(Why) Have we stopped reading fiction ?

vegetable theories

vegetable theories

Acolyte
I was re-reading Matt Cardins amazing interview the other day and when I got to the point where both Matt and Tom said that they didn't really read fiction, it occurred to me that most of my friends don't read fiction anymore.
I don't really read fiction anymore.
Why is this ?
When did it happen ?
I've got two theories.
The first is that the modern media and newspapers are so lightweight and low-brow that you have to go to specialist books to properly understand the current politics, economics or science.
And science and technology seem to be developing so fast and changing our world-view so quickly that you have to read specialist books to keep up.
The real non-fiction world has become more fascinating than the world of fiction.
My second theory is that we've changed our idea of the real and the imaginary. We look at everything realistically and literally. I've got friends who hate the theatre because they feel the whole thing is too contrived. It isn't real enough. To them the theatre is just a poor substitute for the movies. And when they watch movies they will say, "That wouldn't happen","That isn't realistic", as if these are valid criticisms of art which is only ever a fantasy. Even Realism as a genre is a fantasy.
The same thing with fundamentalist religion. The literal reading of a work of imagination, even a divinely inspired work, is taking a rational scientific approach to the imagination.
I'm not saying that we take a literal approach to fiction as well, but if you are distracted by artifice, if you are looking for the real, then fiction can seem like a poor puppet-show. You become aware of the author moving his wooden characters about. In the same way that my theatre-hating friends can't stop seeing actors as people- pretending on the stage.
Maybe post-modernism is to blame with all those narcissistic narratives drawing attention to their own artifice.
In an author like W G Sebald, who I love, I see this discomfort with fiction. The need for autobiography and photographs to make something more real. I think part of his literary success is because he points out our dissatisfaction with fiction. He writes fiction which is trying not to fiction.
Are we unwilling or unable to suspend our disbelief ?
Is it because we're moving into a rational age inwhich the imagination is as anachronistic and dangerous as religion ?
A primitive ability that's lost it's evolutionary purpose ?
Maybe it's not even true that people are generally turning off fiction.:drunk::(:o:confused:
And why does reading Thomas Ligotti give me so much pleasure ?
Although even with his work I'm starting to enjoy the non-fiction more than the fiction...:eek:
 
Honestly, I think it has to do with denial. The world is no more interesting than it ever was. People who are more interested in non-fiction are often the same people who claim to have no love for humanity. Yet, I'd bet they still see 'faces' in the woodwork.
Fiction, for the 'user' is not just a journey into someone else's house, it is also, when it is good, going home. It appeals to our sense of wonder. If the imagination is dying, these are the people murdering it.
But the imagination is not dying, nor reaching obsolescence. We can see so much more of our world these days, there's so much more to imagine. And we've created this world with our imagination, a world where what we imagine can become reality so much more quickly than it ever has in past.
Not to mention, we all want to be original as artists and with so much out there to contend with, perhaps part of us resents and is afraid of it. We don't want to seem as if we've been influenced. Hence the slew of remakes. Another paradox.
Of course, nothing gets me like a good turn of phrase, no matter if the character saying it is fictional or 'not'.
It is more difficult, in my opinion, to delve into the dark reaches of your own soul while reading about the exterior worlds 'real' atrocities.
The whole idea of 'Reality Media' is hilarious. On one hand, it is designed to get you and the coming generations used to being watched. Numbed, frightened and watched.
On the other it opens up whole other avenues for exploring the meaning reality, the image as experience.
"I don't want to see live theatre or go to the damn movies! Those are just people up there acting stupid. It's so much more entertaining and interesting to me to watch people who actually are stupid. And I can feel better about myself from the safety of my own home."
People are stupid. They do stupid things. No getting around it. The trick is to find which brand of stupid you are and be that.
 
Not to mention, fiction also gives us a glimpse into our future. Is it possible we have become so obsessed with current events because we grow increasingly afraid of that future? So afraid it leads to a weird narcissism? Who benefits from that?
 
I think a larger problem is people simply aren't reading -- period. Book and newspaper sales are plummeting. Some major book retailers, like Borders, are on the verge of bankruptcy. The small amount that people do read is often limited to text messaging and blogging. It's sad.


This fiction vs. non-fiction topic is interesting. It made me realize that one of the reasons I like Thomas Ligotti is because often he feels like non-fiction. I don't mean to say I believe his characters and locations are real; rather, they may represent potential cosmic truths allegorically; a kind of horror-philosophy that transcends the fictitious elements. I think all fine fiction does this to some degree.
 
Maybe I'm not qualified to answer this question beacuse I read hundreds of books a year. This includes all catagories. I am re-reading the collected stories of Kathrine Anne Porter at the moment and I am finding things I missed on my previous readings. I am also reading The Big Caper by Lionel White. He wrote the novel that Kubrick's film "The Killing" was based on. I love to read.To be able to read as much and as well as I do I have had to make some deliberate choices. I don't watch television. I spend little time on the internet. I get my news from KPFK (Pacifica Radio) or NPR and the LA Times rather than television.Most people don't realize how much the world ahs changed in the last 30 years - especially in the last 10. It's not better or worse but it is very different. The overabundance of ways to communicate has brought down the level of communication. Reading fiction requires effort, but if you read the right fiction the effort is rewarded in ways that many of todays folks no onger understand. Supposedly this generation is advanced visually, but even visual media have had to be dumbed down to accommodate the new lower level of comprehension.Too much television and video games may us stupid. We don't realize the effect that these things have on us until we get away from them for a while. Let me give you an example. At work I had an assignment at the United terminal for 6 months where we had an hour and a half break every day. We started bringing in movies to watch at lunchtime. (We ahd time for about half of a movie between flights. Usually someone brought in the latest movies but one day I brought in one of my all time favorites, Point Blank.I work as a Customs Officer at LAX. All of my fellow employees are college educated. However, the younger officers couldn't understand the movie. They couldn't follow the story line. They didn't understand what happemned to Walker at Alcartaz. They didn't understand his relationship with his wife. etc. It was too visual. They couldn't put the pieces together in their minds. If this is what is happening to supposedly educated peopel then what is happening to everyone else who doesn't have the same background? Even the supposedly visual smart generation couldn't understand a very straightforward crime story that had a few elements of the French New Wave Cinema. I fear for the future.
 
It seems to me that there are two different issues being discussed here: why people read less fiction in general, and why people read less fiction as they get older. At age 43, I read far less fiction now than I used to, and I think it's because my tastes have changed over time. When I was a kid, I read lots of fiction for sheer enjoyment of story. That's a state of innocence I can't quite get back to. As a teenager with writerly ambitions, I became interested in literature as an art form, and I read a wide range of higher-quality authors with real appreciation. By my mid-twenties, I was a pretty jaded fiction reader, and nonfiction (in numerous areas I wanted to learn about) seemed more interesting to me than most fiction. Also, by my mid-twenties my taste in fiction was much more formed, and thus narrower. This seems like a natural progression to me, and while it feels that I've lost something I also think I've gained something by having a more definitely formed taste.

I'm still interested in literature -- in fact, it's at the very center of my interests. I have a very "literary" turn of mind, so I can't simply move away and find a new mental home in some purely nonfiction field. I read a lot of literary criticism. I also like to read works by nonfiction writers who take a somewhat literary approach to their subject matters (e. g., Nietzsche, S. J. Gould, Cavell, Hitchens ...). I would read more fiction if I could find more that is to my taste, but I've become persnickety. I glance at stuff and dismiss it -- sometimes too quickly. In recent years when I've found fiction I've really enjoyed, I've read it avidly. But these discoveries have been rare. Ligotti, Bernhard, Sebald, Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations. And in the case of all these writers, I was aware of their work years before I actually found the patience to read it (due to that glance-and-dismiss syndrome).

I share Vegetable Theories' and New Nonsense's preference for fiction that is similar to nonfiction. To the list above I would add some writers I read much earlier: Proust, Borges, Malzberg, Coover, Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. I know I'm forgetting some names. What these writers have in common is that they (in various ways) make fiction out of non-fictional ways of thinking. That's an awkward way to put it. They don't simply use fiction to express their ideas (as, say, Stapledon, Mann, and G. B. Shaw do); they make fiction out of their ideas and out of their peculiar ways of thinking. I do like Stapledon, Mann, and Shaw -- but it seems to me that they are a little too straightforward or un-aesthetic in their idea-mongering. But I'm having second thoughts about downgrading Mann in this way. I really loved The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus.

Anyway, I probably made a lot of dubious assertions in this post, so if anyone wants to take issue with it they're welcome to.
 
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I think I read less than I used to, and I am fairly sure why: The Internet has seriously damaged my ability to concentrate and to enjoy being alone. It promises contact - on tap, so to speak - with a world out there, without delivering that much in the end. If you are bored with the Internet, are you bored with life? The Internet is somehow presented as 'the world', so what could be better than a connection to it? And if that fails to satisfy, then presumably nothing will satisfy, and, for me, a chronic restlessness has set in.

I still do read more than most people I know, however. I'm not sure if the proportion of fiction has gone down. Maybe so, but that's because I used to read fiction almost exclusively. I still read more fiction than anything else. I seem to be one of a very few people in the world who really lives for fiction.

I share the concerns mentioned that the future will be basically illiterate and devoid of any kind of attention span at all. I have no idea what to do about this. People embrace new things without knowing where they will lead. At least, no one now ever seems to feel they are in the position to turn down a new technology, whatever it might be. It's a selfish concern, but as someone who writes, I fear that I will be obsolete very soon. I am producing more and more complex fiction, and I feel like the human brain is, collectively, losing the ability to digest that kind of thing, as if I am writing in Latin or some other extinct language. As to what I will do when my obsolescence becomes complete, I don't know. Unlike some, I view the future almost entirely with dread. There may be a better age some day, but I don't know if it will be in my lifetime.

If realism is replacing imagination, that, to me, is not progress. Realism is a dead end. There are no quantum leaps without imagination. With realism, you're stuck with what you've got, a recurring pattern. It is realism that is primitive. The mechanistic view of the world represents a degeneration. Primitive brains, such as those of the flea, we're told, resemble computers, in that they have a few pre-programmed responses. More and more, human beings, losing their imaginations, are degenerating into a state of pre-programmed responses (realism), which they seem to believe is 'the future' in some shiny, ultra-cool sort of way. That's a boat I shall be happy to miss.

Having said that, I'm not entirely without hope. I know a number of younger people who buck this trend quite significantly, though, from what I can gather, they themselves are in despair at their peers.
 
qcrisp said:
I It's a selfish concern, but as someone who writes, I fear that I will be obsolete very soon. I am producing more and more complex fiction, and I feel like the human brain is, collectively, losing the ability to digest that kind of thing, as if I am writing in Latin or some other extinct language. As to what I will do when my obsolescence becomes complete, I don't know. Unlike some, I view the future almost entirely with dread.
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I agree -- but I look forward rather than dread this inevitable outcome... and I continue to write my (complex?) prose but then immediately put it on the public internet as some sort of acceptance of the type of thing you say. I haven't submitted anything to a book or mag publisher since 1999 and I feel that is the best way to remain positive in a negative way! I hope you see what I mean.
 
I don't know if we have stopped reading fiction.

I mostly read fiction, and have a hard time whipping myself to reading non-fiction. I find reality to be quite an overrated phenomena.

However, since the world of today seems to contain more unreality than actual reality, maybe it's time to read about reality, real things, real phenomena, before the reality is irrevocably lost. I fear that may happen in my lifetime.

I work in a major bookstore, and fiction doesn't seem to be selling less, or losing to non-fiction. Most of the fiction people read is an abomination, of course, but it has always been so. Those glorious days when the masses rushed out to read Ligotti, Kafka, Roland Topor, Bruno Schulz, E.M. Cioran and Quentin S. Crisp never were, were they?

But in the last year, both Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita and Thomas Bernhard's Der Untergänger (in Danish translations) have been on our top 10 list of bestsellers.

However, I have noticed that the sales of fiction seems to be concentrating on fewer and fewer books, which is definitely a tendency that is here to stay and grow stronger. I think the more interesting literature will continue to be present in the small presses, but I'm afraid it will lose all contact with the mainstream, which is a dreadful shame, both for the interesting and challenging literature, and the mainstream literature and readers who will continue to enjoy being fed shit, or at least not knowing anything better than to being fed shit.

With regards to age, I have noticed the pattern you have noticed. I work in both the non-fiction and fiction department, and the non-fiction department has a strong overweight of middle-aged to elderly men, who has tired of reading fiction and wants something with an aura of reality about it (an aura of reality mainly meaning books about "great men" and WWII, a field which apperently is exhaustible, as well as books about politics/debate), whereas younger men (and women in general) seems to go for the fiction departments.
 
"Reality. What a concept!" Robin Williams when he was on stage.circa 1978I've been thinking about this thread, started by vegetable theories, for days now. The reason it bothered me was that, in my niavete, I imagined that a website dedicated to one of the three or four most important short fiction writers working in English in the second half of the 20th century and on into the 21st century would be full of (for lack of a better word) militant short fiction readers. The longer I thought on this thread the clearer my ideas became. I now realize that we are as much a product of our times as anyone else.The modern novel and short story are private works of art aimed at one person at a time. The writer works in privacy and the reader reads in privacy. These arts were developed during a time of much less communication and before the joys or terrors (take your pick) of instant communication. If you wanted to talk to someone you had to physically move to where they were or you had to write a letter and wait for a reply. These limitations helped the novel and short story develop into such fine arts.In this new age with everyone stuck in the exact middle (and I mean everybody) of the Global Village with all eyes and electronic devices aimed at their faces day and night one can only wrench off small pieces of privacy through heroic effort. Most of us are city folk from birth, but the few of us who grew up in a real village know that, for whatever good there is in growing up among friends and neighbors, the one thig lacking in a village is privacy. Everyone knows everything about you and everyone is in your business always. In a village, electronic or physical, no one can think for themselves which means, practically, that no one can think at all. Or not without a sustained, deliberate effort. It used to be that every village was a little like The Village in the old Prisoner tv series. Now the whole world is a lot like The Village in the old Prisoner tv series. That show was even more prophetic than we ever realized.Reading is as much a craft and an art as writing. There are no patrons of the arts anymore, so the craft may die out for a while, but I'll keep reading. It might be a good idea, for this and for other reasons, to simplify our lives a bit. Our electronic toys are a ot more subversive than we first thought.
 
One last thought before I go. In my grandfather's time stories use to start "By the Hokies, there was a man in this place one time by the name of Ned Sullivan, and a queer thing happened to him late one night and he coming up the Valley Road from Durlas." This is how stories used to be told befor they became the modern art forms of the novel and short story. IN our time stories have returned to this kind of tall tale. I mean does anyone really believe that any of those paople in Class Reunion were really in the same class together 20 years ago? Does anyone really believe a word that any of Maury Povich's guests say?We haven't become illiterate. We've returned to the pre-art world of the tall tale.
 
I'd like to say a few words. Yes, I thought it only happened to me. It looks like I'm finally not alone here. In fact, I read less than 5 years ago, and much more less than 20 years ago.
Why? In my case, my free time to enjoy literature died when my first kid was born. I simply don't have time to read anything else but newspapers once in a while. Whoever has kids knows what I'm saying. And second, I would say that I worked hard for the last 5 or 6 years and whenever I have free time it is just to sleep or go out with my wife. If I read something, it has to be good, and short fiction.
About a few years ago, I started to collect first edition books, and this was absolutely counterproductive. I don't feel like touching the books. However, on this point, I found a solution, which is basically, go back to read cheap paperback editions.
One more on this, I noticed that after having read so much, all fiction looks alike. It is being harder every time I pick a book to find something new, something that amazes me, that makes me wonder as much as when I read my first Poe's tale when I was 16.
 
Russell Nash said:
It is being harder every time I pick a book to find something new, something that amazes me, that makes me wonder as much as when I read my first Poe's tale when I was 16.
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I think most of us would be familiar with that feeling.
I still find the odd exciting fiction - often it is only published on the internet.

And there are writers Im always amazed at: Elizabeth Bowen, Thomas Ligotti, Robert Aickman...

And i've been excitd by a whole tranche of good Horror stuff in some new books by new writers recently: eg: by Richard Gavin, Matt Cardin, Gary McMahon, Gary Fry, Simon Strantzas, Mark Samuels ....


....and Tamar Yellin.

It's never too late to cease being jaded with literature.
 
I too, believe we all suffer from that feeling which Alberto describes.

I'm only 24 and I suffer from it myself. However, some things can still give me the shakes, even though we (I, at least) get emotionally duller over the years. Some writing still strikes a deep chord within me, though of course, that ecstasy does not manifest itself as often as it did.

I'm not so sure the novel, or the short story for that matter, is dead yet.* After all, it's been pronounced dead so often that it seems unlikely it should happen now, instead of when television, radio or comic books came around. What I do believe is that fewer people will read, and that a larger percentage of the population will cease reading books altogether in the coming years. Those who once read one or two or three books a year mightn't do that now, when there's so much other entertainment to offer.

The novels people read tend to be excessively long, even. Just think about Twilight or Harry Potter, two recent mass-market phenomena. While their literary merit is hardly worth noticing (I guess - apologies to anyone who might like the books), they're still quite long, possibly engrossing affairs.

What I'm trying to say is that people do read. They even read novels, and novels of a considerable length at that. They may be novels that aren't very good novels (possibly better movies), but, they're reading. And the majority of readers have always gone for easily accesible reading material (what people apperently refer to as "a good read" - I for one don't care about "good reads", but I guess I prefer my entertainment to be depressive and cynical).

I'm certain the new technologies have changed our (our meaning "humanity in general") reading a lot, but what and how they have changed it, I'm uncertain of.



*I would like to point out that I prefer the short story or the novella, but that's because few writers' language is interesting enough, vibrant enough, to keep my interest over some 400 pages.
 
My experience is similar to Des's. There are older works that continue to amaze, and a healthy amount of newer work worth reading and exploring if one knows where to look. I don't think the crop of young writers has been this strong in decades. Many of those you read today will be the one's discussed on message boards tomorrow, I have no doubt.
 
I agree with all these ideas, that there is an older generation of very good writers and some new young writers that would still amaze people today and will do in the coming generations.

There was a bookstore I used to buy my books from, where one could find a book for 50 dollars. But, now, the same book can be found on ABE Books for 10, more or less in fine condition. So, I stupidly bought so many good books that I cannot read because they are too many. I even think that if I don't buy more books, I'll have enough for me and my family for years. On this point I see that internet was counterproductive. I even think to turn on my computer only once a week just to have more time for reading.

I also saw that whatever book is in vogue, people read it. Like I saw a receptionist (years ago) reading "Lord of the Rings", the same lady reading "Harry Potter..." number who knows, but that doesn't mean that she reads quality. The best newspaper in Toronto is the Globe and Mail which it is a pleasure to read (sometimes) but the most read is Metro, a free paper, with news that you read and forget soon after.

Do you believe we are in a pre-Matrix era? ...where we cannot unplug our brains from it, from the internet? I can say that from all these books I recently read I don't remember much, and guess what, I still do, for example Dagon by HP Lovecraft, or the Abominations of Yondo, by CA Smith. But these stories belong to a time in my life when I read a few books, and remebered most of what I read.
 
Being the Village Idiot of the Global Village it is all that I can do to turn on the internet. I don't have too much trouble staying away. Let me add "so far" to that last sentence. This is the only website that I have joined for the comradery. Every post is an education for me. The only other websites that I have joined are the ones where you have to be a member to buy things (and then I get all of their spam.)To continue reading I have had to make choices. I am innocent of much of what passes for culture today. During my work day I read enough intelligence on who is trying to blow up whom so I relish being an electronic hermit. I get more reading done that way."Slow down, you move too fast."
 
The only reason I joined TLO -- the only reason I got on-line -- was because I read and write fiction. It is my life. My mother never ceases to complain about how many books I have (I doubt that I have more than one-thousand) and she moans whenever I return from the University Bookstore with yet another book. & now I have found how easy it is to order books from amazon.com with my bank card. & now Mother is asking "Who is sending you all of those packages?" I smile and answer, "My best friend."

But non-reading is a serious issue. I have been posting at the Norwescon forum -- for our region's largest f&sf convention. There was a time when Norwescon was a real writer's convention. Now, alas, it is a boring "media" and "costume" con. I was on one horror panel about modern horror, and a Goth person on the panel was asked about modern authors, and this person said, "Oh, I don't read fiction." I was appall'd. Instead of book-sellers in the dealer's room, there are mostly outlets for costumes and outre jewelry, and weapons. Book-sellers have become a rarity. But Norwescon is a fan convention, and thus uncouth. At real conventions, such as World Horror Con and World Fantasy Con, the dealer's rooms are mostly book-sellers still. & moft of yem books are works of fiction.

The internet is seductive. I have stupidly join'd too many groups. But every group that I have join'd is related to reading & writing fiction (well, except for the six Streisand groups at Facebook.....). The internet HAS taken me away from reading, it is stealing my time -- especially Facebook, where I have join'd so many Cthulhu and Lovecraft groups, because I am going through this new surge of Lovecraftian creativity & part of its manifestation is my huge need to write about Lovecraft and the Mythos. So I've joined sites where I can ramble about such things. To-night, when I should have been working on the new book, I was reviewing Derleth Mythos books at amazon.com.

At The Haunt, they are predicting that the age of books is coming to an end, and that most small press publishers will become online publishers. I want to support the future of the small PRESS -- and try as I may to think of reading new books only from my laptop screen -- it is a world in which I do not want to exist. Nothing --NOTHING -- soothes me like laying on the sofa or in bed with a book beside me or held in hand. & most of those books are works of fiction. So I don't think the end is here just yet.
 
vegetable theories said:
The real non-fiction world has become more fascinating than the world of fiction.
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In the prologue (first published in the first French edition) of J. G. Ballard's "Crash" he writes something that goes like this: (I'm re-translating to English from a Spanish translation)

"We live inside an enormous novel. Each time it is less necessary for the writer to invent fictional content. The fiction is already there. The writer's work is to invent reality"

I most note, though, that I have found myself reading less and less as time goes by; however, I noticed that latter last year and I am doing my best to fix it; I try to read all the time, multiple material.
 
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Karnos said:
In the prologue (first published in the first French edition) of J. G. Ballard's "Crash" he writes something that goes like this: (I'm re-translating to English from a Spanish translation)

"We live inside an enormous novel. Each time it is less necessary for the writer to invent fictional content. The fiction is already there. The writer's work is to invent reality"
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"In addition, I feel that the balance between fiction and reality has changed significantly in the past decades. Increasingly their roles are reversed. We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind mass- merchandizing, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the pre-empting of any original response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality."
(third paragraph, from Ballard's introduction to Crash)

I too, at 41 I find less and less time to enjoying literature. And I bought too many books in the last years, many more than I could read.
It seems that life devours your time -- and your old passions -- with increasing voracity...
 
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