Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that mankind has invented yet. Psychology and x-rays bring up the portentous shadows, and demographics and stroboscopic photography do some fine breakdowns, but for the full parfum and effluvia of being human, for feathery ambiguity and rank facticity, for the air and iron, fire and spit of our daily mortal adventure there is nothing like fiction: it makes sociology look priggish, history problematical, the film media two-dimensional, and the National Enquirer as silly as last week’s cereal box.
---John Updike from “The Importance of Fiction” in Esquire
Fiction is about life, and life is messy.
It is important to read and critically think about a myriad of issues.
“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.” ---Virginia Woolf
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