The Wisdom in Fiction

“I think that when people read fiction, they’re really reading for wisdom. I am. That’s what most of us really love. If we read a novel that rocks our world, it’s because there’s something in it that we didn’t know already. Not just information but really wisdom - sort of what to do with our information. And wisdom comes from experience. ”

— Barbara Kingsolver

I read a lot of fiction – and I mean a lot! I read over 200 books this past year, mainly fiction. This means that my non-fiction pile continues to grow. So this year, I committed to leave fiction behind and switch to non-fiction. I want to be like those women I have met on Instagram who impress me with photos of high piles of non-fiction. I started reading These Precious Days, a book of essays by Ann Patchett - which is brilliant! Then the doorbell rang and the mailman handed me Susan Hill’s latest Simon Serrailler mystery, A Change of Circumstance. Okay, I thought, just one more mystery before I return to Patchett. An hour later, a couple of long-awaited holds at the library were ready for download - all fiction. What a dilemma! Clearly, I need some balance. I have decided a better commitment will be to read one non-fiction to every two fiction.

I have always marvelled at how much I learn reading fiction, especially about women, relationships, and the human condition. As Barbara Kingsolver shares in her quote, there is wisdom in fiction. Reading about the characters in fiction helps us grow as individuals. An ever-growing body of research validates this, fiction has the proven capacity to make readers more open-minded, empathetic, and compassionate. Mmm, scientific proof, maybe I shouldn’t feel bad about reading so much fiction!

In an article in Greater Good Magazine, How Reading Fiction Can Shape Our Real Lives, writer Francesca Lo Basso suggests that perhaps because a reader sits with a novel for hours, days, sometimes weeks, this concentrated time gives a reader an embodied experience of the other, increasing their awareness and appreciation for differing perspectives. There is an intimacy in a reader’s relationship with a fictional narrator’s interior dialogue.

Keith Oatley, a novelist and professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, states that literary fiction is essentially an exploration of the human experience. He shares that reading novels enables us to become better at actually understanding other people. Oatley and his colleagues conducted a study in 2006 that drew a strong connection between reading fiction and better performance on widely used empathy tests.

Some of the most powerful examples of fiction’s influence on empathy come from studies that specifically looked at attitudes toward members of stigmatized groups. A 2014 study demonstrated that elementary school and high school students became more empathic toward immigrants, refugees, and gay and lesbian people after reading Harry Potter. In their work, the researchers explained that “the world of Harry Potter is characterized by strict social hierarchies and resulting prejudices, with obvious parallels with our society.”  

I suppose I have always known the value of fiction as I have collected pages of quotes from fiction over the years. So I thought I would share some of these passages with you. I got this idea from Kerry Clare’s blog, Pickle Me This. Kerry has a regular feature called Gleanings, a list of passages from blogs. Click on the passage and it takes you to the blog. I have discovered some lovely blogs through Kerry’s Gleanings.

I have done the same below, sharing some of the more recent passages I have collected. Click on the passage and you will taken to the Good Reads description of the book. These passages reflect my interest in family, relationships, women, and life stories.

She’s spent her whole life standing straight, so as not to spill the overflowing bowl of her parents’ love.

Kim was surprised at how the simplest of facts were overlooked by the people that needed them the most and yet obvious to someone outside the situation.   

But because she knew me when I was a kid, she had all the ammunition she needed to push every one of my buttons and took great delight in doing so.    

Wakes are always an interesting affair. Anything that mixes family and alcohol usually is. Condolence after condolence, in the absence of alcohol, are frankly exhausting.

I suppose that’s the stuff we are made of, stories and journeys great or small, complete or incomplete, whatever gets passed on to us down the line.

Memory is garbage. It’s the worst possible witness...Especially with something like this. Your mind will play tricks on you.

She’s learned that the beginning of one’s life mattered the most, life was top-heavy in that way.

Funny how the story of their lives can be an entirely different genre depending on the storyteller.

What I wanted to say to this man was that the greatest works of poetry, what make each of us a poet, are the stories we tell about ourselves. We create them out of family and blood and friends and love and hate and what we’ve read and watched and witnessed. Longing and regret, illness, broken bones, broken hearts, achievements, money won and lost, palm readings and visions. We tell these stories until we believe them, we believe in ourselves, and that is the most powerful thing of all.

Men don’t know, she thinks, they don’t know how having a baby makes you protective of your skin, your body, your space. When you spend all day giving yourself to a baby in every way that it’s possible to give yourself to another human being, the last thing you want at the end of the day is a grown man wanting you to give him things too. Men don’t know how the touch of a hand against the back of your neck can feel like a request, not a gesture of love, how emotional issues become too cumbersome to deal with, how their love for you is too much sometimes, just too much.

Some people said that what you felt at four in the morning was the bleak, spare truth that you couldn’t face up to in the daytime.

Sometimes, when you’re carrying around too much pain, you don’t want to open your mouth because you’re afraid you’ll start yelling and you won’t stop.

Do any of these passages sound familiar to you? I’d love to read some of the fiction quotes that resonate for you, quotes you may have scribbled in a journal as a way to preserve them.