My Weird Fictional Hangup

[unspeakablehorror]

I have kind of a weird hangup about fiction where I can have a negative reaction to associating characters or events in fiction too closely to  particular real life people or events.  I tend to prefer to make more generalized associations about behaviors or personalities or repeated  historical trends.  And I do understand both that this is a common thing to do in meta-analysis and why one might want to draw such specific parallels, but for reasons I don't quite understand, I feel immense discomfort doing that myself.  So if anyone wonders why I tend to avoid making specific comparisons like that when I write meta on fiction, that's why.  I don't necessarily feel this is something I need to get over any more than I feel that other people need to view fiction in this abstract way.  And as long as I can interpret it differently, I have no difficulty reading or watching things with such a specific interpretation, and am well aware that I do so regularly.  I just a.) don't interpret them in that way myself and/or b.) avoid thinking about the specific real-life interpretation when I'm actually reading/watching the work in question.

Comments

[chamerion]

To be honest I think a lot of comparisons in that vein are either pretty bad ones, or fail spectacularly to understand the difference between symbol and cipher (or both) - much of the power of fiction is that it can mean more than one thing at a time, so claiming that a certain element in a story stands for X And Only X, in a 1:1 sort of way, usually ends poorly.

So while I really appreciate those kinds of parallels in both analysis and fiction itself, I can understand why someone might have a negative reaction to them.

[unspeakablehorror]

Well, I certainly feel even more uncomfortable if I feel someone is making a really inaccurate or simplistic observation on whatever real life person or event is in question. But I do think there is value in more nuanced interpretations, particularly ones referencing specific events rather than specific people (references to specific real people seem to bother me the most). I just have a strong tendency to avoid them when I am writing or reading anything.

I think part of it might be that I feel certain aspects of reality are best addressed through nonfiction rather than fiction. I think the value we can get from stories and the value we can get from, say, an essay, is different. So that's part of it. But part of it I think isn't really rooted in a rational basis and I suspect it's probably some sort of coping mechanism.

[chamerion]

I definitely agree that the value we get from nonfiction and the value we get out of stories is different. But I guess I’ve always considered it a both/and question. Precisely because they’re suited for such different things, thinking about history through the lens of both fiction and nonfiction can give a slightly more holistic perspective on an issue, I think? Approaching that kind of thing primarily through literature is a bad idea. But if you read about WWI, and you know Tolkien fought in it, and then you read The Two Towers or The Fall of Gondolin, I think you understand something about the sensory and emotional experience of the Somme that you might not get from any number of history books. You should have grounding in the history books first, of course! But the fiction can complement the history. It’s sort of akin to the difference between studying and remembering: different ways of knowing about a subject.

That said I don’t think there’s anything wrong with preferring other kinds of interpretations. Like I said, imo a lot of the beauty and power of literature lies in it being a little bit like sculpture - it looks different from different angles, and there’s no one “right” angle from which to look at it. There are bad readings, definitely. But that doesn’t mean there’s only one good reading.

[unspeakablehorror]

Yes, I agree that fiction and nonfiction can complement each other in terms of improving our understanding of the world outside ourselves. It all depends on how it's applied.

And I certainly do agree that being open to alternate interpretations of fiction is important. The fact that there are bad readings doesn't prevent there from being good readings that simply make us feel uncomfortable.