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What's the use of stories that aren't even true?
I've been re-reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie, and this quote really got me thinking. So, I wanted to see what other people thought.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories p.19-20 wrote:
'He's got his head stuck in the air and his feet off the ground. What are all these stories? Life is not a storybook or a joke shop. All this fun will come to no good. What's the use of stories that aren't even true?'
_________________ "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never say a common place thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..." ~ Jack Kerouac
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This reminds me of another quote:
Quote:
There's more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty. The storytellers twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strenghtens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, or does it let the heart soar.
John Steinbeck, "East of Eden"
I think many works of fiction are based on experience of the author. Look at "The Yellow Wallpaper", for example, it is fiction, but based on truth, a dreadful truth.
I have not read the book you refer to, so I can only imagine the conversation. Sounds like a father and a son talking. Many people tell stories about what they would like have happen in their lives, yes, could be considered wishful thinking, but, what's wrong with having a dream, or a goal?
Also, escaping the world of stress, and work, and bills by reading a fantasy book is a good thing. I know a professor who reads nothing but mystery books, and romance novels. She told me that she lives in reality all day every day, these books keep her sane.
Books are many things to many people. What I find interesting, is when I read a book of fiction, and find truth in it for myself.
_________________ I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth. --William Faulkner
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Hello. I don't think there are many worse things I can think of than a world stocked exclusively with writers who won't make things up. I am excluding nuclear type disaster scenarios here of course. I've been thinking these last few minutes about The Satanic Verses, the only Rushdie novel I've read, and what I took away from it. And even though I haven't come up with anything I do see head stuck in the air and feet off the ground in a positive light in that it says, Thinking.
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"stories that aren't true" are the masks. the mirrors, or the allegories of stories that are true.
...fiction shows the real things that have been happening around the world, only that these events / truths are coated with more intrigue, spice, feelings. life , etc.
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Re: What's the use of stories that aren't even true?
Tim O'Brien writes in "The Things They Carried," "Story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth."
There is an emotional truth to stories that fiction is often able to communicate. My novel (Homefront) is fiction because my personal story wasn't exceptional, but the larger experience was one that needed to be a novel. The characters may be fictional, but the heart of the story is as "true" as it can be.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" was an incredibly powerful and perspective-altering work of fiction. There's a lot of fiction that introduces people to elements of history or modern times (or politics, government, and human social constructs) they'd otherwise not have been privy to. Consider "The Handmaid's Tale," "The Grapes of Wrath," "Animal Farm," and the like.
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Re: What's the use of stories that aren't even true?
I would staunchly refuse to live in a world where there were no fictional stories. Everyone needs an escape from the cruelty of the world now and again.
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Re:
Suzanne wrote:
This reminds me of another quote:
Quote:
There's more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty. The storytellers twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strenghtens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, or does it let the heart soar.
John Steinbeck, "East of Eden"
I think many works of fiction are based on experience of the author. Look at "The Yellow Wallpaper", for example, it is fiction, but based on truth, a dreadful truth.
I have not read the book you refer to, so I can only imagine the conversation. Sounds like a father and a son talking. Many people tell stories about what they would like have happen in their lives, yes, could be considered wishful thinking, but, what's wrong with having a dream, or a goal?
Also, escaping the world of stress, and work, and bills by reading a fantasy book is a good thing. I know a professor who reads nothing but mystery books, and romance novels. She told me that she lives in reality all day every day, these books keep her sane.
Books are many things to many people. What I find interesting, is when I read a book of fiction, and find truth in it for myself.
I agree on all points. The one that strikes me most, though, is your first point about "the experience of the author." There's that old adage, "write what you know." Regardless of how out of this world a novel may be, it reflects something profound about the author's conception of the human experience. It's similar to looking through someone's medicine cabinet, on a huge scale, because you can see into their fantasy world. It's about connecting with people on a profound level. To me, that's what the human experience is all about.
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Re: What's the use of stories that aren't even true?
Very interesting notion. Maybe the question should be reframed: why do we invent myths and fictions? It maybe that they aren't useful in the sense a tool is useful, but that only fiction can create the kind of connective tissue between people that they need (of course all art does this), and that there is too much specificity in the true.
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