Everyday Canvas

Good Fiction and Memories

Prompt: David Foster Wallace said, "Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable"
Do you agree and what do you think good fiction’s job is?

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Yes, I agree, but that’s a simplification of what good fiction can do. I believe that a lot more things exist as to what good fiction does.

To begin with, good fiction holds a mirror to all there is inside and outside of us. Sometimes that mirror disturbs or comforts or even encourages to take action. Encouraging is more than comforting, isn’t it? For example, a person reading about a story during the French Revolution may look at the injustices in his own country and may begin to speak up.

Then sometimes, good fiction advises us not to take action, too, as that action could be deadly, by giving examples of what might happen in this quixotic, paradoxical life of ours.

Yet another job of it is teaching us about our world, its history, its geography. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I finished reading a novel, The Weight of Ink, about the Jewish refugees in England who escaped the torture in Iberia. This part of history, even though I was good with history in school, must have escaped me. So I started reading a non-fiction book on the treatment of the Jews in Spain and Portugal during the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, called The Jews of Iberia. That good book of fiction stimulated my curiosity and taught me a thing or two, and I am not even Jewish, although I do believe I might have Jewish ancestors.

Good fiction also entertains. I am now reading another book from an author in Amsterdam who has written about his experiences in an old people’s home and he admits to turning those into fiction; in other words, he’s making up most of the stories. From that point of view, he is really entertaining me, which is much more than providing comfort.

Prompt: Is there a difference between your personal memories and your history as others know it, and what intrigues you most about how other people recall the past?

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Surely, there are a lot of differences between the actual events and what I remember about them because, as a human being, I can’t be certain I am 100% objective about everything as all human beings have some degree of emotionality and interpretation.

To top it off, we all own imperfect brains that mix everything up such as imagination and reality, the residue of past experienced affecting our way of seeing things, and rejecting or embracing negative stuff, which the behavioral experts tell their subjects to never give oneself a negative command since the brain has the knack of turning “don’t do this!” to “Do this!” As an aside, that may be why smokers and fans of other vices can’t give up by just deciding not to do the deed.

I don’t trust other people’s memories, too. For example, my cousin who has a much better memory than me recalls the naughty deeds we did together through rose-colored glasses whereas I either reject recalling those memories or think of them as stuff to be embarrassed about. I can’t believe she even thanked me for filling her childhood with fun.