The Inquisition is very taken with the idea of there being an essential truth in fiction. Good fiction is a powerful mechanism with which it is possible to discuss and digest abstractions – the intricacies, highs and lows of life free from deep interpersonal or emotional involvement. We all can, to a greater or lesser extent, identify with paintings of wild outdoor scenes, babies with mothers and so on ad infinitum throughout human history.
“Fiction is truer than history, because it goes beyond the evidence, and each of us knows from our own experience that there is something beyond the evidence.” – EM Forster
The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene describes concepts fro the absolute and global such as the death and birth of empires, the British diaspora and their changing place in world events down to the individual’s power to cause and change only the events around him and which have in turn, greater impact.
In a very direct example of the provocative power of good fiction he has his characters discuss imperial control with great insight, ‘starvation makes a man desperate. Malnutrition makes him too tired to raise a fist’.
This article was posted by Ronan McDonnell on
Thursday, October 21st, 2010 at
13:57.
It is archived in Short Post and tagged Art, fiction, writing.
If you enjoyed this article, please help The Inquisition grow by sharing it.
