Novelty

My current novel 

For the last several years, starting with Moby Dick, I have been reading novels on my iPhone Kindle app. Usually at night, a couple of pages or at least one sentence. My goal is read at least something of the novel daily with 95% compliance. There are days that I miss. But, I do put a reminder on my iPhone calendar to at least not forget. It is like the old adage of how to eat an elephant: One bite at a time. I have knocked out about ten classic novels in the last three years and have found a lot of enrichment by doing so.

I was watching a talk on CSPAN2 BOOK TV yesterday, "television for serious readers," which is a tad ironic, where the speaker was getting into talking about George Washington's mom. History hasn't been kind to her apparently, but the speaker sought to rectify what she perceived to be the unfavorable light in which she has been cast, primarily by George Washington's letters referencing her, particularly in her petitions for money.

She was a widow whose husband had died when George was 11. As the eldest son, George had some duties towards her which became more complicated by his father also having older sons from another marriage where the father's will was more generous to the two older half-brothers than the second family with five kids. The speaker's point was the Mary Baldwin Washington had a tough go of it. And since she wrote few letters, her side of the story has been lost to history.

The speaker made the point, which research has shown, that fictional novels inculcate empathy. It was an interesting point to make about a historical person but I think her goal was to compose verbally I surmise, based on the available evidence and conjecture, a novel of sorts about Mary Baldwin Washington's life to attempt to correct a male writer bias against her, and perhaps women in general of the time, who toiled often in obscurity in their daily trials and troubles and triumphs.

I am not sure why fictional novels have been found to be influential in inculcating empathy in readers but I have two ideas:

1) Biographies, and even more so, autobiographies, by their very nature are biased. Every author has a slant and other characters by implication become secondary. By elucidating the main characters, perhaps others are unfairly reduced in importance. Very few people are entirely forthright. It may be their attempt to portray themselves better or to avoid placing another person in negative space. Lawsuits happen over things like that.

2) It is very difficult, in non-fiction, to get into characters' heads. To figure out what they are thinking and why. We read words and envision their actions. But, only fiction gives god-like power to the author to probe their inner world. And maybe, that is where the empathy piece comes from. When we understand why characters do things according to their own reasoning, we are least have a place internally to stand versus being on the outside looking in. Not sure....

For example, Javert in Les Mis had an ultra-compulsive need for law and order based on his own chaotic and turbulent growing up. Ahab was chomped by Moby Dick and his crippling condition fueled his rage towards the White Whale and a rematch. Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin, as a Christian, decided to be a cooperative slave under even cruel masters until it came to obey orders to abuse other slaves, where he refused and sacrificed his own life instead (how that makes him an Uncle Tom seems to be a one-dimensional unread canard about his character).

I worry that our culture is jettisoning reading and will lose the capacity to place ourselves in others's shoes. Our social media world does seems to place the user at  the center of the story at the expense of others. Call it Trumpism. Who apparently doesn't read much.