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The creation of fiction is an activity unique to the human race. Other creatures may dissemble (for example to lead predators from eggs in a nest), but none tell lies. Embroidering the truth, moving from reality to meta-reality, requires not merely imagination but intellectual objectivity: the powers to decide what effects we are aiming for and what ways will best or most enjoyably achieve those effects, and the ability to eavesdrop on ourselves, as it were, to assess our performance even as we give it. People with a tin ear for the arts often affect to despise fiction, on the grounds that making up reality is a denial of the true analytical and logical powers of the human mind. On the contrary, making fiction uses those powers in a precise, and precisely calculated, way. Anyone can pigeonhole, but to invent your pigeonhole before you start and then modify it as you go along to suit what you choose to put into it: that takes thought. KMcL |
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