Why We Read

we read for The Truth

In the novel, The Light Between Oceans, we, the readers, know the truth. A lighthouse keeper, named Tom Sherbourne, and his wife, are living on a remote island off the coast of Australia. One day a boat washes ashore with a man, dead on arrival, and his infant daughter, who is alive. Tom and his wife decide to keep the baby and raise her as their own. (I'm not giving anything away that isn't revealed on the jacket copy.)

Of course the implications of this decision are far-reaching and disastrous for many people. No one escapes with a clean conscience and no one knows the full story, yet everyone wants redemption. What is so compelling about the novel is that it never makes a judgment on the characters. It doesn't it try to convince you that what they did was acceptable or not. You're only presented with the facts of why they did it. The story simply asks you to meet the characters where they are with an open mind.

The Light Between Oceans is the first novel or narrative nonfiction I've read in quite a while that evokes my sympathy for all the characters, even if I don't agree with their actions. I understand the situation from every angle. I get it, and I get them.

This is why fiction can be truer than reality. In fiction—in good fiction—a character's motivations stem from his or her truth. In life, we often don't know "beyond a shadow of a doubt."Ralph Waldo Emerson said that fiction reveals the truth that reality obscures. When a character's actions lack sufficient motivation, something doesn't ring true for me. When they do, I connect in a meaningful way, even though the people aren't real. This is what I wanted to write about today as my first post in a monthly series looking at why we read, how we can use storytelling to spread compassion, and the implication of what we read in a larger context.

we read to change our minds

I'd read Pride and Prejudice once in high school and once in college, and I disliked it both times. It offended my burgeoning sense of what it meant to be a woman. The main topics are marriage, money, and high society, which really are all sides of the same coin. "All these characters talk about is finding a husband! How is this relevant?"

There is some truth to this. Pride and Prejudice is indeed about finding a suitable husband to secure a good future, and woe be the woman who chooses wrongly. Jane Austen pulls no punches. In the famous first sentence, she tells you what her story is about. Me from the past (as John Green would say) cringes at this sentence.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

I'd harbored these resentments until last September at the Brooklyn Book Festival when I stumbled on the Jane Austen Society booth. If you want to see how passionate these people are about Austen's novels, mention that you think her works are insulting to women. (Tip: Don't do this.)Those "Janeites" got to me. I began to soften.

Then I received an annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice as a Christmas gift, and I devoured the 700 pages (including annotations) in days. The annotations certainly went a long way in shedding light on social customs and taboos of early-19th century England, things Austen's contemporaries would have understood. The significance of various carriages, the nuances between addressing Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Miss Elizabeth, the fact that propriety dictated a man should not write to a single woman directly—all were made richer by reading this edition. The major plot point that I'd thought unrealistic and manipulative—Elizabeth visiting Pemberley and "accidentally" running into Darcy—was commonplace. People often visited grand estates for tours, even when the owner was in residence.With few exceptions, women in Austen's day had little opportunity to improve their station in life. They couldn't own property, couldn't earn their own income, couldn't change social class. They used the only agency they had available to them—saying yes or no to marriage. Austen makes sure we understand this by having Elizabeth refuse first Mr. Collins and then wealthy Mr. Darcy. This is her right. It makes her declaration all the more delicious: "I had not known you [Darcy] a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world I could be prevailed upon to marry."

In Natalia Sylvester's post about rereading Little Women, she writes, "Who we are inevitably changes how we read the books we love: suddenly I was catching bits of Louisa May Alcott’s feminism I hadn’t noticed as a young reader..."

Same! In rereading Pride and Prejudice all these years later, I can see beyond my original indignation to a deeper understanding of the characters' motivations. I am open to the idea that this novel is about much more than marriage and social class. Elizabeth Bennet is, in fact, enterprising. She is using the only means of influence available to her, and maybe in that sense she is a role model.

we read to stretch our World

"We need fiction to stretch our world."  ~Susan Sontag

If you want to learn something new—about yourself, the people around you, the world—there are plenty of nonfiction resources to do that. Very bright people dedicate their lives to conducting research or sharing their personal experiences in the hopes of enlightening the rest of us.

Still, I find my eyes are opened widest through fiction. I've felt the dust in my throat as it swept across the Great Plains,  realized what it means to be unjustly accused, been an Outsider, discovered how to work a lighthouse, and much more.

In fact,  I usually learn more and in a way that resonates with me longer through fiction than nonfiction. Nonfiction often has an agenda. The author has a thesis and is trying to convince me of X. With fiction, I let my guard down. No one is getting preachy (not in good fiction, anyway) or trying to persuade me. The author is presenting the details as they unfold, and I take what I want from it. Fiction immerses me in the lives, occupations, and eras of the people who lived them. These people may exist only in my imagination, but they are representatives for thousands who may not have had a voice.

And so it was with Salt to the Sea, a wonderful new novel by Ruta Sepetys. Near the end of WWII, there was a maritime disaster so terrible, it dwarfed the losses of the Titanic and the Lusitania combined. When the Wilhelm Gustloff sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea from three Russian torpedoes, it took the lives of more than 9,000 people. Many were refugees and injured soldiers who were "trying to escape from a no-man’s land neither Axis nor Allied in a war already lost but not yet won." (Read the spot-on New York Times review.) 

Weaving four narratives in very short chapters (reminiscent of All the Light We Cannot See), Ms. Sepetys brought me there to Gdynia, Poland, with her characters and asked me to make impossible, often heartbreaking decisions. Leave your family behind? Wait for the iron curtain to close across Eastern Europe or take your chance with the Nazis? Send your baby aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff with strangers in a desperate attempt to get him to safety? Behind each of these decisions were people faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. We put ourselves in their shoes. We wonder: would I have the courage, the strength to overcome this?

Every time I pick up a new book, my eyes are opened again and again, and I learn more about myself and the kind of person I want to be. "I am drawn to stories of strength through struggle. I think how we deal with the challenges that face us—that's what really defines us." ~Ruta Sepetys.

we read to be convinced

Years ago, Anthony Doerr went to Rome on a prestigious fellowship to the American Academy. He and his wife packed their six-month-old twin boys to spend a year in the Eternal City. (He received news of the fellowship the day they got home from the hospital!) He had been given the gift every writer dreams of: time. He would be able to devote himself to writing whatever he wanted, no strings attached.

His main project was an epic WWII novel with alternating characters: a blind Parisian girl fleeing the Nazi occupation and a German boy whose knack for radio electronics brought him the attention of the Hitler Youth.Doerr would eventually finish that novel and win the Pulitzer Prize. But that lay years into the future. For now, he was in Italy and recording his thoughts into a memoir called Four Seasons in Rome. 

If you loved the descriptions in All the Light We Cannot See, this book will delight you. I mean, it's ROME! But...it's also Rome. It's difficult to convince me that there is something new to uncover. People have been writing about Rome since the Etruscans. How will I not be pummeled with meaningless adjectives and cliches I've read a thousand times? How will I not drown in melodrama?

The answer, I've come to realize, is that the writer has to change my relationship to the subject in a surprising and convincing way. To do this, she first has to develop a unique relationship to the subject herself. I think Doerr often does a terrific job with this. Rome is, he writes, “an iceberg floating beneath our terrace, all its ballast hidden beneath the surface.”

The next step is to select the right details and put them into the right places in the story. Easier said than done, I know. Later in Four Seasons in Rome, Doerr writes:

Every story seeks, in Emerson's words, the invisible and imponderable: faith, loss, emotional contact. But to get there, oddly enough, the storyteller must use the visible, the physical, the eminently tangible. The reader, first and foremost, must be convinced.And details, the right details in the right places are what do the convincing...These details are carefully chosen. They are there to reinforce majesty, divinity, to ensure us that what is said to be happening actually is happening.[The writer] hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let her reader see, smell, and hear a world that seems complete in itself. She builds a stage set and painstakingly hides the struts and wires and nail holes. Then she stands back and hopes that whoever might come to see it will believe.

I come to a novel, short story, memoir or essay because I want to be surprised and convinced. I'm ready to give the writer every benefit of the doubt, so I'm willing to suspend my disbelief. In other words, I'm hoping to make a new discovery, even about a place, a time, an event I know. And, let's face it, in this age, knowing is a few clicks away. Every story has been told. How can the writer make something commonplace new again? That's the promise of what lies beneath the cover of every book.

We read to recognize ourselves

Literature is an unbreakable bridge...When readers recognize themselves in a writer’s work, you’ve built this unbreakable bridge [between the writer and reader] that is a spiritual connection. ~Cheryl Strayed

The best stories, the most memorable stories, are the ones in which I develop a connection with the main character. I know when this begins to happen because I find myself (gasp) underlining sentences and, if I don't have a pen handy, turning the corners of pages. What is this connection?

Connection can be a fanciful, dreamy term. Connection, in real life or in the pages of a good book, is recognition. It's identifying with someone. It's more than just a clever line or an unusual situation, which is why I rarely find recognition in genre stories where the focus is on the uniqueness of the character's circumstances, rather than character himself.

I can imagine how terrifying it would be to find myself stranded on Mars, but I never saw myself in Mark Watney. That's not to say that a character's personality or circumstances should mirror my own. Recognition doesn't need to come in the literary equivalent of a mini-me. In fact, the most poignant moments are when I see glimpses of myself in characters vastly different from me. Lily Bart in The House of Mirth. Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Eilis Lacey in Brooklyn. Mary Sutter in My Name Is Mary Sutter. These characters have lives that are nothing like mine, yet I feel that connection.

Seldon pushed his hat back and took a side glance at her. "Success—what is success? I shall be interested to have your definition.""Success?" She [Lily Bart] hesitated. "Why, to get as much out of life as one can, I suppose. It's a relative quality after all."The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

I found that recognition most recently in Alice Pearse in A Window Opens, who is desperately trying to find a work/life balance. This is from Lorraine's review at Enchanted Prose:

Alice, though, is an optimistic soul, so when she/“employee #305” enters her minimalist, impersonal white workplace she translates “stark” into “elegant.” Keep in mind she’s also an independent soul...who is determined to succeed. Fear of failure, a potent yet misguided motivator.

Alice feels personal, familiar. And I feel validated and acknowledged. I am seen, even though I may be alone in the room. I think this is what we mean when we say that we really like a character, and why it's so difficult to continue reading a story with unlikeable characters.

I'm currently reading a novel with multiple alternating points of view. One of the characters, Willa, is instantly recognizable to me. The other points of view character, not so much. That's not to say they aren't wonderfully written characters—dynamic and interesting—just that I don't have that special connection. I spend a lot of those chapters hoping that I'll be getting back to Willa soon.

I think this may often be the case in multiple point of view stories. The characters are in direct competition with each other for the reader's attention. Readers may not get enough "page time" with any one character to develop this deep connection. Or they don't like one of the point of view characters.

That deep recognition doesn't happen in every book. It can be a bit elusive like chasing the Loch Ness monster, but when it does, it feels like that unbreakable bridge.  

We read to have fun

Sometimes I don't want a deep, thought-provoking read. Sometimes I don't want to be challenged or need to research historical background. I just want to open the cover and enjoy.

Also, the onset of warmer weather encourages me to pick lighter subject matter. Sweeping epics like All the Light We Cannot See and Station Eleven feel stout, like a hearty bowl of stew. Good for curling up under a blanket on a winter's day when the sun sets at 4:30. In the summer, I tend to gravitate toward the literary equivalent of flip-flops.

I recently read two books that were just plain fun. Just because these novels are entertaining doesn't mean they don't have well-rounded characters and an engaging plot. These books won't ask a lot of you, but they will put a smile on your face.

Someday, Someday, Maybe, by Lauren Graham If you want to get yourself geared up for The Gilmore Girls episodes later this year, this will do the trick. Someday, Someday, Maybe feels like Bridget Jones meets The Gilmore Girls. It's a new adult story of young Franny trying to land her first real gig as an actress in 1995 NYC. (A thinly veiled autobiography of Lauren Graham's experience?) There's plenty of witty banter, clever lines, and twenty-something angst.We know how things are going to turn out for Franny, and in that respect, there isn't much surprising about the story itself. There are no twists, turns or dark dealings. It's a straight-forward tale about a time in our lives when we're unsure of what is supposed to happen next, when all of life feels like a secret and we don't know quite which way is up.  I listened to this as an audio book, which was the right call. Lauren Graham reads the story, and she's perfect of course.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan Let me say that I have an unnatural attachment to novels about bookstores and libraries. I enjoyed The Storied Life of AJ Fikry and The Little Paris Bookshop. So I had a feeling I would like Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, but I didn't know how much! There is a secret society, high-tech whiz kids, special fonts (yes, I said fonts), and a budding romance. The story is always moving forward, weaving an interesting group of twenty-somethings that circulate around the main character, Clay. I think it's safe to say that Clay has a lot of "just right" connections, which all fall into place perfectly. He knows how to get his friends on board to help him solve the curious situation he finds himself in since he started working at Mr. Penumbra's bookstore. Robin Sloan did a nice job of describing these disparate worlds—the high tech Google cohort and the secret society members who surround themselves in ancient texts clad in flowing black robes. If you pick up a "carbon-based copy" (as Alice in A Window Opens calls paper books), you're in for a fun treat: the cover glows in the dark!

we read to travel

“Oh, the places you'll go.” ~Dr. Seuss

My absolute favorite books—fiction or nonfiction—are ones that transport me to another place. James Herriot's Yorkshire. Ignatius J. Reilly's New Orleans. Twain's Mississippi. The authors brought these places to life and we remember them. It's not only because these stories are classics. I'd venture to say that they are classics partly because they evoke the setting in a captivating way.

Setting is the Goldilocks element of any good story. It should find a nice balance between not too much, not too little, settling on just right. Selecting the right details pulls me into the characters' world. Most readers want to find common emotional ground with the main character, and that is an important first step. But if I can imagine myself there—hiking the PCT alongside Cheryl Strayed or onboard the Wilhelm Gustloff as it sinks, I will remember specifics about that story for a long time to come.

The location informs the characters. People are not the same everywhere. The weather, landscape, architecture, foods, flora, and fauna all serve to inform the culture. It's why you might feel comfortable in Amsterdam but not Alaska, Santa Fe, New Mexico but not Santa Fe, Argentina.Come along as we travel at the invitation of three authors. First, Ann Patchett takes us to the Amazon in State of Wonder. 

At dusk the insects came down in a storm, the hard-shelled and soft-sided, the biting and stinging, the chirping and buzzing and droning, every last one unfolded its paper wings and flew with unimaginable velocity into the eyes and mouths and noses of the only three humans they could find. Easter [the name of a character] slipped back inside his shirt while Dr. Swenson and Marina wrapped their heads like Bedouins in a storm. When it was fully dark only the misguided insects pelted themselves into the people on board while the rest chose to end their lives against the two bright, hot lights on either side of the boat. The night was filled with the relentless ping of their bodies hitting the glass.

Next, we stop at a tenement apartment in Brooklyn with eleven-year-old Kim and her mother, freshly arrived from China.

A thick layer of dust covered the small kitchen table and wide sink, which was white and pitted. As I walked, I tried to avoid the brittle bodies of the dead roaches scattered here and there. They were huge, the thick legs delineated by the harsh shadows...The walls were cracked, bulging in places as if they had swallowed something, and in some spots, the paint layer had flaked off altogether, exposing the bare plaster like flesh under the skin.Despite its bareness, this room stank of old sweat. In the corner, a double mattress lay on the floor. It had blue and green stripes and was stained. There was also a low coffee table with one leg that didn’t match, on which I would later do my homework, and a dresser that was shedding its lime paint like dandruff. That was all. I hugged myself with my arms. “Ma, I want to go home,” I said.

Lastly let's go to Versailles with Alain Baraton, master gardener there for forty years, as he deals with the aftermath of a terrible storm.

Two young beech trees I had recently planted had been among the first to go. They were now smothered under the mass of a fallen cherry tree. My trees, once so orderly and upright, were now tangled and piled up on one another in painful chaos. They lay in agony, their roots naked and suffering, exposed to the air in a position I couldn't help but find shocking.

The laws of nature, which usually seemed so clement and productive, had been swept away in a climactic upheaval that had lasted only a few hours. Another revolution had struck the subjects of Versailles, and those "subjects" (as we often refer to individual trees in French) were going to die. They had been taken away in the space of a night and there was nothing  I could do about it.

Deprived of the garden's protection, the palace itself suddenly seemed fragile. Heart racing, I headed to Versailles's botanical treasure chest, the Queen's Hamlet. The surroundings had changed so dramatically that I had trouble finding my way. Nothing familiar had survived. The trees that once guided visitors through the garden were unrecognizable. Some of them lay on the ground; others had been displaced or crushed by their neighbors. Even the road was gone. In its place lay a field of mud where my boots sank to the calf.