Story and Truth

        The shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.

            from Writings by Anthony de Mello, 1999

[Picture: Women at Well, wood engraving by Pal C. Molnar, c. 1930 (Image from Annex Galleries).]

Realism and Truth

        In the first century philosopher Apollonius of Tyana wrote of Aesop:

He was really more attached to truth than the poets [historians] are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events.

        Apollonius makes two points that I’ve argued before.  First, that what passes as realism is not necessarily so.  Just like any other genre, “realistic fiction” has conventions, fashions, and rules that have more to do with what sells than what is factual or actually realistic.  Ursula K. LeGuin observed in an interview last year, that “fake realism is the escapism of our time.”  Perhaps it comforts people to think that the world truly is uniformly dark and dreary, to justify their own hopelessness or their unwillingness to work for greater goals.  ( Heh - that makes me sound almost as curmudgeonly as LeGuin!)

        The second point is, of course, that fantasy can indeed be true.  More than that, fantasy can be more true than misused “facts” or “realism.”  Of course, it isn’t always true.  Unfortunately, fantasy can push the agendas of prejudice, violence, or ignorance just as any medium can.  But we would always be wise to remember that, as J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in 1939:

Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.

[Pictures: The Two Doves, wood engraving by Thomas Bewick from Select Fables of Aesop and Others, 1871 (first published 1818); 

detail from The Geese & the Cranes, wood block print by Walter Crane from The Baby’s Own Aesop, 1908 (first published 1887) (Images from Aesopica).]

Quotations from interview with LeGuin by Hari Kunzru in The Guardian, 2014;

from the essay On Fairy-Stories by Tolkien, 1939.

The Importance of Fantasy IV

        Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams;  seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams.

        Not to have fantasy would be to have no dreams and no visions.  But dreams and visions exist not merely for entertainment or excitement; when they are true and noble they fuel our souls.

[Picture: Pandora Dreaming, wood block print with watercolor by AEGN, 2005.]

Quotation from an 1867 essay by George MacDonald in A Dish of Orts.

The Importance of Fantasy (III)

        It’s time for me to harp some more on the value of fantasy in developing the human imagination and intellect.  But don’t take my word for it.  Here are a few much-admired achievers in a variety of real-and-earnest scientific fields explaining how important they deem creative fantasy.

 

  If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

        Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was the biologist whose observations about pesticides such as DDT brought awareness of the need for conservation to the American public and led to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  She points out the connection between the capacity to wonder and marvel, and the urge to study and value the natural world - and the importance of maintaing this sense of wonder into adulthood, rather than outgrowing it in order to be “mature.”

        All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.

        Carl Jung (1875-1961) was the enormously influential psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology.  (I’ll forgive him the sexism of his wording, seeing as he was born in 1875.)  It may seem obvious that nothing is created that isn’t first imagined, yet just this week there was a letter to the editor in my town newspaper making once again the ever-popular claim that the arts are a waste of time and money in our schools because they aren’t practical.  But what could possibly be more practical than giving our children the tool they need at the most basic level before they can accomplish anything productive at all: the tool of creative fantasy?

        It has been written that the shortest and best way between two truths of the real domain often passes through the imaginary one.

        Jacques Hadamard (1865-1963) was the mathematician who made major contributions to number theory and differential geometry (among other things.)  He was also particularly interested in how creativity works, and around 1900 he surveyed 100 leading physicists about their own thought processes.  You can see something about his conclusions in the comment above, finding that introspection, wordless imagining, and spontaneity were at least as vital as logical, calculating cognition.

        Now I’d absolutely never say that we don’t need logic.  Indeed, we clearly need a lot more of it than we currently see!  But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that we need logic paired with imagination -- and that one of the best tools there is for fostering imagination is fantasy.

[Pictures: 4. Landscape with ruins, dodecahedron, and rhombohedron;

7. Landscape with ruins and penetration of rhombododecahedron and hexahedron, wood block prints from Geometria et Perspectiva by Lorenz Stör, 1567 (Images from TU.)]

The Importance of Fantasy (II)

        While recently reading an essay on writing for children I ran once again into a common misconception: that children read fantasy because they're not yet mature enough to put away a primitive, ignorant view of the world.  (And of course this says nothing good about adults who read fantasy!  Clearly we are somehow in denial of reality, or merely looking wistfully backward, as this particular essayist opined.  There's definitely something wrong with such arrested development.)  The idea is that reading fantasy is shallow escapism, while presumably reading realistic fiction is all about engaging with the world in a mature and meaningful way.  I would argue that there's certainly an element of escapism in all recreational reading.  After all, even if you're reading biographies or scholarly history, for example, you're still immersing yourself in a different time or place, in lives and experiences other than your own.  And I honestly don't see why such escapism is always mentioned with a sneer, as though walking a mile in someone else's shoes, even if they're fictional shoes, is only for those infants and madmen with a dubious grasp on how Real and Earnest life actually is.

        But beyond that, I reject the very idea that speculative fiction is primarily about escapism at all, or that it's somehow fodder for the immature, just to amuse them until they grow out of it.  I think it's explained well by James Gurney, the author and illustrator of the Dinotopia books.

        If there is one age or time of life that embraces the book [Dinotopia] most heartily, it is the moment after the horizons open from childhood into youth, and before the limits are set by adulthood…  I've come to realize that this audience… [is] more logical, intelligent and vocal than their adult counterparts.  Utopian literature gives them a chance to inhabit the dreams that fuel their growth into independent life.  They read not exactly to escape their world, but rather to engage more fully with it, for only through fantasy can they try on an identity and live as actors in their own dreams.

        There are a few pieces of Gurney's statement that I especially want to emphasize.

        1.  Adulthood (and the Real and Earnest attitudes that go with it) tends to set limits.  It is fantasy that can give both children and adults a road map around those limits, into an attitude of greater possibility and greater creativity.  The ability to ask "What if" - that ability fostered by speculative fiction - is one that can only benefit us all individually, as well as humanity as a whole.  We need our creativity encouraged, not sneered at as immature, or dismissed as head-in-the-clouds escapism.

        2.  Speculative fiction, especially Utopian literature or stories depicting integrity and heroism, allows children to try on positive identities as they grapple with what kind of people they want to be.  Just as younger children may play house, doctor, firefighter, teacher, to try out and practice their ideas of what it's like to be an adult, so older children use reading to imagine themselves in different situations and with different ways of responding to life.  All fiction gives readers the opportunity to feel themselves in different identities, but fantasy has an additional edge over realistic fiction.  That is, it does not necessarily limit the responses to those that authors and editors feel are "realistic" - those that are likely, trendy, or have already happened.  With speculative fiction anything is possible… if…

        3.  This creativity and this practice in visualizing different ways of living life are not escapism.  They are, on the contrary, a way of engaging more fully with the world.  That's something that's healthy not only for children of all ages, but for adults, too.  And that's another reason why fantasy is so important!

[Picture: Steep Street, oil on board from Dinotopia: The World Beneath by James Gurney, 1996.]

(Quotation from James Gurney, "Terrible-Lizard-Happy-Dream Kingdom: The Origins of Dinotopia," Phi Beta Kappa Key Reporter, Fall 2010.)

The Importance of Fantasy (I)

        Alison Gopnik, a leading researcher in the field of cognitive development, has been studying the importance of play for children.  Lest anyone doubt that fantasy is good for kids, here's what she has to say:

        Where does pretending come in? It relates to what philosophers call “counterfactual” thinking, like Einstein wondering what would happen if a train went at the speed of light.

        We found children who were better at pretending could reason better about counterfactuals—they were better at thinking about different possibilities. And thinking about possibilities plays a crucial role in the latest understanding about how children learn. The idea is that children at play are like pint-sized scientists testing theories. They imagine ways the world could work and predict the pattern of data that would follow if their theories were true, and then compare that pattern with the pattern they actually see. Even toddlers turn out to be smarter than we would have thought if we ask them the right questions in the right way.

        Play is under pressure right now, as parents and policymakers try to make preschools more like schools. But pretend play is not only important for kids; it’s a crucial part of what makes all humans so smart.

        You can read more about her studies at Smithsonian Magazine.

        And you'll notice that she referred to Albert Einstein, that icon of intelligence.  So here's what Einstein himself had to say on the matter:

        When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.

[Picture: Frontspiece by Florence Wyman Ivins, from This Singing World edited by Louis Untermeyer, 1935.]

The Wisdom of Norton Juster

        Ten days ago I was delivering some art to the venue of a show, and I arrived before the woman I was to meet.  So I picked up the free copy of the Parents Paper magazine that was sitting out, and was delighted to discover therein an interview with Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth.  It turns out this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Phantom Tollbooth, and a musical production of the story is also coming to town.  (There was a contest/drawing to receive tickets to the show and both P and T eagerly wrote up paragraphs to submit.  I'll report back if we end up winning some tickets… but don't anyone hold your breath.)

        The Phantom Tollbooth, as everyone knows, is its own species, not really like any other book.  But it does share with many of my favorite books certain characteristics, such as likeable, decent characters, a happy ending, a sense of fun and wonder, and narration and vocabulary that don't talk down to children.  I was really delighted to read about some of Juster's ideas behind the writing of the book.

        First of all, he said The Phantom Tollbooth "did everything wrong.  The general theory at the time was that no child should ever pick up a book and find in it anything he didn't already know about, so they tended to discourage any kind of interesting plots or stories or conflicts.  To top it off, they said fantasy was bad for children because it disorients them."  I still see this attitude, as when T's first grade teacher kept trying to encourage her to read something "more realistic."  But I am by no means convinced that realistic fiction is more realistic in any respect other than the decor of the story.  (I've said more about this in my post How Juvenile Fantasy Will Save the Earth.)  Or, as Juster said of Baum's Oz books, "They started me thinking in a wonderful, imaginative way and made things possible that you knew were not possible - but then again, they were."  He went on to say of The Phantom Tollbooth - but I think it's equally true of all good juvenile fantasy - "Certain things don't change.  What [the book] deals with are still the basic issues for kids in life."  In other words, fantasy is about what's real and important, and it gives kids a way to explore those issues that supposedly realistic fiction often does not.

        When asked what advice Juster had for parents on reading, he replied, "One thing that bothers me now is the constant pressure for kids to read earlier and earlier.  A lot of people want to get their 3-year-old kids into perfect pre-kindergarten, then the perfect kindergarten, up the line to Yale and Harvard, and it's just a very mistaken idea.  What you want to do with your kids is to let them roam around not only in the world, but around their own head, and not immediately tie them into a patterned, structured way of doing things."  He went on to praise the effect of word play, but again I would argue that it isn't just word play (much as I love that) but all of fantasy with its impossible possibilities.  "Word play is wonderful because it changes language, changes your understanding, and opens up the way you perceive things in a completely different way."  This does not disorient kids - On the contrary, it frees their minds, their hearts, and their imaginations.

       If you want to read more of Juster's thoughts on writing, childhood, The Phantom Tollbooth, and more, here are a couple more interviews:

   Interview with RoseEtta Stone

   Interview with Laura Miller at Salon

       The quotations from Norton Juster in this post were taken from: McGregor, Amanda, "The Real Power of Imagination," Boston Parents Paper, October 2011: 30-32.

[Picture: "The Phantom Tollbooth Map Quilt," squares made by Westminster Middle School students, assembled by AEGN, 1994.  This quilt is huge, about 10 x 8 feet.  Each of the 20 squares was made by a group of 3 or 4 seventh grade students as part of a unit integrating English, math, and art.]