4 ms·
it's amazing what people will do to avoid reading a novel
by torh 5y ago
it's amazing what people will do to avoid reading a novel
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI think it's amazing people read novels. Even if I had infinite time I'm not sure I would. Not that I'm against them! A great novel is a beautiful thing, and I'm glad someone is out there to enjoy them.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wellthisisgreat 5y agoAudiobooks are a good middle ground if the voice actor matches your perception of the narrator.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI'm a voracious consumer of podcasts and the audio edition of the Economist. Alas, it leaves me no time for fiction.
- torh 5y agoI might. But for now, I found that I prefer to read biographies. They just seems to give me more joy.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoGreat point. I love biography. The myriad details that don't matter at all to me if someone made them up are absolutely fascinating when they're (more likely) real.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoThe crucial ideas in a piece of fiction, I find I generally can absorb much faster in some other format. It's true that the flavor of the world and the human interactions is lost. But I have an actual world to provide those. I can see the argument that my experience of human interactions is a biased and incomplete sample. That's clearly true. But they are the relevant ones to my experience. And I'm always disappointed at the bias in the human interactions portrayed by novels. They are almost invariably driven by unrealistically evil people, and the stakes are typically too high to bear any relevance to most of human life. Most conflict is between people none of whom can be well characterized as evil. There is substantial variation in peoples' values, and in the information they have, and those are the important drivers of what people do. Damn, I should write a novel.
- Jtsummers 5y ago> And I'm always disappointed at the bias in the human interactions portrayed by novels. They are almost invariably driven by unrealistically evil people, and the stakes are typically too high to bear any relevance to most of human life. Most conflict is between people none of whom can be well characterized as evil. There is substantial variation in peoples' values, and in the information they have, and those are the important drivers of what people do. This very much depends on both the author and the genre of fiction. Not every fiction novel even has a notion of "evil" (or outright evil, there may be characters who are "bad" in some sense or the antagonist, but not outright evil in their nature or quality in an over-the-top fashion). From your description of fiction it sounds largely like the fantasy genre in particular which is very often written as good vs evil kind of stories (though not universally, just very common). Other genres or other writers within that genre are often more interesting.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoYou're right, evil is not a universal plot driver. But at least one of exceptional evil or exceptionally high stakes drive the majority of fantasy, sci-fi, crime, horror, and political novels. And not without reason -- if you want drama, they give you that. But I don't think they often do much to usefully inform a person about anything.
- yottalove 5y agoOften you must lie in order to tell the truth. After all, language is a poor simulacrum of life, but, then, we use it else "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" and forced to use shadow puppets deep in Plato's cave.
- spookybones 5y agoThis comment reads as someone who doesn’t read much fiction. Your misconception is that fiction is merely a capsule for the delivery of ideas rather than being a multifaceted work. It is like someone who proclaims that cuisine is not the best delivery of nutrients, that it’s much easier to blend ingredients, and then, impressed with his assessment, proclaims that he should make his own smoothie.