WHY READ OR WRITE FICTION?

Some suggested answers are as follows:

“Yet we do not read fiction for information, informative though it can be. Unlike journalism, history, or sociology, fiction does not give us facts snug in their accredited truth, to be accepted and absorbed like pills, for our undoubted good; we make fiction true, as we read it. Fiction can be poison to our minds, as it did those of Madame Bovary and Don Quixote. It extends our world, and any extension is a risk. The self we are left with when we close the book may not be a useful, marketable one. Fiction offers to enlarge our sense of possibilities, of potential freedom, and freedom is dangerous. The bourgeois capitalist world, compared with the medieval hierarchies it supplanted and with the communist hierarchies that would supplant it, is a dangerous one, where failure can be absolute and success may be short-lived. The novel and the short story rose with the bourgeoisie, as exercises in democratic feeling and in individual adventure. Pamela, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe – what do they tell us but that our entrepreneurism, on one level or another, may bear fruit? If fiction is in decline, it is because we have lost faith in the capacity of the individual to venture forth and suffer the consequences of our dreams. Myself, I feel that this most flexible and capacious of artistic forms still holds out its immense space to our imaginations, still answers to a hope within us of more adventure. What is important, if not the human individual? And where can individuality be better confronted, appraised, and enjoyed than in fiction’s shapely lies?"--an extract from “The Importance of Fiction,” by John Updike

 

“When you read a novel, you might identify with the character in it. And from there you begin to reflect on your own life, and the world around you.”

– Lim Sulin, as quoted in The Straits Times (30-Sep-2002)

 

"For me, literature is, above all, a journey of self-discovery. In every novel or poem I read, in every play that I watch, I learn that little bit more about being human.

 

In comedy, I find an education in the value of laughter. In chiding the clown for his inadequacies, I realise my own. In tragedy, the cardinal sins of heroes and villains alike remind me of my own frailties, my capacity for malevolence.

 

Either way, I grow more sensitive to the way mankind works, I become more aware of my own nature. I am made a little bit more discerning, and therefore, either more responsible, or more culpable.

 

The beauty of literature is that you don't have to study it to appreciate it. You don't have to be able to write a 5,000-word A-plus thesis on Shakespeare to recognise the pertinence of his plays. You just have to be human."

-- Kenneth Kwek

Excerpt from "Embark on a journey of self-discovery with the all-encompassing and timeless discipline of Literature" in The Straits Times.

 

                                   

"What's the point of deciphering the human genome if we don't even understand what makes us human? Humanity is not a series of codes you can break. A man at the point of breakdown, the heartbreak of a first love -- these, to me mean more to us as humans."

-- Felix Cheong, as quoted in The ALUMNUS (Apr-2001)

 

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

-- William Faulkner

Excerpt from his Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature

December 10, 1950, Stockholm, Sweden.

 

“Art grows. It is a living thing. Writing must be a living thing, growing from the heart and soul of the writer. Many will never achieve it. But to produce any honest, real writing is a great career, a fine profession, a service to mankind, and a magnificent life.”

-- Adela Rogers St. Johns

Excerpt from “Tips from a Master,” in How to Write a Story and Sell It.

 

“I have come to believe that there are no new photos and few new stories, only unusual recombinations of things that have been told before. But what is new, and fresh and original is the author’s lens through which these situations are viewed. Our gift, and consequently our responsibility as writers, is to view life situations in our naturally unique way and report the truth about their meanings and values to the reading public so they can have fresh insight into human condition. We are each unique in the universe and, therefore, so are the stories we tell.” -- Elizabeth Engstrom

*** THE END IS BEYOND US ***

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