Why do you read fiction?

It’s a legitimate question, and one that really has no right answer.  Some people turn to fiction for the adventure, some to connect with people in a way they can’t in real life, some to escape real life.  Some read to learn, some read just because they love words and the way those words come together to form a whole book.

Frankly, it’s not really important.  If reading fiction makes you happy, you should read it.  No matter what genre, topic, or theme.

My stance on this was reinforced the other day when I read a blog post by Swiss-Anglo philosopher Alain de Botton, writing for Penguin’s UK website.  The post, titled “Alain de Botton on why romantic novels can make us unlucky in love“, frankly, set my teeth on edge.

Alain de Botton begins by stating we should read fiction because it “it lends us more lives than we have been given”, which is a sentiment I think is really quite lovely.  He holds that fiction essentially allows us to live through the lives of others, and learn from their mistakes and decisions, all of which is just fine.  However, that is, apparently, where our amicable acquaintance ends.  Because, de Botton then goes on to state,

Unfortunately, there are too many bad novels out there – by which one means, novels that do not give us a correct map of love…The narrative arts of the Romantic novel have unwittingly constructed a devilish template of expectations of what relationships are supposed to be like – in the light of which our own love lives often look grievously and deeply unsatisfying. We break up or feel ourselves cursed in significant part because we are exposed to the wrong works of literature.

I honestly can’t begin to tell you how sick I am of other people telling me–or any reader, for that matter–that reading romance novels is bad, or “wrong” for them.  As long as romance novels have been popular, there have been people (particularly men, but I’ll leave that be for the moment) banging on about how romance novels will inherently make women unhappy and unfulfilled, because they provide false expectations of reality.

I read a great deal of fantasy and science fiction novels, in addition to romance.  I have never heard anyone voice concern that I may be harmed by these books.  No one seems worried that I will come to believe that animals can talk, or that I can time travel, or that I can shoot flames from my finger tips.  Yet, over and over again, I hear that I am in real danger of thinking romance novels are real.

Let me be really clear about something: Romance readers are, demographically speaking, college aged women with careers.  They know very, very well that romance novels are fiction.

Now that we have established that fact, let’s also think about the purpose that romance novels do serve.  They are escapes.  They exist in a world where one doesn’t have to dust, or clean the toilet; where people can excel at interesting jobs; where soul mates are a real, tangible thing.  They are guaranteed happy endings.  And, as I’ve noted before, they explicitly affirm the heroine’s (and, thus, the reader’s) right to self-affirmation and individual happiness.  They teach us that we, as readers and as heroines, are capable of growing, of trusting ourselves, of respecting and loving ourselves.  Love is a reward for a journey of self-discovery.  The rest of it is frosting.  Delicious, sweet, decadent frosting.  With glitter.

Yet, according to Alain de Botton, “The Romantic novel is deeply unhelpful. We have learned to judge ourselves by the hopes and expectations fostered by a misleading medium. By its standards, our own relationships are almost all damaged and unsatisfactory. No wonder separation or divorce so often appear to be inevitable.”

By this same rationality, the current state of our environment can be attributed to too many science fiction readers believing that we will soon be moving to a moon colony.  Or that our foreign policy is the result of too many thriller readers believing that the Constitution is really a secret code handed down by the Freemasons.  Yet no one assumes that readers of science fiction or thrillers are that stupid or shallow.  Why, then, is it in anyway fair to think that romance readers have such a tenuous grip on reality?

I’m not sure if Alain de Botton hasn’t read many romances in his life, or doesn’t quite get them.  And that is fine.   As a very proud Library Person, I can say that he has every right to read, and to enjoy, whatever he likes.  If he would rather read more realistic stories about “real life”–whatever that actually is, that is terrific, and does not reflect on him as a worthy or intelligent person at all.   What I don’t, and will never, accept, is his assumptions about other romance readers.  We, too, have a right to read whatever we want, whenever we want.  And no one has the right to call that wrong, or tell us that “we merely need to change our reading matter”.

As long as there have been romance novels, there have been people telling women that there is something wrong with the books, and with them, as well, for wanting to read about a world where their voices and their thoughts and their persons are fundamentally valued and important.   That’s not dangerous for anyone, and it certainly shouldn’t be considered unrealistic.

But until we stop judging genres–and their readers, we are not doing justice to the fiction we read, or the empathy that our fiction seeks to instill in us.

So, as we kick off National Library Week, we just wanted to take a minute to reiterate that you and your reading choices are always welcome here, no matter what anyone says.