A few months ago, in a short essay on reading that I had written in reflection of the recent turns in my evolution as a reader, I wrote briefly on how, starting off as someone who was focused mostly on reading histories, biographies and other pieces on nonfiction, I have slowly gotten around to adding more literary and fictional works into my reading diet.
In recent weeks, I have come to the belief that my reading experience and pleasure would be best served by focusing even more on literature, and to reduce even further the mix of nonfiction works in my reading queue.
Let me explain.
Like many, I spent most of my youth believing that “nonfiction” means what it says on the cover: that by reading works of history and biography and science, one would get a better appreciation for the reality of the world that surrounds us. What better way to prepare oneself for the world, than to gain deeper knowledge and appreciation of how that world works: its grand design, the outsized historical figures that direct the currents of politics and nations, the workings of human societies and the vast natural endowments that surround and support those human civilisations, the animals and the trees, and the physics of pebbles as well as planets.
By contrast, the very term “fiction” conveys a certain sense of fakery – why should I spend my time being immersed in the doings and goings of made-up characters in some random person’s imagination? And “literature” added another sheen of (what I then perceived as) stuffiness and pomposity around works of fiction; as if there was a certain class of nonfiction that ought to be elevated above others, by the simple device of approbation from peer writers and the reading public. “Apa yang bagus sangat?” as one would say.
As I mentioned, it was only after marrying a committed lover of literature, that my attitude towards this dichotomy was finally broken. And in more recent weeks, I find myself feeling even more committed to the value and pleasure of reading good literature.
One could ask: what do you think of as “good literature”?
The answer to this, I think, rests in what I believe to be the essential nature of the contribution of literature to the human spirit: by dramatising human dilemmas and struggles and travails in fictional terms (which are often just thinly-veiled depictions of real events), the best authors are able to capture in words and on paper, however fleetingly, essential and timeless truths about human nature and the struggle of existence.
As I mentioned to a good friend recently over coffee, in nowhere else but in literature, I believe, can one human being truly immerse themselves in someone else’s mind and consciousness, to walk in someone else’s shoes. I am thinking here of Victor Hugo’s depiction of Jean Valjean’s internal struggle on whether to give himself up in place of someone else who was mistakenly arrested by the authorities. I am thinking of James Agee’s masterful narration of the inner monologue of Ralph Follet, the alcoholic brother struggling against his addiction and self-loathing. I am reminded here of Tolstoy’s Pierre Bezukhov, and his long journey towards finding himself amidst the hedonism and travails of early 19th century Moscow. Moments in Proust and Austen and Eliot when a smattering of letters and punctuation marks and lines can come together to paint a picture of utter realism in the lives of people who are recognisably human in their frailties and concerns and inner doubts.
This is why I read literature. For pleasure, yes, and to while away the time, certainly. But more than anything, it is through literature, I believe, that we can best get past the superficialities of our mundane existence, to attempt to touch the very core of what makes us truly human.