Member-only story
5 Truths That Reading Fiction Reveals
Fiction is the lie that helps us get to the truth.
In my second year of doing an English Literature degree, I studied The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. Throughout the book O’Brien flirts with fact and fiction, with a purpose captured in the line:
“Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.”
This book, and this quote especially, has changed the way I read forever.
I always thought non-fiction books were the ones with the facts, the lessons, the nitty-gritty real-life stuff that teaches and guides us. Whereas fiction was for entertainment, escapism, culture, or tradition. Primarily, I thought it was false.
What can a pretend world, a fantasy or a lie, teach us about truth?
I wasn’t willing to let the line go, so I searched the quote to see if O’Brien had talked any more about it. He had, and it turned out so had many others. Albert Cammus, Jessamyn West, Alan Moore, Neil Gaim, and Khaled Hosseini are just a few of the authors who have spoken of the same principle, that fiction is a path to an understanding about the world only reading it can afford.
My questions didn’t end there, I needed to know what these ‘truths’ were. What is it that can…
