The Reality of Fiction

My daughter Sara and I attended a storytelling at the local library tonight. She sat on the floor near the front with her friends and I sat in the back with mine. The stories were nothing exceptional, and the only running theme I could determine was that they all involved cholesterol. Bacon was mentioned in each one. Since these were all works of fiction, I figured that the person telling the story was just hungry. You can do that when you tell fiction - wing it to reflect your mood. If the kids had been little screaming monsters my guess is that the stories would have involved alcohol.

It was during the last story that things got weird. The storyteller leaned forward in his chair and began what he described as the most scary story of the evening. It was about a girl named Sara (or Sarah, you can never tell in narration) who was adopted, had a pink bicycle, was forgotten at school by her parents and had a fiery temper. I could see my daughter sitting there relating to all those attributes but the last one. I could relate to all of them. And yes, there was an incident with the school bus today that caused me to wait at the wrong bus stop, leaving her abandoned for a brief period of time, but that's another story and not entirely my fault. All-in-all a strange series of coincidences that caused me to take more interest in the tale being told.

This got me thinking. In the absence of our own involvement in a work of fiction, why do we hang on the next word, or scene? What is it that draws us into something which doesn't exist in reality. As a plot unfolds, the author, director or narrator can, on a whim, take us in a different direction, a different place, a different time, and we would never know. Why as spectators do we let ourselves be manipulated in such a way? The scholarly answer is that we read or watch fiction to be transported, to sever our ties with reality and escape. I don't entirely buy this. To me this makes fiction sound like a narcotic. If this were the case heroin would be more effective and involve less eye strain. No, I think I tonight I discovered the real appeal of fiction. The fictional work is a window into the mind of the author. Reading fiction is an act of voyeurism. In the final chapter of a book, you're not reading to see what the characters will do. They can do anything - live, die, repent, it doesn't matter. What the reader wants to know is what is the author thinking? What's going on in her mind that will cause a character to do one thing over another? If we only read for the sake of the story then why do we care one way or another about the fictional outcome of a character's situation?

In the HBO series The Sopranos, the very last second, of the very last episode caused an entire viewing nation to shout a collective "What the f#*@k" at their televisions. This wasn't because of anything that happened to the characters in the story. It was because the writer suddenly pulled the shade down on the window of his mind. As an audience we were caught peaking under the tent. Hauled away like children as the last enticing glimpse into the writer's most personal space was blocked from view. We all crave to know more about others than we know about ourselves. This is because wh...