Everyone is going through something different right now, so I\u2019m not writing this as some form of judgment. I\u2019ve been extremely lucky through it all. These are merely my own thoughts on why reading novels has been important to me and some of the realizations I\u2019ve had on how structure and genre influence how I\u2019m affected by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reading for Comfort<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
From my earliest memories, I can remember reading as a comfort. I was the nerdy introvert, curled up on the couch with a blanket and a book. Novels were an escape from the cruel realities of schoolchildren.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had my animal friend adventures in Redwall<\/em>, the fantasy of a magical world just beyond my wardrobe in Narnia<\/em>, and even the thrilling and fun horrors of the Goosebumps<\/em> series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve gone through many reading phases in my life, but reading for comfort in this way has been pretty consistent. I matured into the more complicated adventure, horror, and fantasy series of Shannara<\/em>, Dune<\/em>, The Wheel of Time<\/em>, and Stephen King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, more than ever, is a perfect time to return to these comfort reads. I\u2019ve been making a conscious effort to get away from screens and into books. It\u2019s a bit embarrassing, but I haven\u2019t even been venturing much into new territory. I\u2019m returning to books I\u2019m sure have what I\u2019m looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve re-read Patrick Rothfuss\u2019s breakout novel The Name of the Wind<\/em>. It has been the perfect antidote to the news cycle. But it also got me thinking a lot about genre and story structure. Once a writer, always thinking about writing, I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m sure there will be a dozen angry comments pointing out obvious counterexamples to this but here\u2019s one realization: fantasy has a hard time producing genuine emotional responses in me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Romance is relegated to mere subplot, so we tend not to get the swooning of an equally escapist Nora Roberts novel (and if you\u2019ve never read her, you seriously need to use this quarantine time to remedy that!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deaths aren\u2019t felt deeply. They are either celebrated victories, mere backstory, for horror effect, or a shocking plot twist only to be reversed through magic later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In The Name of the Wind<\/em>, the main character\u2019s entire family is slaughtered. Yet I felt mostly nothing. We hadn\u2019t developed deep relationships with any of the characters. The scene is used to set up the main character’s backstory and internal motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a bit crass, but love, death, and many complicated emotional situations tend to be mere tools to advance the plot. They aren\u2019t explored with any depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adventure plots in general, and fantasy in particular, follow the Hero\u2019s Journey. Literature that achieves deep emotional response must use long-term payoffs. There are only a few such moments in any story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the plot structure is focused on defeating evil, the payoff comes from the main character overcoming their weaknesses and flaws to do this. When a book tries to set up other emotional responses, it fights with itself, making all parts weaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fantasy is great. It can be thought-provoking, motivating, inspirational, fun, scary, graphic, and many, many other things. Almost by definition, it can\u2019t be painful or moving in the cathartic way we\u2019ll soon talk about. There just isn\u2019t enough space or structure to set these things up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I know: many cutting-edge novels in fantasy are pushing genre boundaries. I\u2019m doing it in my own work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m trying to say that this is all okay! It\u2019s great that we have excellent escape fantasies for exactly these types of life moments. When I read The Name of the Wind<\/em> right now, I don\u2019t want to experience the trauma of losing family members. I want an escape from that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m going to continue to revisit my favorite fantasy novels to read for comfort and you should, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone is probably wired slightly differently. I found out at an early age that music affected me with an immediacy and profound intensity that many other art forms did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I actually started my undergraduate education as a music major. Fairly early on, I used to identify emotions with music. When I thought of anger, I thought of You Oughta Know<\/em> by Alanis Morissette. When I thought of love, I thought of Iris<\/em> by the Goo Goo Dolls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you can\u2019t tell, I was about as stereotypical an emo 90\u2019s kid as it gets. When I discovered classical music, my world broke. I didn\u2019t cry at anything in the real world, but music made me cry all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Henryk G\u00f3recki\u2019s Symphony No. 3<\/em> showed me sorrow and pain. I could watch a movie set during World War II without much comprehension. All it took was one time through that symphony to feel someone\u2019s art about it. I couldn\u2019t sleep that night and then listened to it over and over again for weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It actually took quite a bit of time to disambiguate these emotional ties to music, but that\u2019s what great art is supposed to do. It captures an emotional moment and shares it with the viewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aristotle had already identified this feature of art in 335 BC in his discourse Poetics<\/em>. Art is catharsis <\/em>\u2014 and not just for the creator. It allows the viewer, listener, or reader to purge and purify their emotions by experiencing them through the work of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a vital part of healthy human life, and it\u2019s something many of us are severely lacking while in isolation. Right now many of us are bottling up what we feel and think about what\u2019s going on in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As counterintuitive as it might sound, we need to read for pain. When I discovered great literature in college, I found out that it could do the same thing as music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve made it a point to not just read escapist fiction right now. I need the catharsis that can only come from a story structure completely designed around eliciting these emotional responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I picked up Graham Greene\u2019s The End of the Affair<\/em>, Joan Didion\u2019s The Year of Magical Thinking<\/em>, J.M. Coetzee\u2019s Disgrace<\/em>, and Michael Cunningham\u2019s A Home at the End of the World<\/em>. We can still live and express while in quarantine by doing it through great, painful novels and memoirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading for pain is only a facsimile of the real thing, but it\u2019s a darn close one with the right author. Each person will probably find a different author they resonate with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If this all feels like too much right now, I\u2019ll coax you with one other concept: there\u2019s reward enough in feeling deeply understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, we all feel thoroughly alone and isolated because we are. This isn\u2019t a figment of our imagination or psychosis we must overcome. David Foster Wallace once said that the role of literature is to make us feel less alone by feeling understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If reading for comfort and reading for pain are beyond you right now, at least read to feel less alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Find a book that really speaks to you \u2014 that makes you feel completely understood in a way that no person can. Find something that reads your mind and puts it on the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read that and feel less alone, even if it\u2019s only for a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anecdotally, the reading of literature seems to be down in these trying times. I\u2019ve spoken to some of my author friends, and they, like me, are seeing a downturn in numbers. There are obvious reasons for this, but those aren\u2019t points we should dwell on. People have less disposable income. Information is changing so quickly, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/amindformadness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/pexels-photo-267684.jpeg?fit=1880%2C1245&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12019,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12013\/revisions\/12019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Reading for Pain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Loneliness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"quarantine](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/amindformadness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/quarantine-reading.png?resize=538%2C1024&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"