The High Art of Literary Fiction

Fiction, the pundits tell me, comes in two kinds - literary fiction and commercial fiction. Commercial fiction is the kind that helps you while away a few hours suitably entertained. On the other hand, literary fiction is as Kafka famously stated "an axe to break the frozen sea inside us" In these days of ardent quantifying - page ranks, neurobiological metrics and mining of personal data - the question is asked about what use is the "breaking of the frozen sea inside us". Two recent studies by social psychologists ( http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/i-know-how-youre-feeling-i-read-chekhov/?_r=0, and http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0055341) have proved that the reading of literary fiction, at least in in its immediate penumbra, increases emotional intelligence or empathy. These findings, like all findings of studies in the soft sciences can easily be questioned) but that to, my mind, is besides the point. "Breaking the frozen sea inside us" is in itself an affirmation of life and increases the intensity of all that you feel. If it is private grief that you are battling with, it can find you a resonance that relieves the painful edge of grief suffered alone. If it is failure that is depressing you or success that is blinding you, it can help you laugh at both. The utility of literary fiction is, to my mind in the realm of the personal rather than in the lately-much-to-emphasized realm of the social. I read a lot. At any point of time,I have multiple books on my "being read" list - fiction/non-fiction, prose/poetry, literary/commercial (You can find my reading list and share yours on Goodreads - the "Facebook" for book readers). However my pace of reading goes up and down and recently I find myself returning to the voracious mode. Also,after a couple of years of favoring non-fiction, I find myself returning to fiction. In the past 6 weeks I have finished reading six books - The Lowlands by Jhumpa Lahri, Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon, Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil, Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel, Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe and The Flamethowers by Rachel Kushner and 80% through with a seventh - The Goldfinch by Donna Trott. That is way beyond my average pace of reading and in these six weeks the four non-fiction books on my "being read" list have listlessly languished there. Everyone of the seven books have been a joy to read. They are of varying merit. I would put Goldfinch right on top,followed by Bring Up The Bodies, followed by Back to Blood, followed by The Lowlands, followed by the Flamethrowers, followed by Bleeding Edge and trailing last would be Narcopolis (For those of you interested in such things, I plan to write brief reviews of each book on Goodreads). But everyone of them, in it's own way, helped me attain an angle of repose after a period of high emotional and physical discomfort. In fact I believe that this torrent of reading has been my sub-conscious coping mechanism. In fact my top-of-the-list book ,The Goldfinch is a masterpiece that,I believe,will find its place among the best of the decade. However I suspect it is on top of my list not just because it is extremely well written, has masterly character sketches or an unflagging narrative intensity but because it finds great emotional resonance with me. The book is set in circumstances and locales that are foreign to me and nobody would catch a glimpse of me in any of the main characters in the book. So where does the resonance come from? I think it comes from the depths of the sub-conscious where empathy goes beyond the apparent and where our deepest self and therefore Kafka's "frozen self" lurks. I am quite aware that literary fiction is not everybody' cup of tea. There are many of us who find other means of unfreezing our deeper selves. For some its treks into nature. For some others it is hobbies like playing an instrument or singing or acting or dancing or cooking or, writing or, apparently with a large section of humanity, talking/ socializing. For the lucky few among us who have found an vocation it is working. The one difference you will notice is nearly all other means of "unfreezing your self" are when you are in an "active" mode - you are doing something- while the claim of this post is that an apparently passive activity like reading good literary fiction can match the intensity an benefit of doing something active. That, I believe, is because in reading each one of us creates the context and is therefore are in an active "creative" mode. And when you are reading a good work of literary fiction you are creating at the deepest level of emotional intensity s and therein lies it power. “It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” ― Oscar Wilde And now for some lighter moments with and about readers courtesy of the New Yorker's Cartoon Bank: