1. My perspective on fiction and nonfiction changed mightily when I read an essay by Northrup Frye in which he explained that nonfiction tells us what happened and fiction tells us what happens.
I'm enjoying how Leo Tolstoy combines nonfiction and fiction in War and Peace. In the war sections of the book (at least so far), he draws upon what actually happened in a series of battles between the French and the combined forces of Russia and Austria.
More compelling, though, is when he moves his attention to what's happening in the hearts and minds of two of his central characters, among others, when they are subjected to the violence of war.
We see what happens when two young, inexperienced, naive soldiers are in battle and confront the very real possibility of death. One of the characters, Andrei, thinks about how being in battle has the potential to make him a hero. Another, Nikolai, hero worships the Russian emperor Alexander and so what happens to him in battle is that he loves the emperor so much that he considers it an honor to possibly die for him. (This short summary leaves out a lot more of what happens to these characters under the stress of warfare.)
Tolstoy doesn't pass judgment on these (or other) characters. In fact, he writes about their inner lives and describes what happens in a way that I experience as objective and committed to the truth of what these characters are about, free of commentary or evaluation.
2. When I took breaks from reading War and Peace today, I thought about the book club I attend.
It turns out that on the whole, I've become as interested in what I'm learning about how and why people read as I am about their comments about the books themselves.
Now, no one says right out "this is how I read" or "this is why I read", but their comments about the book always reveal how they read and often reveal why they read.
I'm learning from this group (and from video clips I see online in which readers evaluate and recommend books) that many readers read books with expectations.
A common comment readers make goes something like this: "I expected the book to be more of a (fill in the blank)" or "I didn't expect the book to (fill in the blank)", "I was disappointed because I thought this book was going to (fill in the blank)".
I admit it. For the last several years, I've been reading books in my own little world with almost no interaction with anyone who is also reading the books I've been reading.
I've been out of touch with other readers and so listening to other readers talk about how they read has led me to examine how I read.
I might write more at another time about how I read, but I do know that I don't read with expectations. I focus more on trying to understand what the writer is inviting me to understand. This inquiry leads me to also think about the book's structure, the writer's writing style, and these elements of the book contribute to the writer's purpose and what I'm being invited to experience and understand.
For example, I'm reading Josh Brolin's memoir From Under the Truck as my bedtime reading.
Brolin wrote this book, at least in the early parts of it, in a fragmented, nonlinear style, jumping back and forth between vignettes from his boyhood/teenage years and his adult years.
From the get go, even before I started reading this book, I did not expect it necessarily to read like other memoirs I've read. I didn't expect anything. My approach to reading has left me receptive to being intrigued by his approach to memoir writing. I'm reading it without judgment, trusting that as I get deeper into it, I might arrive at a better understanding of why he wrote this book this way. I'm enjoying each fragment, each short story. The question for me goes something like this: "Why did Brolin write the book this way? What did he gain by taking this approach?"
And, of course, I might not figure it out and I'll be left feeling intrigued and possibly puzzled.
Can I live with that? Accept that?
You bet.
3. I fixed a pot of brown rice and combined part of what I cooked with a variety of vegetables, olives, and feta cheese to make salad I'm enjoying a lot. I also used some of this rice in a different way, combining it with leftover chili. I melted a slice of sharp cheddar cheese on a tortilla, scooped the chili and rice on to it, folded it over and had a simple and delicious dinner.
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