The Futility of Fiction
Posted by majutsu on April 30, 2008
I once again had some extra time on my hands, and I vainly tried to fill it by reading fiction. I have had a lifetime struggle with fiction. In school, it is always assigned and held up as an essential human academic venue. But I could see only it’s futility, and furthermore, I derive no pleasure from it. Feeling, however, the pressure of public opinion, I periodically try to force myself to appreciate fiction and literature. I have tried the Dickens, Twain, Melville, as well as the Vonnegut, Dick, Asimov, etc. Whatever genre or time period, I make it about 1/3 of the way through any fiction before I am irritated and bored. Now, I do appreciate music, visual art, and poetry, and by extension cinema (which is mostly visual and musical with the thinnest butter of story), but fiction per se has always remained opaque to me.
Well, having some time on my hands, I set about to read fiction. Since I like movies and science, I figured maybe science fiction would be more successful, so I attempted to read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, said to be one of the greats of speculative fiction, with three pages of glowing critical reviews as a preface. About a third of the way through, the book is already in the recycling/donation bins outside. As to the specifics of this book and why it tired me so, I shall go into some detail. First, it must be remembered that this book is supposed to be 12,000 years in the future. It must also be remembered that this book was written in 1951, and I will judge his “world-building” according to that time frame. In the beginning, there is a trial of the psycho-historians. These historians are predicting a doom (sort of like global-warming scientists), and the government is accusing them of having political motives rather than scientific for their studies. They are cross-examining Hari Seldon as to the number of scientists in his employ, to prove that his actions are political and not scientific. The government asks him how many scientists are in his employ. Seldon replies with a small number, and the government quotes a figure four or more times that. To this (in paraphrase) Seldon replies that those are just women, children, and support staff (other races/slaves). So, even though Asimov should have been aware that M. Curie won Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry, and women had won the right to vote in his youth in the twenties, he goes on to create a world 12,000 years in the future where women are mentally incapable of being scientists and have no political power? And though Gauss made important mathematical contributions as a pre-teen, children cannot make contributions to mathematics in 12,000 years? And the same lack of consideration of the intelligence or political weight of non-white races is still present so far in the future despite Asimov’s awareness of folk such as Langston Hughes, the Harlem renaissance, and the earliest blooms of the civil rights movement in a decade? This is not a credible world. In the very next section, a great worker on the Galactic Encyclopedia is cataloging his findings on paper with a stylus, even though the first computers with punch cards are already in play in the 50s, and Max Mathews is already doing his early acoustic research on early IBM machines. This is not a credible world. Furthermore, despite the 50’s fascination with the glorious future of plastics and synthetic materials, which is well known to a man well-versed in science such as Asimov, there is a grave discussion regarding mining and the necessity of steel for every construction paragraphs later. This is not a credible world 20 years in the future, let alone 12,000 years. Also, the aliens gather into a Christian church with a Reverend next. When we live on a planet where few people give a shit about a psychotic Jew who lived 2000 years ago, we are expected to believe that distant planets 12,000 years in the future will embrace Christianity? Furthermore, at one point a character mentions that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but that the ancient wise man who discovered this (Einstein) has been forgotten. But a meaningless Jew 3000 years prior to Einstein with no contribution to human knowledge is remembered and revered? Talk about Mr. Asimov’s distorted personal lens. The fact is that this great of science fiction creates a sloppy, unbelievable and tiresome world with no credibility heavily weighed down by his lack of vision, racism, sexism, failure to understand ecosystems or holism, and a genuine lack of appreciation of the true nature of scientific research or the interaction of science, society and government. Not to mention that the two-dimensional characters, lacking convincing psychological motivations, sexual or self-affirming actions, stuck in a third-world industrial hell, are mere cardboard cutouts to move a facile plot of no significance forward. Like most speculative fiction, it seems to be the play-world of pre-teen power fantasies projected at large with a curious disregard for other people as people versus mere manipulations for the author. I feel sorry for these people’s families.
To me, drama or supposedly realistic fiction suffers from the same problems. The characters are often abnormally aware of the importance of their mundane action, like visiting the parson for tea. In real life, when you go to someone’s house for coffee, you don’t know that very act is part of some grand drama. Some days it may be mundane, some days it may be the beginning of a complicated drama involving the bombing of some buildings in New York with airplanes. You can’t savor the moment a priori with psychic awareness the way novelists do. In some ways, the comic book American Splendor by Harvey Pekar is much more convincing than any work of literature, as the mundane, like finding a jazz album we are searching for, is the drama and grand event to us individually, though absolutely mundane to everyone else. Furthermore, the characters in literature, due usually to the narrator’s grand god-like awareness, have entirely too much knowledge of the contents and motivations of other people’s heads. Whereas, in real life, I am often unaware of the contents of my wife’s head while we speak about some grave and serious matter. Also, there is the constant plague that none of this is real. The people aren’t real. The events aren’t real. They certainly aren’t going to help me build a fence or feed my children. And given the lack of verisimilitude of the characters, their awareness of others, and their prescience of the significance of the mundane, I question as so many blindly accept, that such input could in any way help you deal with real people in real life with any authenticity. I believe fiction sets up an arrogant, solipsistic world for the heavy reader that is flagrantly anti-social in that other people are mere objects for the manipulation and enhancement of experience of the self-centered.
I suppose that is why I think religion is stupid. Religion is fiction. The Bible is fiction. The world was not created in six days. The circumference of a circle is Pi times the diameter, not three times (1 Kings 7:23). Hare do not chew their cud. (Lev 11:6) There was no world-wide flood. Bats are not birds. (Lev 14:11) The sun does not move or go around the earth, but as we know from Copernicus, vice versa. (Joshua 10:12, judges 5:31 and many others) The earth rotates on its axis. It is not still. (Chron 16:30) Human thought is in the brain, not the heart. (Esther 6:6) And that is a short list of Biblical errata, as everyone knows. These are just stupid, made-up stories by pre-scientific people. The Koran is fiction. There are not eleven planets. (Koran 12:4) The sun does not move, the earth is not flat, and the sun does not go to bed in a muddy spring. (18:86, 90) The earth is not still, but rotates on its axis. (27:61) The moon is not its own light, but reflects light of the sun. (71:16) Again, the Koran is a fiction. The Koran is just more stupid, made-up stories by a backward, pre-scientific people.
Only fundamentalists try to say the Bible or Koran is true, the word of God. But for a omniscient being, God doesn’t seem to know much about the world he created, suggesting these are not God’s stories, but the stories of men who lived in ignorance of reality. Many believers, understanding the need to not fly in the face of reality, prefer to say that these stories are poetry, and while not literally true, still have an important core message. Let us look at the core message of both the Bible and the Koran then. They, fortuitously, have the same core message, so we may dispense with both of them at once. Both the Bible and the Koran say that God exists and created the earth and man. When you die, you will be buried and stay there. At some future time, God will blow the whistle for “end of game,” the dead will be pulled out of their graves, and the living and the dead will be judged on their actions and belief affiliations. The good will go to paradise or reward, and the bad will go to the good ol’ lake of fire. First of all, there is no god. Second of all, the dead will not be resurrected. Third of all, there is no punishment or reward. Both scriptures said the end was very near, but it never came and it never will come. If there is an “end of game” for the people of earth, it will be when the sun red giants or subsequently supernovas, and we will all be in a lake of fire, regardless of what book you read or what club you belonged to. And this time of demise for the planet and the heavens is so far in the future that it is entirely possible that we may simply colonize a habitable planet or man-made space colony. So I suppose the scientists who take to the stars will be saved from the lake of fire, and the religious scrabbling with their old books on a crumbling earth will burn in the lake of fire. The real core message of Islam and Christianity, the resurrection and judgment, is an absolute utter fiction. And this intelligent, non-material being called God is a pure fiction. The only intelligence comes from firing neurons in a nervous system, something a non-material being couldn’t have. Furthermore, there is the old “ghost in the machine” problem of how a purely non-material being could interact with a material world.
Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism are utter fictions and nonsense too. There is no reincarnation, as our personality and identity is a by-product of our human brains. There is no human intelligence transferable to a non-human brain such as a roach. The number of species and beings is not a constant, so are some souls being made fresh and some recycled? Buddhism is absolutely contingent on belief in reincarnation, because seeking Nirvana or freedom from rebirth is the sole point to the Noble Eightfold Path. As to pantheistic notions such as Taoism or Hinduism, there is no universal spirit or connection between all things no matter how close or distant. If Alpha Centauri explodes today, the only effect that would have is a peculiar twinkle in the sky some thousands of years hence, because no communication or effect can occur faster than the speed of light. So there can be no instantaneous, magical connection. The only connection between us and something else must occur through the exchange of bosons that determine the four fundamental forces of nature. Any object too distant is limited by the universal speed limit of the speed of light, and therefore such interactions are negligible and slow, and most certainly completely material.
Why people persist in maintaining the utility of fiction is beyond me. We live in a real, vibrant, and beautiful world, full of wonder and greatness. These religious fictions are simply for the control of others, for generating fear and misery. We should embrace reality and the wonder it is.
April 30, 2008 at 9:23 am
The only thing I would dispute with you, Maj, is your statement that all fiction is useless. The best literary fiction does explore the human condition and is peopled with characters worth getting to know. Henry James’s The Golden Bowl (which I have for you to read, if you wish) is a good example. A beautiful book about thinking, feeling people in love (and written near the end of his life, it’s his masterwork and has a pleasing, optimistic ending, a rarity for him). Of course, James was accused of creating characters with a moral sensibility that isn’t often found in real life, but his response was that if such characters don’t exist, they should.
Just because most writers try and fail doesn’t mean there aren’t a few who succeed. The biggest problem with novels, especially, is that the author’s character and intelligence keep you company throughout the book and therefore has to be one you want to spend a fair bit of time with, and you’re a pretty discriminating reader, so most of them fall short. I tend to be a little more tolerant of imperfection (and aren’t you glad I am?).
Of course, what you say about religions I endorse wholeheartedly. The primary problem with religion is that it takes these fantasies and insists they have some bearing on reality, nay, that they ARE reality, and that reality itself is actually an illusion. What a recipe for mass mental illness they create, and the evidence of this crowds and poisons the planet.
June 2, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I wonder if the purpose of fiction, at its best, isn’t simply the same as that of all art forms. And I wonder if all art forms aren’t fiction.
That said, I am a terrible fiction reader - can’t prevent the sense of wasting time. But I think fiction can connect us with another world - an intangible spirit-world - as do music, drama, and poetry. There is a reality there that transcends our simple-minded cognitive measurements.
Ah, I am a fiction-hypocrite, I guess!
June 5, 2008 at 8:37 am
Monte, I think the purpose of fiction varies with the author and the form. I read recently (because, ironically, I’m beginning to explore fiction writing myself) a great book by John Gardner on the craft, The Art of Fiction, which had a paragraph I ended up reading to Maj which helped him understand part of the function of successful novels. I’ll be making a post on it soon. Maybe it’ll help you to enjoy fiction yourself. (Good fiction is definitely NOT a waste of time, and is an important part of the human experience through which we can communicate with each other across cultural and temporal divides!)
June 13, 2008 at 4:10 am
hi all,
must say, don’t often come across people who aren’t fiction readers. i can appreciate most of what you say regarding reading fiction, i can’t get the ‘this isn’t real or possible’ notion out of my head and very quickly lose interest as a result.
having said that, I am a Muslim and feel it necessary to point out some flaws in your arguments stating the Quran (Koran) is fiction. Honest poet you said in one of our previous conversations that you believed Mohammed was a poet, so i find your interpretation of the koran a bit bizarre?
the Quran was revealed in FusHa Arabic (classical arabic) at a time when poetry was very big in Mecca. this is historical fact, not made up myths. The language of the Quran is also poetic - another fact not myth. (if you don’t believe it is from god, that’s different, but the physical verses are poetic). To understand the Quran, one can’t simply read a translation and interpret in any way we like. Whilst Islam doesn’t encourage reliance on scholars, this has become a sad reality of our present time, as religious education is either prevented, shunned or separated from scienctific or modern education. it is therefore not encouraged and we end up relying on scholars to tell us the meanings.
Either way, a common mistake made by non-Muslims, they pick up the quran and read a translation and conclude what they think they understand. As a poet, i’m sure you’ll appreciate that translation into another language can kill the essence of the meaning. The harder part is understanding the context in which the verse was revealed. this is very important - as people in the west often pull out verses relating to jews, or women and don’t understand the context and misinterpret its meaning.
i’ll use some of the verses in your example to explain. you said that the koran states the earth has eleven planets (12:4). THis is the translation:
(Remember) when Yusuf said to his father: “O my father! Verily, I saw (in a dream) eleven stars and the sun and the moon - I saw them prostrating themselves to me.”
Allah says, `Mention to your people, O Muhammad, among the stories that you narrate to them, the story of Yusuf.’ Prophet Yusuf (Joseph) mentioned his dream to his father, Prophet Ya`qub (Jacob), son of Prophet Ishaq (Isaac), son of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham), peace be upon them all. `Abdullah bin `Abbas stated that the dreams of Prophets are revelations from Allah. Scholars of Tafsir explained that in Yusuf’s dream the eleven stars represent his brothers, who were eleven, and the sun and the moon represent his father and mother. This explanation was collected from Ibn `Abbas, Ad-Dahhak, Qatadah, Sufyan Ath-Thawri and `Abdur-Rahman bin Zayd bin Aslam. Yusuf’s vision became a reality forty years later, or as some say, eighty years, when Yusuf raised his parents to the throne while his brothers were before him,
you then state:
translation:
(Until, when he reached the setting place of the sun,) means, he followed a route until he reached the furthest point that could be reached in the direction of the sun’s setting, which is the west of the earth. As for the idea of his reaching the place in the sky where the sun sets, this is something impossible, and the tales told by storytellers that he traveled so far to the west that the sun set behind him are not true at all. Most of these stories come from the myths of the People of the Book and the fabrications and lies of their heretics.
(Until, when he reached the setting place of the sun,)
means, he followed a route until he reached the furthest point that could be reached in the direction of the sun’s setting, which is the west of the earth. As for the idea of his reaching the place in the sky where the sun sets, this is something impossible, and the tales told by storytellers that he traveled so far to the west that the sun set behind him are not true at all. Most of these stories come from the myths of the People of the Book and the fabrications and lies of their heretics.
then you state:
Is not He Who has made the earth as a fixed abode, and has placed rivers in its midst, and has placed firm mountains therein, and has set a barrier between the two seas (of salt and sweet water) Is there any ilah (god) with Allah Nay, but most of them know not!) Allah says (Is not He Who has made the earth as a fixed abode,) meaning, stable and stationary, so that it does not move or convulse, because if it were to do so, it would not be a good place for people to live on. But by His grace and mercy, He has made it smooth and calm, and it is not shaken or moved. This is like the Ayah (Allah, Who has made for you the earth as a dwelling place and the sky as a canopy) (40:64).
(and has placed rivers in its midst,) means, He has placed rivers which are fresh and sweet, cutting through the earth, and He has made them of different types, large rivers, small rivers and some in between. He has caused them to flow in all directions, east, west, south, north, according to the needs of mankind in different areas and regions, as He has created them throughout the world and sends them their provision according to their needs.(and has placed firm mountains therein, ) means, high mountains which stabilize the earth and make it steadfast, so that it does not shake.
(and has set a barrier between the two seas) means, He has placed a barrier between the fresh water and the salt water, to prevent them from mixing lest they corrupt one another. Divine wisdom dictates that each of them should stay as it is meant to be. The sweet water is that which flows in rivers among mankind, and it is meant to be fresh and palatable so that it may be used to water animals and plants and fruits. The salt water is that which surrounds the continents on all sides, and its water is meant to be salty and undrinkable lest the air be corrupted by its smell, as Allah says:
(And it is He Who has let free the two seas, this is palatable and sweet, and that is salty and bitter; and He has set a barrier and a complete partition between them.) (25:53) Allah says:
(Is there any god with Allah) meaning, any god who could do this, or who deserves to be worshipped Both meanings are indicated by the context.
(Nay, but most of them know not!) means, in that they worship others than Allah
Finally, you state:
translation:
(And has made the moon a light therein, and made sun a lamp?)
this is one of the ayahs inviting man to think about creation amongst many.
I’d still challenge you on this one. If Mohammed wrote it, why did he make all the rules obligatory upon himself? He could have easily exempt himself from the rules?
the concept of equality in Islam is actually quite unique - everyone is equal in the eyes of the creator and hence in Islam. no one is above the law - even the prophet had to pray, fast, pay the zakat, perform the pilgrimage, treat women with respect, lower his gaze etc. there are very few rules that were specific to him, some making things harder for him - for examplle there is an optional prayer (late night prayer) that is optional upon the Muslims but was obligatory upon the prophet. but anyhow, i’m not trying to convince you the prophet was a messenger. the point is to let you know that you’ve gravely misunderstood these verses.
the concept of after life was one of the concepts in islam that the non-muslim arabs at the time of Mohammed couldn’t grasp. they obviously had the prophet before their eyes so couldn’t deny his existence as some can confidently now. you’re not new. this life is a test, we do need rules to live, i’d rather submit to rules of the creator where everyone is equally accountable (with more responsibility comes greater accountability) rather than submit to the laws of a human being or group of human beings.
I don’t blame you for concluding that the Quran is fiction. This discussion isn’t encouraged around us and people are quick to pick up the quran and translate and interpret in anyway they like. it’s frustrating as a Muslim to not be given a voice. Muslim voices are suppressed in Muslim countries more than anywhere else - perhaps because if they weren’t, many would agree with Islam and that may lead to a shift in the balance of power. this can possibly be viewed as a conspiracy theory - but i do believe there are some who genuinely don’t know, but there are also those with malicious intent.
hope this makes sense!
June 13, 2008 at 9:37 am
Hi HD,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this thread.
I didn’t write the original post in this, rather my husband, Majutsu, did. He does recognize the problems with translation. For a little while he was trying to learn Arabic so he could read the original, but since it seems that travel to most Arabic-speaking countries is too dangerous for Americans these days (and it’s hard to learn a language without speaking it), he’s given up.
I do think the Koran has at least a little more valid provenance than the Bible (which has been mistranslated and maliciously edited so many times as to be downright toxic in places), but I still see it as a fiction, myself, I have to confess. But if it’s got truth in it for you, I think that’s a good thing, esp. since you seem to read it and let it influence you in a very positive way.
June 13, 2008 at 11:34 am
Hi Mrs. Honestpoet,
thanks for the clarification. i thought it may have been a genuine oversight so decided to explain the verses your husband mentioned.
science and islam don’t face the same clash that christianity and science did in the past. people sometimes view islam in the same light and think that a belief in god hinders scientific progress. so thought it’d be worth mentioning there is no such friction in Islam.
anyway, more important things are the way we can move forward as a people. will no doubt chat on that at some point. take care until then.
June 16, 2008 at 9:18 pm
OK, fiction: Have you read The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy? It just killed me. Been a long time since I read anything with language this vivid. Takes my breath away to think of it still.
June 17, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Nope. I’ll keep my eye out for it.