THE ART OF READING FICTION

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth."

                                                                            - Albert Camus

 This was supposed to be another football post. I had planned to write about youth in football, and why youngsters were not getting a chance to hone their skills at the top clubs, and the rather quintessential steps being taken by youngsters to make sure they got their chance at the top level.

 This is a post on fiction. On why reading fiction is important, on why fiction is the contorted mirror held in front of facts, on why, ultimately, it often acts as the envelope in which facts are kept, safely, waiting for someone to open it, and take them out, for their perusal, at any convenient time. 

"Truth is stranger than fiction," or so goes the famous Mark Twain phrase, and that is as apt as possible. Before expanding upon anything else, I would like to explain why I read fiction. I began reading fiction because of compulsion. My school library had a plethora of Enid Blyton books, and my mother decided that instead of lolling around during the summer vacations, I should do something productive. She took out a Secret Seven book, and gave it to me, and I was hooked. Mind you, I was eight, so I wasn't carrying the weight of the world on my shoulder, so I read in excess. Reading them, I was transported into England while sitting in my bedroom, and I was Peter, and Jake and Janet, and Scamper, and I was eating the food, the hallmark, it seems, of any good Blyton book, while attending the meetings, those secret meetings, for which you required a password, without which you could not enter. I was mesmerised with each and every aspect of the book. Looking back, I don't think I could go through the paces again, which makes it even more special. 

While I entered this world without being asked, I continued reading fiction because it was fun. I loved the worlds I entered, the monsters and heroes, the detectives and the gods. It was a world of unquenchable imagination, and a world where the rules made sense. 

If fiction is a building, then it is made up of bricks called facts, built on the road of truth, with clouds of imagination hovering over it. Fiction without facts is like a body without a heart; it would fail to exist. 

Many of the stories in the Song of Ice and Fire are built from facts, as George RR Martin often attests. The Red Wedding is based on a true event, The Black Dinner, which happened in Scotland during the 15th century. The fall of Old Valyria is often likened to the Fall of Rome. 

And sometimes, it is not necessary that all fiction contain truth, and truth only. We are not judges, the books are not witnesses, and it is not an execution. Sometimes, the simple act of sheer enjoyment is enough justification to read something. That's the primary reason I continued to read fiction, that's why I got into comics, and that's why I have started watching manga. Not everything has to be dissected, and examined. They are all stories, and ultimately stories last longer than humans.