Literature and Reality

That was an interesting post!  I was going to read it and finish my laundry, but it sparked so many ideas that I couldn't leave without dropping a few.

Mass-market paperback books (and I especially include LDS fiction) are geared to cost-benefit analysis: maximize the profits for the least amount of effort.  The novels are formulaic, for a good reason -- the formula sells novels, and the greater the sales, the greater the return on investment for the publishing house, the agent, and finally, the author.  The three elements of any popular novel guaranteed to hook the reader are: 1) strong physical action (mystery, espionage); 2) romantic interest / sex; 3) comedy.

The purpose is escape from reality.  Genre fiction, in itself, doesn't constitute literature -- though it can, at times, approach the level of art.

Art is not reality, and was never meant to be.  It is abstract, but that doesn't mean that it is divorced from reality itself.  It is like meta cognition -- "thinking about thinking."  Fine literature isn't so much about reality itself, as it is about the author's experience of it.  As such, it is the travel guide into the inner psychologies of the authors themselves as they think about the people they have experienced, the events in life as they have lived it or imagined it, and -- if it is truly excellent "literature" and not just fiction -- how these elements fit into a view of the world as a whole in a thematic context (or philosophy).

For instance, the books in the category I am reading now -- Ayn Rand and her Objectivist crowd, her philosophical foundations, the historical context of the novels -- do not constitute my reality.  However, the effect her novels and philosophy have had on the men and women I have interacted with, in a tangential way, still impact my reality, whether I like it or not.  In places I have worked, management have based their reward systems on Libertarian / Republican principles strongly influenced by Ayn Rand's capitalist philosophy and ethical definitions.  It may be a Utah thing ("redder than red", ironically), but I cannot escape rampant Libertarian / Republican ideologies the premises of which are repugnant to me.

The current work of fiction I am reading, "We the Living," contains characters I do not know.  The themes of totalitarianism, the conflict between Nietzsche's ideal of "Superman" and "Last Man" in conflict with the state, however, are blisteringly relevant to the culture in which I live and work.  It is ironic that the fiercely Republican / Libertarian capitalists with whom I have worked recently are more closely aligned with the Bolshevik communists I read about, than they are the capitalist superheroes of Ayn Rand's later novels.  "If you do not work, you will not eat," the Russian politburo says to the categorical bourgeoisie. "If you do not work, you will not eat," say LDS Republican capitalists, at the same time that they demand donations and conformity from any member who wishes to define themselves as such.

The characters in the novel are not real and never were, though they were based often upon persons who existed in reality.  The story is not real and never was, though it was based upon events that Ayn Rand personally experienced.  The theme of the story, its implications and ramifications, however, are relevant.  I could not consider it a waste of time to explore those issues, and the premises that govern the internal workings of human beings with which I interact, whether or not I agree with them.

I think that literature is like a religious tradition -- it is not so much about what the tradition itself offers those who question or participate in it, but what the believers themselves bring to the banquet table in participation.