Why Fiction?

I'd wanted to write about fiction for a while. Most of my reading tends to be fiction of some sort, which has almost always invited the occasional inquiry (why?) coupled with an almost always unsolicited recommendation for Sapiens. The fault has probably been mine so far - it's not something I've thought particularly seriously about, and therefore the discursive replies I usually conjure up don't really help, either. So I'm going to attempt and work something coherent out, but this is still going to be exploratory for me as well.

Like most people who tend to read from an early age, I too started off with the popular fantasy titles of the early 2000s. Although I think I've outgrown them now, I still harbour a soft spot for some of those books I had read during my own formative years - perhaps because they were seminal in developing this habit that's largely stayed constant throughout and helped me tons. I did flirt briefly with the usual autobiographies handed out during high school, but preferred instead to read poetry and fiction (from coursework, and otherwise) much more during that time. Reading fiction - particularly fantasy and YA stuff - was sort of an easy escape for me; so while the school faculty should have perhaps intervened and asked me to partake in activities more befitting of a teenage boy, they instead chose to honour me with the “Voracious Reader” title - at a time when I didn't quite know what voracious meant.

My relationship with fiction graduated (and possibly matured) after entering college. At the time of going into my undergraduate studies, I had expected to mostly spend my waking hours figuring out computers; so of course I was delighted after finding out that an entire humanities track for literature and philosophy was on offer. This gave me (a) an escape and (b) a legitimate reason to be lost in books during a regular semester. Of course, I was still reading (mostly) made up stories, but there had been a thematic shift. No longer was I reading about grander worlds with complex magical systems, nor embarking on long arduous journeys and preparing myself for the grand battle. I found modernist fiction arguably more sombre, based in and on everyday plights than the monomyth. Anachronistic period dramas that sometimes delved in the human psyche left me intrigued, to say the least. I also found that some of these authors were experimenting with language in a very offbeat way which felt borderline unconstitutional, but still kept me curious. For example, stream of consciousness as a narrative device felt simultaenously both annoying and engrossing (my feelings about it have remained largely the same since). All of that's to say, this new kind of fiction felt rewarding and enjoyable in a way I hadn't quite expected fiction would, ever. Some of my peers and friends found this weird back then, something that was perhaps portending a lot of how people would react to my reading habits later on in life.

And then post(graduation → modern). 21 year old me found the term “postmodern” sort of seductive and highbrowed, something I could perhaps mention at a dinner table to instantly gain social currency and intellectual influence. So while it's highly likely that I was intentionally looking out for postmodern literature on the internet to serve that end, I like to think that my main motivations were perhaps rather uncomplicated: as a newly atomised individual suddenly confluent with existential loneliness in a new city, I sort of gravitated towards postmodern fiction because Victorian era discourses on suffrage no longer helped me cope with the disillusionment early adulthood rewards you with. Self help books were a bigger disaster, and I've only abhorred them since. Experiments with other sedatives one gets (mostly) peer pressured into - drugs, relationships, sex, therapy, alcohol, and nicotine - only proved that peer tested solutions are mostly fuck-all shots in the dark. Philosophy was perhaps alright, it at least helped me develop the vocabulary necessary to understand my own mental concerns better. But it was also largely an academic exercise exerted post academia, and there's only so much dryness I'm willing to power through while also handling everyday adulthood. I found postmodern contemporary fiction - especially stories about everyday people - much more rewarding and therapeutic. Stories that take new risks in their narrative structure and style, but are still mostly about the boring stuff. There's no grand resolution, no big battle, and no looming evil. I would hazard a guess that these stories are perhaps more about embracing than escaping, a big lie to tell some fundamental truth.

This kind of fiction for me was also sometimes deeply personal, slowly robbing me of my own solipsistic beliefs and subconsciously helping me become somewhat lesser self absorbed. It's been a lesson in empathy - a lesson built upon dialogue, monologues, and exposition so internal and raw that nationality, races, allegiances, and gender simply stopped mattering. Reading books about made up but also very real confused little humans in the 21st century is a rather chaotic but humbling experience: awkward, funny, mirthless, and poignant; but ultimately incredibly meaningful. Perhaps since I've practically always read since I was very young, I've never really approached books from a utilitarian standpoint (it's kind of hard to learn how to make balanced value judgments when your biggest concern is whatever's going on at the playground). So even though I don't think there's any fringe benefit I can pitch right now to get more people (or even you, the person reading this) to give contemporary fiction a serious try, I do think that it's helped me immensely in looking at people beyond simple commodities that live and die on each other's phones and screens - and exist solely to satisfy their own selfish desires and concerns. The fact that you, the person reading this, is about as complex as I can ever be, is perhaps a very banal and trite observation - the kind of cliché that almost invariably makes people roll their eyes and invites off-colour riposte. But it was a powerful realisation for me, and has since helped me in developing and understanding my own relationships with other people better, while also precipitating a newfound respect for language - through which we can only hope to maybe capture a small percentage of the aforementioned complexity. Personal differences exist, sometimes, most of the times, to no fault of any of the involved parties. Acknowledging complexity of human exchanges therefore has made me pay far lesser attention to things my already sick head would've most likely spent an entire sleepless night anxiously playing and rewinding and editing out.

And then these books manage to do all this while also being incredibly funny - the kind of banter that's not just sardonic and sarcastic back-and-forth. While I do find sarcasm occasionally appropriate, most of the times though (to me) it's incredibly lazy and petulant. None of which are original or terribly informative critiques, but that's besides the point. The point simply is that being puckish with language in more caring than caustic ways feels like an incredibly challenging task to me, especially since most humour now is either self-aware irony ad infinitum or stand-up routines parroted out. Easy to capitulate.

That's probably the meat and potatoes of it. And that's what I think of the kind of fiction I have been enjoying over the past couple of years. I don't know if I'll be disillusioned by even this in some time, but for now I think I've sort of found my literary niche. If you've read till here, you can probably gauge that this is something I care deeply about. I really do believe that fiction grounded in reality is a very underrated and overlooked cure to the everyday egoism and basic self-centredness all of us experience on some level - and also a reminder that our internal narratives about our own personal suffering are neither special nor unique (most of the times). To close this, here's a small list of books I really adore and would recommend (in no particular order):

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill.
Mirrorwork by Salman Rushdie & Elizabeth West.^[1]
White Teeth & On Beauty by Zadie Smith.^[2]
God Bless You, Mr Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut.
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata.
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace.
Atomised by Michel Houellebecq.^[3]
Em and The Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto.

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