Haven't watched the show (don't have adolescents & so much else to watch/read/experience in limited time 🤷) but totally agree with you about fiction having an "in" that often straight fact-based non-fiction doesn't. In some respects it gives the reader PERMISSION to see perspectives that otherwise they would avoid, but because it is part of a fictional story it allows them to rationalise giving them headspace, and possibly taking some of it on board in real life.
I read a series of fiction by a writer whose stories revolved around sucking you into being apalled by some characters, sympathetic to others, and then totally "flipping the script" later when you realise the crazy wife & the adoring husband were actually totally opposite, and the sympathetic third party observing it all ends up killing "the bad guy". Every book has a conundrum - was a murder justified because of 1) the extreme behaviour/abuse of the killed towards others? & /or 2) the saving of future victims of the killed? & /or basically self-defence as in prevention of the inevitable abuse? Although in other stories by the same author some of the murders, while of not-nice people, were for the convenience of the murderer (eg disposing of a blackmailer). It was interesting the change in perspectives & mindsets which can ONLY happen in fiction, although in this respect non-fiction/fictionalised re-enactments of "true crime" can approach this I guess? Certainly made me ponder whether SOMETIMES a murderer should be able to get away with it 😱
Great post, Jesse. Your comments about fiction vs non fiction sparked in my mind the old creative fiction adage: "show don't tell". It seems to me that non-fiction often struggles to "show" while fiction struggles to"tell".
Jesse, bang on, and there’s more. 1. Non-fiction tells us stuff that fiction shows. The best fiction writers tells us everything we need to know about a character is just one or two sentences. I am always going on to business leaders about the need to read fiction to better understand humans. 2. It’s not the phones, it’s not the internet. I mean it partly is but the feminist critiques of Adolescence include observations about the modelling of masculinity in the home and wider society still being enormously powerful. I was stunned to discover that my best men friends- smart, kind, business leaders- had not heard the term ‘incel’ before watching the show. We underestimate how siloed we have become as a society. 3. Listen to ‘If Books Could Kill’ episode about Haidt’s book. It offers a scathing, and hilarious, read which I found helpful. Thanks as always for the work you and Vic do to start and contribute to the really important conversations we need to be having.
Great article, I'm even struggling to know what is non-fiction or fiction. The world seems like non-fiction is weirder and less likely than a lot of fiction - at times like this, I hope that, maybe, I'm in a book or game that is fiction because if all that's going on right now is real, I'm real terrified!
Haven't watched the show (don't have adolescents & so much else to watch/read/experience in limited time 🤷) but totally agree with you about fiction having an "in" that often straight fact-based non-fiction doesn't. In some respects it gives the reader PERMISSION to see perspectives that otherwise they would avoid, but because it is part of a fictional story it allows them to rationalise giving them headspace, and possibly taking some of it on board in real life.
I read a series of fiction by a writer whose stories revolved around sucking you into being apalled by some characters, sympathetic to others, and then totally "flipping the script" later when you realise the crazy wife & the adoring husband were actually totally opposite, and the sympathetic third party observing it all ends up killing "the bad guy". Every book has a conundrum - was a murder justified because of 1) the extreme behaviour/abuse of the killed towards others? & /or 2) the saving of future victims of the killed? & /or basically self-defence as in prevention of the inevitable abuse? Although in other stories by the same author some of the murders, while of not-nice people, were for the convenience of the murderer (eg disposing of a blackmailer). It was interesting the change in perspectives & mindsets which can ONLY happen in fiction, although in this respect non-fiction/fictionalised re-enactments of "true crime" can approach this I guess? Certainly made me ponder whether SOMETIMES a murderer should be able to get away with it 😱
Great post, Jesse. Your comments about fiction vs non fiction sparked in my mind the old creative fiction adage: "show don't tell". It seems to me that non-fiction often struggles to "show" while fiction struggles to"tell".
Yes, good article. Re Sacha's comment: Emily Writes' substack 'His dad is a bigger influence than his phone' (26 March) is well worth reading.
👍🏾Thought about that too - excellent article!
Jesse, bang on, and there’s more. 1. Non-fiction tells us stuff that fiction shows. The best fiction writers tells us everything we need to know about a character is just one or two sentences. I am always going on to business leaders about the need to read fiction to better understand humans. 2. It’s not the phones, it’s not the internet. I mean it partly is but the feminist critiques of Adolescence include observations about the modelling of masculinity in the home and wider society still being enormously powerful. I was stunned to discover that my best men friends- smart, kind, business leaders- had not heard the term ‘incel’ before watching the show. We underestimate how siloed we have become as a society. 3. Listen to ‘If Books Could Kill’ episode about Haidt’s book. It offers a scathing, and hilarious, read which I found helpful. Thanks as always for the work you and Vic do to start and contribute to the really important conversations we need to be having.
Thank you Sacha! There’s heaps here which I’ll look at more closely. Great to have your giant brain on it!
Great article, I'm even struggling to know what is non-fiction or fiction. The world seems like non-fiction is weirder and less likely than a lot of fiction - at times like this, I hope that, maybe, I'm in a book or game that is fiction because if all that's going on right now is real, I'm real terrified!