A Case For Reading Novels

An unpolished first draft of a Square (school newsletter) article:

Rafidah Aziz made an interesting point in a STAR interview some time ago.

‘I don’t read novels. Only non-fiction.”

Granted, Malaysia’s ‘Iron Woman’ is a busy, active professional, a good example of a woman who balances her time between a multitude of responsibilities (she plays sudoku and a gameboy to keep her mind occupied). What she reads is entirely up to her and suits her career and personal tastes.

But really now – why should people read novels?

I was piqued by her comment and started asking around.

“Novels? I read textbooks!”

“No time; must study.”

“Escapism, relaxation and … entertainment?” my aunt suggested. I mulled over her words.

“Then doesn’t that make books equal to television?”

But by then of course I had lost her to a Romance novel, and was left to reason on my own.

Novels are at its most basic works of fiction – stories told to enrapture and entertain and engage the reader. But entertainment alone wasn’t enough to justify reading to me: I could easily say the same for the computer, couldn’t I?

Well, no. Books require you to visualize scenes while reading – and each visualization is unique to the reader. I can never forgive Daniel Radcliffe for his portrayal of Harry Potter – he is far less the geeky, ordinary boy that roamed in my imagination.

Then, one day, I came across Lord Of The Flies.

And I had my answer. Golding’s tale of school children stranded on an island wasn’t just a story. It was a statement – that all men have evil tendencies, and civilization is our attempt at controlling them. Golding’s story is like a car crash: you want to turn away from the carnage – the kids killing each other – and yet you can’t.

I started seeing statements wherever I looked after that. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss was about Western dominance, even in the isolated jungles of Kathmadu. Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin asked if we should blame mothers for their son’s actions, amongst other things. And The Age Of Innocence turned out to be more than a love story – it was a front for a difficult question: Who are the heroes of our society – and what does that say about us?

Edna O’Brien deserves a mention here: “I believe that the novelist is the psychic and moral historian of his or her society.”

They say reading maketh a man. But what books do we read – and what does that say about us?