It’s almost winter and I have not read a work of fiction since the spring. In fact, I had almost forgotten that I read that book, Lonesome Dove, until I remembered that I took it on holiday to Texas in March.
Nowadays, I’m ashamed to say, my reading list is crammed with non-fiction works: mainly collected writings, histories and biographies. I’m currently 400 pages into Robert Caro’s 1,100-page The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Will I ever be set free?
I mentioned this to an American friend who works as a fiction editor at a London publishing house the other day and she told me that I had caught the “American Disease.”
The American Disease, as she described it, is a never-ending desire for knowledge. (I’m not convinced this is a purely American disease; I’d hazard a guess that it goes on in the UK too.) Why waste valuable hours on make believe when you can learn something instead?
The answer is, of course, that it is possible to learn a lot more from a work of fiction than purely facts and figures. Great novels are an exploration of great (and often timeless) ideas. But they require a great deal more independent thought than a work of non-fiction. When I finished Yuri Trifonov’s The House on the Embankment I had explored the concepts of time and memory. The subject still fascinates me. When I finish Caro’s biography of Robert Moses I will have a better understanding of the city around me. But will I have learned anything about the human condition, other than one man’s monomaniacal vision for New York City and State?
However much I miss fiction, I cannot escape my hunger for fact. As I cast an eye towards the end of the year and our week-long Christmas vacation in the Danish countryside, I have started to put books aside for the trip. Much as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Bonfire of the Vanities keep tempting me, the two books currently in the lead are 1776 and Dangerous Nation, with A Short History of Nearly Everything jostling for attention. All three—you guessed it—non-fiction.
Cross-posted at Television is Furniture.
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You lucky thing going to Denmark. Have you heard about the topless speed control ladies they’ve unleashed there? I first caught an eyeful on yesterday’s Mobuzz TV, but here’s the full scoop http://tinyurl.com/yb2sdh - so remember to pack your shades.
I have been to Denmark many times. That’s got to be fake.
Sounds like your American friend has caught the “European disease.” Europeans have been criticizing Americans for centuries for being “obsessed” with facts. Who needs facts when you have conspiracy theories to live by?