Click here to go to Amazon.com which includes excerpts from reviews that describe the flap. Read more about this dispute over Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, by Edmund Morris. You can read many other articles and sites that discuss this issue.

There is another controversy over Saul Bellow's novel Ravelstein which you can read about at Amazon.com. Then take a look at "Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom, and Abe Ravelstein" by Robert Fulford which will give you a hint of the reaction to Bellow's use of his friend in his novel.

In your journal describe your reaction to the blurring of boundaries between fiction and nonfiction and the controversies over it.

Why narrative?

Fiction (either in its more imaginative or less --"nonfiction"-- imaginative forms) is simply the most popular genre to read. If you took the Literary Response Questionnaire, I can pretty safely predict that you scored high on Story Driven Reading, for example. Why do we like it so much? Why can I predict that if you like to read, you probably like to read fiction or nonfiction narrative the most? What are its attractions for us? I think it has to do with the sense that a plotted story brings order and meaning to life.

If we take seriously the question of why narrative is clearly the most important or popular or ubiquitous form our writing takes, we would do well to study the insights of cognitive science.

Current cognitive science research relates narrative structures to basic mental operations. Here is Amazon.com's page on Mark Turner's The Literary Mind and here is a link to Alan Richardson's review of it: "Brains, Minds, and Texts: A Review of Mark Turner's The Literary Mind" . <http://www2.bc.edu/~richarad/lcb/rev/mt.html> Once you understand his thesis, it is no wonder we love narrative so much!