In defense of fiction

I have heard the sentiment that fiction books are not worth reading, only non-fiction. This just seems unfortunate to me. The problem, I think, lies in the fictitious alignment of non-fiction books with "true" and fiction boks with "false". I'll give some examples to illustrate the arbitrariness of this distinction. First, Tim Lehay has written several non-fiction books. Need I say more? Well, I will anyway. This is a good quote from wikipedia on the definition of non-fiction (I emphasize text):

Non-fiction is an account or representation of a subject which is presented as fact. This presentation may be accurate or not; that is, it can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question. However, it is generally assumed that the authors of such accounts believe them to be truthful at the time of their composition.

So the main distinction appears to be that the subject is treated truthfully. Take the situation of Bram Stoker's Dracula vs. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vampires, a serious treatment of a fictional subject. They both deal with fictional stories and characters. But because one is written as a story, it's considered to be of less value than the one written as a factual account. I think this arbitrary distinction is unfair.

An overlooked concept is that fiction does just as good a job at telling you the truth as non-fiction. Here's the definition of fiction from wikipedia:

Fiction (from the Latin fingere, "to form, create")is storytelling of imagined events and stands in contrast to non-fiction, which makes factual claims about reality.

This definition though, is erroneous in that it says "imagined events". Fiction can, as a matter of fact, be written about events we know to be entirely truthful. The difference may be as small as an author creating a character simply to be our eyes and ears and experience the events for us, enabling us to live the story vicariously. This is sometimes what occurs in historical fiction.

I would argue that both fiction and non-fiction have a place in teaching "truth" (subjective as it is) to readers. For example, while history books (well, not public school books, but that's a different story) do a better job of laying out a broad outline of a historical event, they are often lacking in providing perspective on events. I mean, they do sometimes say things like "this war was disastrous for the peasantry, which lost a third of their numbers." But by and large, histories tend to strive for objectivity (again, with some glaring exceptions like A Patriot's History), and you tend to lose any human element. It's much more enlightening to view the events from the viewpoint of someone who was there. Also, most histories are slanted towards looking at those who were the decision makers at the times. I mean, how much did you read about Abraham Lincoln as opposed to individual Yankee or Confederate soldiers in the Civil War?

Sometimes you're lucky enough to get a biographical account from someone who was there (other than Presidents and Kings, that is), but not often, and especially not from times when most of the Earth's population was illiterate. You rarely read a book that includes the views of the average 13th century European farmer. If you wanted to read a factual account, you could not. This is where fiction comes in handy. Even though we know what the average life of such a farmer was like, you wouldn't want to read an entire non-fiction book about the farmer because it would be dry and boring. If you read a fiction story, however, it can be made fairly entertaining, and include as many facts as a straight history. I believe that this enables the reader to absorb facts better, in fact, than non-fiction histories of the same subject.

I'm not saying non-fiction books don't have their place. I love reading non-fiction as well as fiction, and I don't think any fiction book could cover the territory of Millenium, or Europe, or 1491 equally. And non-fiction books can be quite enjoyable as well, not even counting some of the great documentaries that are out there. I'm just saying that let's acknowledge that neither type of work is superior, and that both have their values.