A Novel Idea
It is good to read a novel. Why do so many people disagree?
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Sometimes I meet people who read nonfiction to the exclusion of almost all else. Last year they might have read eight self-improvement books, three autobiographies, and a historical account, but the most recent novel they picked up was The Magic Treehouse in kindergarten.
I have noticed that this trait is more often true of people who have developed identities around being Smart and Productive Humans. People in consulting, tech workers, business owners, and so on. If I am estimating right, much of the Quarter Mile audience (including myself!) falls into this category. Which is partly why I’m writing this.
The Smart and Productive Humans tend to be older, and they tend to be men.
I thought this theory of mine was anecdotal. Then I started looking at the data, and it turns out my experience is representative: preference for fiction drops dramatically as people age. Only 28% of 50 to 64 year olds prefer fiction to nonfiction, compared to 47% of 18 to 29 year olds. And the non-fiction preference skews towards men at every age. The people who really love fiction are younger women (and if you need further proof, the bestselling novel on Amazon last year is literally called The Women).
So I guess my initial characterization was basically correct.
I am not making a value judgement about either category here. I am just curious: Why?
Whenever I meet a Nonfiction Reader, I ask that question. The response I get is usually along the lines of: “nonfiction is more useful.” These people want to improve their lives, and nonfiction seems to be the right path to doing so. Nonfiction is more practical. It is more serious. Novels are for children, or for artists, or for women, or for people with Star Wars posters on their walls. Nonfiction is for Serious People. [0]
I’d like to briefly challenge that idea.
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I am somebody who reads a lot of fiction and nonfiction. I believe that this is the best place to sit on the fiction-nonfiction continuum, which is to say, you don’t sit there at all and instead you read everything.
What’s weird about Nonfiction Readers telling me that nonfiction is more useful is that it does not in any way align with my life experience. If you asked me to write a list of the 10 books that had improved my life the most, that shaped the way I think and behave and live, eight or nine of them would be novels.
Brief interruption: Reading does not always have to be “useful.” It is just good. It is good regardless of whether it is useful. And if it does have to be useful, well, I find I am often wrong about what is useful.
There is clearly a disconnect here: I feel like the most beneficial, useful books I’ve ever read are fictional, yet the people who tell me they care about usefulness seem to prefer nonfiction.
So what is going on?
My basic answer is that people are addicted to learning new things, to collecting information. And the addiction is to a specific kind of information; a category we may be able to classify as Facts & Frameworks. Atomic Habits is a Facts & Frameworks book. So is the 4 Hour Work Week. So is scrolling the New York Times or your news outlet of choice when you wake up in the morning. Consuming all of these things feels useful. It feels like learning. Look at all these new facts! Look at all these useful new ideas that could improve your life. [1]
Conversely, novels—take Anathem by Neal Stephenson or The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway—do not immediately feel like new, useful information. Your brain rejoices when you read them, but not in the “I’m learning!” way. The default state for most people, I think, is to assume that when you are reading a novel you are doing the equivalent of watching a T.V. show or playing a video game, but that when you are reading a nonfiction book you are sitting in a university lecture hall.
I believe this is a poorly calibrated way to think about reading. I believe that:
- We overrate the usefulness of information that is presented in an educational context.
- We underrate the usefulness of information that is not presented in an educational context.
They aren’t aware of it, but most people who read Atomic Habits are doing it because it feels good. Its readers will likely not extract anything useful; if I delete the facts from Atomic Habits from their minds a week after they are done reading it they will not change, really, at all. They will go on as if nothing had happened. The difference is that they are telling themselves that there is a higher purpose; that Atomic Habits is a useful, virtuous thing to read where a novel is not.
The reality is that novels contain a lot of useful information. In many cases, they contain more useful information than the Useful Information Books do, and they deliver that information to you in more memorable and emotionally impactful ways. There is no nonfiction relationship advice book that could have changed the way I felt about unrequited love, but The Remains of the Day certainly did. Anathem sparked more interesting thoughts about parallel universes, religion, politics, and our place in the universe than reading a Neil DeGrasse Tyson book could ever have. [2]
Nonfiction and fiction are great, and you should read both. Really, I am telling you to read whatever you want. Just be careful about stuffing your mind with junk food that you tell yourself is “useful information,” to avoid becoming mentally obese, and to be wary of the obsession to “learn new things”. Be suspicious when you see someone’s reading list and notice they only read nonfiction. Ask them why.
Anyway, I think you should read because reading is good. And, to that extent, novels are good. You could go pick one up before the weekend.
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I want to close with the idea that all of this is, well, just semantics.
My elementary school librarian taught me that there were two types of books: fiction (imaginative, fake!) and non-fiction (factual, true). My high school AP literature teacher taught me the word pedantic, which means being overly concerned with minor details.
Here is one of my more pedantic points of view: non-fiction books are actually fiction.
To think that history books are entirely factual is incorrect. To think that self-help books are the most useful guides for living is incorrect. Non-fiction books are written by people. People with biases. Misinformation. Agendas. They are at least partly made up, too, and so the information in them may be as useful (or as not useful) as a novel about space wizards on a planet called Glorb. Something to think about.
* * *
[0] My argument here also extends to fiction readers who feel weird about reading fantasy or sci-fi. I have been in numerous conversations over the past year with people who only read literary fiction and view fantasy in the same way that a lot of nonfiction readers view fiction. They are all wrong.
[1] Sometimes this is useful, but the percentage of times this is useful is (in my view) much lower than what people who consume this content would like to admit. Most facts are not worth knowing.
[2] Once again, I love and read a lot of nonfiction. My point is that it’s weird to read nonfiction to the exclusion of all else, especially if your stated goal is usefulness or productivity. It’s also weird to read fiction to the exclusion of all else, so if you are one of those people, read nonfiction.
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