I read a Tim Parks blog post last night (via Dish) where he says that fiction may be less necessary now than it was. Now, people can write nonfictionally about (openly admit to) abuse, adultery, etc., in a way that Dickens et all could not have. I’m not sure that’s the only or main reason to leave fiction — but it was interesting that he said fiction was a way writers would work out their own life-issues. It’s not really why I would use fiction, but then, I’m more interested in ideas than people. Were I to write fiction, it’d be a fiction of ideas. I mean, I’m realizing lately, thanks to this year’s recent Creative Writing stuff, I’ve been realizing that I really don’t care to read about others’ experiences and feelings. Maybe it’s rude of me, maybe I am a tidbit autistic, but shit, ideas seem more vital than feelings to me. Ideas are new, or can be. Feelings are endlessly recycled person to person.
So many novels and movies have characters who make dumb choices, or impulsive ones, and I’ve never been dumb or all that impulsive. What seems far more vital to me are ideas on how, at any moment, there are so many different ways I can think. I can sit down and just have and let go of ideas. Say, sitting outside, I can look at the grass as a whole or particular blades, or I can lie back and feel like I’m gonna fall off the earth — “what’s holding me down?” — but these ideas aren’t even as interesting has having new ones, you know?
[From journal of Sun., 26 Oct. 2014, Journal 200, page 133-5]
MonkeyMoonMachine 