One of the characters in John Fowles’s The Magus says,
I burnt every novel I possessed. . . . Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?
I sometimes feel that way lately. When I’m at the bookstore and I read the jackets of new novels, they all sound like stories I’ve read before. I keep reminding myself that there are only so many stories that can be told, and that the real value of a story is in how it’s told. But even the tellings all sound the same these days. And if there’s no joy to be found in the language, nothing new in “getting there,” no great truths to be gleaned, then what is the point of ingesting all those lies? One’s mind could grow fat and bloated on such a diet and yet remain malnourished.
Give me beautiful language. Give me an exciting journey the likes of which I have never experienced before. Give me brilliant lies that yield big truths.
Give me all this or give me nonfiction!