Idle

For some reasons unbeknownst to me, I find myself thinking about literature of late. In particular, I feel that I have been revisiting an earlier idea that I had about it before I came into university, which is that works of literature (fiction) are useless because they are not real. It is doubtlessly a pretty extreme idea but somehow it got deeply lodged in my system such that I always feel that I am wasting my time when I find myself reading fiction. I really enjoy books like Chrysalid (a sci-fi exploring a post-apocalypse society that practise an extreme form of christian fundamentalism) and Eleven Minutes (Coelho’s narration of a woman’s journey through sex, prostitution and SM), but somehow I always feel very bad for wasting time on this kind of useless fiction. It’s like partaking in a really exciting voyeuristic gossip that does not even involve real people. Worse still, sometimes I feel like I get socialised into thinking about certain phenomena in society by the writer/Sparknotes writers/ Wikipedia contributors e.g. racism/communism is bad. Of course, I try to exercise discretion but it’s hard coming out from a book like 1984 saying yes to communism. But yea, it’s impossible to not get socialised doing anything.

In the past few days I came across a few ideas that challenge my earlier conclusions a little and I thought I would write them down so that I would not bash myself up for wasting time this holidays reading useless classics. =D 

“In his discussion of absurd art, Camus recommends that writers confine themselves to description, and not attempt to explain the world. Explanation is an attempt to impose some order on experience, to make sense of the world, and thus tries to go beyond a mere acceptance and awareness of the unreasonableness of the universe. Rather than try to explain why the world is the way it is, an absurd artist should just give as full a description of the world as he sees it.”

Reason 1:  They are brave, honest descriptions of reality.

“In characterizing poetry as more philosophical, universal, and momentous than history, Aristotle praises poets for their ability to assay deep features of human character, to dissect the ways in which human fortune engages and tests character, and to display how human foibles may be amplified in uncommon circumstances. We do not, however, reflect on character primarily for entertainment value. Rather, and in general, Aristotle thinks of the goal of tragedy in broadly intellectualist terms: the function of tragedy is ‘learning, that is, figuring out what each thing is’. In Aristotle’s view, tragedy teaches us about ourselves.”

Reason 2: They make you think, reason and reflect.

Actually I still think these are rather inadequate reasons but they shall suffice for the moment. I’ll look for more.