Reality and novels

At a local book store, there was an effort to start a book club and I showed up with high hopes. There are so few book clubs in my city. There were three people, counting myself, who did come which seemed a disappointment; but I thought we might be able to pick up some people in the future. My hopes were crushed when one member, a high school science teacher, said that there will not be any books that were fiction. He was very authoritarian and sure of himself being able to set the rules. The other member was a housewife that did the books for her husband's construction business. She said she just wanted to read and did not care what the book was. I asked the teacher why he he would not consider novels.

"Novels are not based on reality." He said firmly. "We should deal with truth only."

Needless to say, the book club never went anywhere. The first book we read was on the Ancient Greeks and the Science teacher said he could have done better. I liked the book, myself. I never went back and it did not attract anymore members and folded.

I have heard this argument before that novels portray life in a fictional mode and do not represent reality. In the Victorian Period, girls were often forbidden to read novels because there was too much reality in novels that girls who were thought to be innocent and pure,were not able to face although many women in the poorer so-called classes in Europe and America, had to deal with a very harsh reality in their lives. They just could not read about it.

D.H. Lawrence put sexuality in his books and stories and poetry. Many people thought of him as a pornographer although his work is considered mild today. Lawrence did more in his books than put sex in. He put the changing reality of England in his books and that also offended many people. A novel does best when it does put reality in the story. People can identify what is going on in a story or novel with what is happening in their lives even if it is described on a planet in another solar system.

Again, I have heard the complaint that novels do not describe reality but are fiction and thus not based on truth. I have heard this from pulpits when I was required to go to church as a child to opinions from people I have known over the years. To my mind, the opposite is true. An author takes what he or she sees as reality and creates a story for people to follow in a book. If it was not plausible, people would not read it. Harry Potter is a boy people get to know in J.K. Rowland's books although the circumstances of wizards and witches are not something that people see everyday or at all. The characters are totally reality based although the circumstances are not. Everyone knows of a man who is ambitious and evil to a fault and gathers followers around him, only to be defeated in the end. An example would be Adolf Hitler. History is full of such people. The character, Sherlock Holmes, was based on someone who was a real person that the author knew.

Novels are truth otherwise no one would read them. What is reality? It is a version of what is before our eyes and can be different. Even history differs from historian to historian. Some biographies are really novels and some novels are really biographies. Transcripts of court proceedings are full of eyewitness accounts that are unlike each other. Some people question whether or not there is a reality but many realities to chose from.

I read "The Last Temptation of Christ" by Nikos Kazantzakis and I never considered the fact that it was true. It was one great book. It was one very good version on the life of Jesus Christ and it may or may not have been accurate. I am not a Christian so it had no significance for me since I am a Buddhist. I will bring up another book, "Siddhartha",a novel by Hermann Hesse. This is a novel on the life of the Buddha that I do not consider to be accurate but a great read. This brings into this discussion why people read novels and that is to read about other people's lives and versions of those lives so that they get clarity about their own. I am sure there are other reasons. Who know what is true and what is not as long as it resembles the truth?

It was a shame about that book club at the book store. The teacher was very dogmatic and looked upon the other woman and me as his students which was out of line. When I was a teacher in high school, I did not run a democracy. A book club of adults is by definition a democracy. He did not understand that, but then his wife was the manager of the book store. He knew he could get away with it. When he said he could write a book as good as the writer of the first book we read, I told him as I said to all wannabee writers: "Then do it." To the best of my knowledge he never has. I am sure he doesn't read novels either which is his loss.