Wise Fiction?

Is all good fiction psychologically wise? 

Not long ago, that question was posed to the readers of Ilana Simons, the Literature & Life blogger on Barnes & Noble's Book Clubs.  This is how I attempt to answer this question.

Wise encompasses so many variation, human interpretations; human needs, human desires, on any and all subjects.  Who or what do we look up to, to show us just what wise means?  A fine line can be drawn between ridiculous and the sublime....

I see fiction in all senses, some wiser choices I can make, than at other times.  Whether or not the majority of readers see fiction in those lights, or hold expectation of their choices to be wise, I can’t answer. 

As it is said, not all works of fiction are read and enjoyed for the same reasons, or to even find insights, for that matter.

During my reading of Michael Cunningham’s novel, By Nightfall, feelings prevailed in me that said:  feel uneasy, feel sadness; think about what he is saying to you. 
Disconcerting, to feel every inch of me tingle, to feel his words striking me as if I were a tuning fork - words taking hold of my nerve endings, my breath hanging, awaiting the next sentence, or the next paragraph, to bring light into a subject that has to be viewed by this reader.  Uncomfortable----I catch myself holding my breath.  

I breathe.  I contemplate these meanings, an application to myself.
A writer, such as Cunningham, does not shy away from expressing himself fully - by communicating a character’s needs and desires, you enter a world of sensual reality.  And even though Cunningham holds a gentle hand, giving you a glimpse of this world around, and within, he can stir images up that will capture insights we may or may not want to see.  All of our desires differ.

We may very well end up struggling with our own personal demons.

A line by Gustave Flaubert, ‘Madame Bovary, ch. 12, was altered and used in Cunningham’s novel......  “...exaggerated turns of speech conceal mediocre affections: as if the fullness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the ‘human word is like a cracked cauldron upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity.’

So, the question may very well be, why do we love the fiction we love?  On an introspective morning, these were my thoughts. 

Why do I read what I read, if it turns my world inside out, and upside down? 

What's the answer....?

For just for that reason!

Where are we, who are we, what are we, if we are standing still in the dark?  

There are people who live in the mundane, because it is safe. 

Standing still, you cannot be hurt, but then, cannot move beyond stagnant.

If we are not challenged by the least expected, we will never discover how to move forward.

If we are standing still, alone.....

Dormant is dead 

I admit, I don't always feel comfortable being stretched to my limits by my senses, my feelings in the written word, but unless I seek it, experience it, I cannot know life, and hence, never realize I am alive. 

Give me more - deeper, richer  

Appreciation for life 

In reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, in preparation to reading Cunningham's The Hours, I ran across this quote from Shakespeare’s play, Cymbeline. Cunningham also repeated this quote: " 'Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages.' " 

The ordinary is seemingly what Virginia Woolf and Cunningham reveal to us within their characters, but these intimate looks by these writers are not ordinary, not in the least; Wise is what makes these writers see, and give us, something beyond extraordinary.