I watch some fiction on TV or movies - mainly because my wife enjoys it, and it is a small price to pay to spend time with her. On my own, I would never choose it.
My reading is 100% non-fiction, with one exception. My wife (a literature professor) selects one a book a year, she believes I will enjoy and I almost always do.
Slaughterhouse Five was this year’s selection.
But beyond that I just don’t see the point, there is so much information out and I feel a need to understand as much as feasable.
My wife and I a very much opposites - but it works for us.
It’s a very strange movie, but it’s also very funny and in my opinion it’s the humor that comes from the absurdity that makes it great. It’s a comedy about existentialism. It’s not weird for the sake of weird, it’s weird because life is weird and it’s trying to make a specific point drawing on some very specific philosophical ideas (nihilism, existentialism, Buddhism.) Which means it’s mostly about internal character development - a man caught up in his own stupid drama learns that his stupid drama is universal, and ultimately feels better. Some people consider stories about internal character development as not having a plot. I don’t think that way, but YMMV.
Anyway, you could say the the same thing about any story at all. “Why not just say the message?” Because I don’t think that’s how people learn. We learn from example and experience. As a storyteller you have to provide an experience to your reader, ideally one that changes them. This requires a high degree of empathy. There are research studies showing that avid fiction readers have higher empathy than average. Whether reading develops that empathy or highly empathic people choose to read fiction is an interesting question.
^This.
One could just say “Slow and steady wins the race,” or one could tell the full story of the Tortoise and the Hare. Which version will resonate, which version will people remember and internalize?
However, a lot of food for thought here about adults vs. children. I’m obviously in the pro-storytelling camp, but it must be said storytelling is pretty closely associated with childrearing. No doubt prior to the invention of the novel (and movies, television, etc) things were a little different. One can see Aesop telling his stories to adults thousands of years ago, but a modern-day Aesop’s audience is children for sure.
Today’s adults heard the story when they were kids, and they remember it now because it’s a great story, and it served its function in their childhoods. But they don’t necessarily need to be told more stories in adulthood, or at least some don’t.
Maybe not everybody needs that. I see no reason to judge anyone who is not interested in fiction. But fundamentally, I need that.
I was recently reading book 2 of the Expanse series. There’s a scene where the captain, Holden, is scared out of his mind, but he knows he has to keep it together for his crew because they need him to be okay. And when I read that scene, I thought, “Oh, that’s what parenting is.”
And that’s definitely not an insight I would have had as a child. Or even as a childless adult. So for many of us I think fiction is still really relevant for adults.
Former pretty voracious fiction (SF/fantasy) reader here, tho I’ve always had non-fiction in my reading diet. In my case Sturgeon’s Law has decided to strike with a vengeance, and after a few too many low-quality novels, I simply lost interest in rolling the dice on some formulaic hackwork that I might spy in B&N. Non-fiction tyically has a much higher batting average for me, where those that fail do so mainly because they told me stuff I already knew, tho to be sure there is hackwork there too.
So it actually looks like it could be the kind of weird movie I’d like based on that trailer (i.e. with actual characters and plot that keep me engaged, even if its completely batshiat and weird). I’d be tempted to watch it and report back, but its not on any of the streaming services I use.
So I don’t have a problem with subtext, I’m a firm believer that the job of a director is to “show not tell”, and unnecessary exposition has always been bug bear of mine. What I’ve grown to dislike (in approximately the same time-frame as I’ve gone from mainly reading fiction to non-fiction) is subtext with no “text”. If your actual movie is just random stream of consciousnesses craziness (or dour black and white figures muttering niceties and glowering into the middle distance for three hours while nothing actually happens) with no discernible plot or characters I care about, I couldn’t care less about your subtext, go tell that to your therapist, don’t try get me to buy a movie ticket to watch it.
Here’s someone with a different take on stories:
For those with an hour to spare, here’s the complete lecture (worth the hour IMHO)
I don’t really avoid fiction, but I’ve certainly drifted away from it in the past few years.
I now read mainly linguistics and history books or articles. I don’t watch any movies and, while I still read some literature from time to time, it captures my imagination less than non-fiction nowadays, paradoxically.
I agree. My philosophy is that I get enough reality in the real world. If I want to escape from all that, give me something fantastic. Give me some goofball comedies, horror, fantasy, or adventure. It doesn’t matter if the format is books, movies, video games, or TV shows, I enjoy them all. The more escapist, the better.
I don’t avoid fiction. I don’t understand those who do. Do they not daydream? That’s just a fictional story you tell yourself, presumably about yourself.
I read less overall, but that’s just because I’m still coming to grips with my eyes aging and making my preferred modes of reading uncomfortable. (Worsening nearsightness plus worsening farsightedness means there no comfortable way to read what I like.)
That’s my nightmare. I don’t want to go the way of Henry Bemis.
Slight hijack: that is the stupidest story to teach kids. 99 times out of a hundred, fast and steady (or even fast and furious!) wins the race. You go slow and steady and you’ll end up 30th. The hare was unrealistically stupid, and the tortoise would lose in any real life race. Even metaphorical races.
Back to the thread topic, I may not judge, per se, but I do feel sorry for those that can’t enjoy fiction.
OTOH, those that choose to not read fiction out of some snobbery, “fiction is for the weak minded” people, yeah, those I judge.
Total hijack but I’m not sure that’s true for either real or metaphorical races (assuming we are talking about humans not literal hares and tortoises). If you set off running a marathon at a sprint you will absolutely lose to someone who is going at a steady slow jog. Similarly for most big undertakings in life, if rush into them and say “I’m going to work for 12 hours a day for months until this huge project is done”, I’d wager you aren’t going to get as far on that project as someone who says “I’m going to make a schedule of a couple hours a week on days I don’t have a lot of commitments”.
But if I’m running the Indy 500, running 100 mph slower than the leader is gonna get me somewhere in the 25th place or lower, no matter how steady. And marathoners run 10 mph. I run about 2. By the time my steady gets to the end, they’ve already packed up and gone home.
Unless the other drivers dawdle in the pits, pull over for selfies, or otherwise fail to continuously apply themselves to their goal.
That’s the moral of that story. The “steady” part of “slow and steady win the race.”
A more explicit but less artful (and less archaic) wording would be “steady can win the race even if you’re slow.”
Yeah but slow doesn’t have to mean 2 mph. It could mean 10 mph compared to the guy who runs 13 mph who can’t finish the marathon.
Yeah, I take it as a warning against overconfidence leading to slacking off.
Fiction is fine, but make up your own characters. I do not care to read about Mark Twain plus Alice in Wonderland fighting vampire robot pirates (unless you are a fricking Goethe-level genius)
I teach kids to write fiction, and that used to be my attitude: other folks own their characters, so use your own.
But then I took a course on children’s literature and fairy tales with Maria Tatar, and over the course of it, completely changed my mind. For almost all of humanity, people have put their own spin on traditional stories. Everyone from Ovid to Shakespeare to Neil Gaiman too characters someone else established, and plots someone else came up with, and made lovely new jewels out of them. Fanfic is the oldest storytelling tradition.
Nothing wrong with coming up with new characters, but there’s also nothing wrong with Enola Holmes or the Battlestar Galactica remake.
I’m curious about people who completely avoid fiction. Do they also avoid other aesthetic pleasures? Like, do they not understand why I want spices in my food? Do they avoid music as unnecessary? Are patterned clothes just a distraction?
Fiction is one of my main aesthetic pleasures (along with food). A well-told story delights me in a way that nothing else does. I don’t listen to much music, which I know is weird for other folks, and visual art doesn’t often move me; but I live for good stories.
Good question.
How about paintings? A photograph should be good enough. Paintings are a form of fiction. At least as inaccurate as a TV documentary. 
Look at Guernica. A photo would tell the same story.