From an early age we are taught that there are two types of literature- fiction and non-fiction. Fiction is story books- fantastical things made up to entertain children and non-fiction is serious stuff for serious people built, not on imagination but, rather, important things- facts.
A fact, we all know, is an opinion enough people like and so it becomes axiomatic. The fact that facts (tee hee) change seems to be irrelevant to the underlying principle, sanctity one might say if one was trying to be mischievous (me? Really? Never!), of the ‘fact’ as being axiomatic.
We make the assumption that our lives are factual- that everything in it, as we are not storybook characters, is factual. This extends also to our interactions with other people. If we see someone doing something we instantly make the assumption (fiction) of a fact that they are doing X or Y for reasons F and G (I have never known why X,Y, and Z are the defaults) for example someone starts wearing a scarf. One can say- o he is wearing a scarf that is because a) he is cold b) he is rude c) he thinks he is above dress codes when, in reality, it may be reason T- he has a skin condition that has flared up that he is trying to cover. Or vice versa- he is wearing a scarf as he has a skin condition when really, he might just be fashion-illiterate. Subsequently the fact is that our life steadily descend into fiction. When we see something, for example a panoramic view, we don’t actually see it all, rather we see fragments and our imaginations fill in the blanks, all colours are illusions created by light and many more things. Thusly, we can say that in many, if not, possibly, all, cases what we call non-fiction actually contains more than a small amount of fiction.
‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.’
Thus spake the scientist Albert Einstein, a man who balked at established facts and asked himself, what is really happening? To do so, he had to move beyond established ‘fact’ and try to imagine what was really happening. The American writer Carson McCullers wrote in her memoir, ‘imagination leads to understanding’ and thusly we have, with the help of these two dead giants (we are only really dead when we fade from memory), reached the crux of the matter. If our lives are actually fictions in the guise of facts, then in order to try to establish ‘facts’ one must remove one’s self from the subjectivity of one’s own self and this is where fiction comes in. The German philosopher Nietzsche said that Dostoyevsky was the only psychologist that he had learnt anything from. But how can this be? Dusty was a novelist and not a psychologist or sociologist or even a scientist- he was a writer. By being a writer of extraordinary (no hyperbole) sensitivity Dusty could not only see people’s actions but, to use the Native American adage, put himself into their shoes and thusly try to, through imagination, glean understanding of who they were and why they did what they did. Dusty was so successful that the eminent psychiatrist Fraud (tee hee) refused to read his books after a certain point as the characters were too mush like his patients, too lifelike- or in other words- Dusty had managed to subvert some of the subjectivity of his self to try to reach an objective understanding of the subjectivity of ‘the other’.
It is all very fun to break the world down into simple categories but, unfortunately, life cannot be broken down and it seems axiomatic (a fact- tee hee) that our very lives, our very existence is a fiction.
‘till next time
thegreaterfool2016 