Is All Good Fiction Psychologically Wise? Musing on Michael Cunningham’s Novels

I can't answer the question, whether I think all good fiction is psychologically wise, but I will always give it my best shot.  Maybe to me it should be, but I doubt that it is the expectation of the majority. 

As we say, not all works of fiction are read and enjoyed for the same reasons, or to find insights. 

During my reading of one of Michael Cunningham’s novels, By Nightfall, I felt uneasy, sadness prevailed in my mind, most of the time, and writers of this style of prose will almost always have significance on my personal life.   I will explain why. 

I find it disconcerting, while I’m reading, to feel every inch of me tingle, to feel as though someone were striking me as if I were a tuning fork - where words take hold of my nerve endings, while I await the next sentence, or the next paragraph, to bring some light into an uncomfortable subject that has to be viewed by this reader.   Until the shoe drops, I catch myself holding my breath. 

Writers such as Cunningham won't shy away from thoroughly expressing themselves, by expressing their characters needs and desires.  And even though this writer, Cunningham, holds a gentle hand, giving you a glimpse of the world around, and the world within, he can stir images up that will capture those insights we may or may not want to hold onto.  We very well may end up struggling with our own inner demons.

This 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 is, why do you love the fiction you love?  On an introspective morning, these were my thoughts. 

Let me put it this way, the question really is, why do I read what I read, if it turns my world inside out, and upside down?  Just for that reason!  Where are we, who are we, what are we, if we are standing still in the dark?  

Some people like to live in the mundane, because it is safe.  It cannot hurt you.  I do not live there, not any more.  We cannot move beyond stagnant, if we are not challenged by the least expected; we will never discover whom we are, and move forward, if we are standing alone.

Give me more 

Life evolves

Dormant is dead 

I don't always feel comfortable, being stretched to my limits by what I feel in the written word, but unless I experience it, I cannot know it is there, and never realize I am alive. 

Give me more

Deeper, Richer  

Appreciation for life 

In rereading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, in preparation to reading Cunningham's The Hours, I saw 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 what VW and Cunningham’s characters tell you about in their stories. These intimate looks from these writers are what make them, and what they see and give us, extraordinary.