What is the value of fiction?

It's characteristic of fiction writers that we tend to be good at bullshitting. Something of a necessary skill, really. And it's characteristic of everyone that we tend to be pretty bad at judging our own importance without some self-aggrandisement.

That makes it something of a problem to evaluate the value of fiction without lapsing into high-minded, flouncing tripe. Of course literature is a tremendous value to all mankind! Just look at this rhetoric I've put together that proves it.

So let's take the opposite tack here. Let's cut away fiction to it's simplest, least pretentious components and see what we get.

The most basic level I can think of for fiction as a social activity is at last one person writing a story, and at least one other person reading it. And hopefully both reader and writer get enjoy it.

Obvious, right?

This is foundational. It lies before we muddy the waters with notions of quality, social context, an so forth.

So it seems to me that fiction writing ought to go in a category with things like conversation and sex: Social activities we do because they are mutually gratifying – play. Play that is open-ended, unformalised, and not subject to rules except in the broadest sense.

And there it is: Mutually gratifying. The core value of fiction is that it's enjoyable. That applies to all the stuff five-year-olds tell one another at school, all the fanfics, all the published fantasy novels all the literary canon, however defined. It covers everything from Xenophilia to War and Peace.

And therein, I think, we find the only necessary and sufficient criterion for a work of fiction to be valuable: Someone enjoys it.

But we can push this a step further.

Works of fiction can carry immense emotional impact. I don't know of anyone halfway sensible who would try to deny this.

“Books are there, when no one else is” says Frances Hardinge. And from Alan Bennet's play, The History Boys, we have: “The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”

And isn't that just magnificent? And it's not just consolation. Fiction can inspire, educate, bewilder, etc. In general, it can have far reaching consequences for the person reading it, and all those they interact with.

Before I sign off, here are two things to keep in mind:

First: Sure, fiction can immense emotional impact. Still, our original criterion holds: The foundational value is simply to be enjoyable to someone.

Second: Across the spectrum – from simply enjoyable to massively powerful – the value of fiction is still small-scale. We're not waving our hands at some notion like “works that have contributed to the progress of humanity” – simply affecting one person is enough. People who try to tell you that certain works are worthless and should be dismissed (or, more insidiously, aren't actually stories at all) are are best talking shit and at worst are actively stifling our fun.

That's all for today.

PS. There's another dimension here. A story may be entirely enjoyable and moving, but nonetheless encourage bigotry, mysticism, and other harmful social effects. Or a story may work against such things. This, the social effect of fictions, is important, but I've left it out of the discussion here for two reasons: (1) It's worth an essay all on its own, and (2) I think it's a separate area that deserves its own topic rather than being crammed under the present discussion.