Today we welcome Garth Stein, author of the bestselling and beloved The Art of Racing in the Rain, and the just-released Young Adult novel Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog. In this inspiring guest post, Garth makes an impassioned argument for the value of reading fiction. His thoughtful words are directly in line with our Read Forever campaign, and we're pleased to present them here on Unbound.
The Need for Fiction
A couple of months ago, I was reading my copy of Scientific American Mind, and I came across an article which was especially provocative. It was about narcissism.
The article said that in the past 30 years, college students’ self-reported empathy has declined rapidly, and during the same time period, their self-reported narcissism has reached new heights. In addition, Americans, as a society, have become socially isolated, more likely to live alone, and less likely to join groups. This isolation has precipitated a drop in empathy, which makes perfect sense, of course. The less we interact with other people, the less we understand their points of view.
Granted, the data used in the article was taken from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, which is a 28-question test designed to glean one’s empathetic responsiveness by grading (on a scale of 0-4) one’s responses questions such as: “In emergency situations, I feel apprehensive and ill-at-ease,” or “Becoming extremely involved in a good book or movie is somewhat rare for me.”
I’m very skeptical of these kinds of personality tests. I remember my sister taking them before she had brain surgery for her epilepsy, and we went over some of the questions together: True or False: “My neck spots with red often.” True or False: “I have to urinate no more often than others.”
This is how the exacting science of psychology makes sense of our world.
Whatever the methods, suffice it to say that the data gathered from this particular test indicate that we have become, over the past 30 years, a nation of self-obsessed, cold-hearted loners.
Here’s where the article gets interesting. Guess what else has declined precipitously since 1980? Americans who read literature for pleasure. We are now below the 50% mark for the first time ever. With the sharpest decline occurring among college students.
The conclusion of this article--which you have likely already concluded for yourself--is that there is a direct correlation between reading fiction and empathy.
A novel is like a puzzle. As soon as we start reading it, we begin trying to figure it out. We compare our own reactions to certain situations with the reactions of the characters in the story. When these reactions differ, we are compelled to put ourselves into the shoes of other people, and see things from a different perspective. The more often we do this, the easier it is for us to see universal truths and gain insight into the human condition--not just our personal condition, but the condition of other people in this world. This is empathy.
Reading is not a passive form of entertainment. Reading demands the full attention of the reader, and it demands that the reader participate in the experience. In a sense, the act of reading becomes a social act. The reader must give up something in order to read. A reader must give attention and time; he must focus on something outside of himself, which in turn, will reveal something about himself.
Fiction is not supposed to be a photograph; it is not a realistic snap-shot of life. Fiction is highly impressionistic. It is an orchestrated, choreographed representation using both realistic and un- or hyper-realistic elements. It allows us to manipulate situations to maximize the dramatic impact, and therefore to provoke the greatest catharsis in our readers.
Because we can control all the elements at work, fiction can bring order to a world that usually appears chaotic. And once immersed in the ordered world of a particular fiction, we can make sense of things because we are seeing them from a new perspective. And this is the key....
We know all the stories. We’ve read them in centuries of books, seen them on stage, watched them on TV and in the movies. Another family drama is just another family drama. Where it becomes different is in the perspective offered by the writer. A unique angle, a different way of looking at the same old story, so that the impact of the drama can be played out fresh and new, and so can have the power to transform the reader.
Because what is writing, what is literature if it is not transformative? I believe that every writer has an obligation, a moral imperative, to provoke a reaction in his reader. We are asking our readers to give us their time and their attention; we have a responsibility to put their time and attention to good use! We need to at least attempt to make the reading of our fictional world a transformative experience.
When we lose our empathy, we become inwardly-focused on a superficial level, and we become more narcissistic. We accept the injustices and the imbalances we see around us as a given. We say things like “Sometimes bad things happen to good people,” and we diminish our own ability to change the world. We simply stop trying
I think we all have an obligation to be idealists--not just writers and artists, but all people. We all should be instigators and provocateurs. We should believe that what we think, what we say, and what we do matters. We should trust the extent of the impact we have on the world around us. We all must stand up and change the things we see that need to be changed, and not just wait around for others to do it for us.
Reading fiction makes you a more empathetic person, better able to listen to the words of those you disagree with, better able to put yourself into the shoes of those with whom you differ, better able to see the world from a different perspective.
And if fiction has the power to transform a single reader, fiction has the power to transform the entire world.
We need fiction. Now more than ever.
NOOK owners: go to shop and search for “Garth Stein” to download his books.
article written by JeremyCesarec
