Fiction

She's Actual Size...
Fiction is a dangerous addiction, and I’m hooked. Fiction warps our sense of reality, engenders a sense of entitlement and fosters narcissism. I see this in the way everyone wants “closure”. Where did we get this concept of “closure”? 75 years ago, nobody ever even knew what it was, much less wanted it. Now our lives are a series of subplots that need to be wrapped up before the denouement.

I'm referring to a weblog entry from my friend Kathleen (the one who got on my case about the Battle Chickens) because her comments echo thoughts I've been having a lot lately. Go read it! Now!

This bizarre idea that life should flow like a narrative is, I think, the cause of more misery than most people realize. People who may otherwise be happy with their lot in life are feeling ripped off because they aren't getting the full John Hughes treatment.

But what can you expect? A work of fiction allows us to get into the "heads" of its characters in a way that real life can't match, making imaginary people seem more "real" than those of us who actually are real, but lack the required telepathic hookups. At the same time, fiction has the option of filtering out inconvenient ambiguities that come in a world where there are no real good guys or bad guys... if you watch "Friends" for 25 episodes a year, you probably do know those characters more than you know anybody in real life, because their motivations are so clear and their personalities so, uh... streamlined.

The real people I know are all inconsistent, with fuzzy motivations, and they never seem to be there just in the nick of time when I'm being chased down by a gang of alien thugs. Some friends you all are!