Why people read fiction (was: Argument for why people aren't interested in slash)

[Queer as John]

Sushi said:

> The bottom line here is that it is something that falls so far outside some
> people's day-to-day understanding of the world that it just doesn't register.
> <snip> A story that introduces the concept is a different matter; he wouldn't
> have such a hard time with that, and he'd demolish it just like every other
> book I've ever seen him touch.

Okay, I can understand your point, but in that case, why would that person
read fiction at all? Especially, dare I say it, fiction about an adolescent
British boy who's been the subject of emotional and physical abuse since age
1, going to a boarding school to learn magic?

Isn't fiction (indeed, non-fiction too, sometimes) supposed to be about the
author using their skills to make you identify with their characters? To
bring the characters to some form of "common denominator" with the reader?
Isn't the reader in theory supposed to learn something new about people
through the characters?

Let me take the example of Kim Stanley Robinson's
_The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt_, an uber-epic which spans many centuries in an
alternate universe where the West was wiped out by the Black Death. The very
point is that Robinson *removes* the Western common reference points from
play, and leaves us dangling in the world that's developed without "us". In
Robinson's world, the only reference points we have left are those within
the Human Condition.

Do I have preconceptions of many of the concepts integral to the text? No. I
didn't know what a /jati/ was before I started reading. However, as I read
on, I began to understand the concept of the /jati/, and on a second/third
reading, I gain new understandings as Robinson explains it.

A counterexample: Terry Brooks' _The_Sword_of_Shannara_. I very much enjoyed
the sequel, _The_Voyage_of_the_Jerle_Shannara_, but when I went to read the
actual book, it seemed too close to LOTR for me to feel that I was learning
nothing new about these characters, and so I got bored of it. It's still
languishing on my bookshelf.

Of course, David Eddings is the counterexample -- I didn't get bored of the
Belgariad, Malloreon, Tamuli or Elenium, though they are blatantly
stereotypical characters and, indeed, settings and plots. I'm not sure why I
didn't get bored of this one -- anybody got suggestions?

--John

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