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

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.

I'm reading MISTS OF AVALON for the first time, I'm embarrassed to say. It's great, a complex world visid with feeling, rendered in beautiful language.