Caleb Fox

WHY FICTION?

People often tell me, with a note of pride, "I only read non-fiction." I wish the tone was sadness and disappointment.

Information about the world is useful. It allows us to drive where we want to go, shop intelligently, find treatment for our ailments, and a billion of other handy things. Yet it's mostly about the outer world. Even a memoir is limited to what is or was, rather than what we can dream.

A well-done novel is a dazzling dream. John Fowles (THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN) wrote that a novel is a way of telling others how it feels to be a human being and walk the earth in your time. It is, and that's a lot. Notice that Fowles speaks of revealing a world that is ultimately inner, the writer’s most fundamental feelings about himself and the world.

But a novel is even more--an act of imagination, preferably as audacious as possible. It is a grand flourish of creative play. The great reward it offers readers, on the highest level, is the joy of mental frolicking and cavorting. It is to non-fiction what dance is to walking.

Also, a novel shows, with amazing intimacy, an inner world. 'This is what I think is fun. This is what I fear. This is what I love.' No compilation of facts, whether a medical chart in the doctor’s office or a profile in the NEW YORK TIMES, could be so revealing, or make the reader EXPERIENCE another human being's mind and life.

If Johnny reads only non-fiction, he will be a very dull boy.

--Caleb Fox

Travelers on the way to Athens had to submit to being placed on Procrustes’ bed. If too short, you were stretched out. If too long, you got hacked down to size. Otherwise no Athens.

That’s how cultures cut citizens to fit their ideals. The fortunate fit naturally, but most people suffer.

Our culture loves the outgoing, self-confident man, the quarterback or colonel. Most artists don’t match—they’re too emotional, too dreamy, too flamboyant, too this or too that. Artists are different, and this society does not love differences.

There’s the choice: Conform and succeed, or be guided by your inner compass, and...?
Tough choice.

Some writers try to escape it by putting on one face in public, another in private. When we walk that road, we live lives of pretense and self-betrayal. We constantly deny our own truths to others. If we play this game, our lives are a lie and a self-betrayal.

For any writer, including those of us who write fantasy, the dilemma is painful. You can be a hack, punching out words in hope of dollars and fame. Or you can shape your stories to your own sense of what is beautiful, and thus expose your real self to the world.

That takes courage. I salute every artist who does it.

--Caleb Fox

Why do we read fantasy? Why don't we stick with realists like Steinbeck and Hemingway? Or limit ourselves to non-fiction?

Sunoya, the medicine woman of ZADAYI RED, has a spirit animal as a guide. If you had a spirit animal, what would yours be? Mine's a wolf.