I love deceptively simple questions. “What is fiction?” definitely counts because, on the surface, it appears childishly obvious. One might say “Fiction is writing stories that aren’t real”, or something of the sort. Probably you couldn’t even entirely disagree with that. And yet, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Obviously enough, if we want to talk about fiction and reality (aren’t they, after all, supposed to be antonyms?) there are special cases, too. “What is fiction?” seems to have a different answer if we offered as an example fantasy fiction, and yet a different one if we talked about, say, historical fiction. And what about memoirs? Not to mention the crazy notion (of yours truly) that all books are autobiographical.
The problem of comprehensively answering the question “What is fiction?” boils down to two main issues:
- Who is the author of a work?
- What is reality?
I told you, I love deceptively simple questions. “The author of a work is the person who wrote it, you dummy!” I hear someone telling me. The same person might even roll their eyes hearing me asking what is reality.
But, as you will see in this post, neither of these questions has a clear answer. And this complicates our attempt to answer “what is fiction?” as well. Though worry not, I’ll face the challenge!
