On Fiction; also, Lara Vapnyar

As an English major, I've heard about the New Yorker. No, I can't recall ever hearing about it outside of school. My parents don't even get the newspaper, why would they get an upscale literary magazine, if that's what you would call the New Yorker? Anyway, a while back, I decided to take a look at it.

The first complete story I read was Katania by Lara Vapnyar. I started reading it only knowing it was a short story. I didn't know what it would be about, I didn't know the genre, I had no familiarity with the author. I just knew it was probably well-written, since it was in the New Yorker. After a little while of reading, I realized I still didn't know if the story was fiction or nonfiction. As soon as I realized this, I started trying to decide which it was. Then, almost as soon as I started wondering, I decided I did not care if the story was fiction or nonfiction. This was, for me, a first.

I cannot recall ever not being able to tell; then again, I've always entered a story knowing one way or the other. I did make a bad mistake in one of my writing classes this past semester, when a woman was asking us to help her decide whether to workshop one short story or a different one, and I told her to do the first because in the second, I could care less about the female narrator who was talking about a life-threatening illness she had. Turns out the second one was autobiographical nonfiction. Whoops.

It turns out that Katania is fiction, written by a woman who was born Russian. To date, the only stories she has written for the New Yorker have been about Russians. Talk about writing about what you know. I haven't read her other stuff, but the one story was incredibly believable. The details were realistic, precise, and in just the right places. As I said, I couldn't tell if it was fiction or nonfiction. For a short story like that, I really can't think of any praise that could be higher, unless the story has changed my life (but it hasn't, so I can't say that).

This story helped to illustrate to me just how incredible and realistic fiction can be (but hey, who needs completely realistic fiction? Not a requirement!). I have always preferred fiction to nonfiction (unless you count myths or scripture, but I'm setting those aside as being different from your regular nonfiction). If you look at where the American education system is going right now, it looks like I might be in the minority, though. The new Common Core standards specify that students' reading be made up of 70 percent nonfiction and only 30 percent fiction. I'll be honest and say when I first read that, I thought it was an error. I still think it's an error, but the error doesn't lie with the news media.

One of my favorite quotes, something that is on the first page of my OneNote work notebook, is by Albert Einstein: "Logic can get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." In a world that is placing an increasing amount of emphasis on critical thinking skills, imagination is an essential. Someone without imagination would turn out to be Vernon Dursley; or, in the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, "I doubt the imagination can be truly suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant."

The world needs your imagination, whoever you are. Without imagination, progress is halted, because no one will come up with new ideas, new dreams, new possibilities. The impossible will remain impossible. Imagination and critical thinking go hand in hand; nonfiction gives you facts, and fiction invites you to meddle with them.

As far as I can tell, the reasoning behind the government's decision to impose nonfiction on students comes from the idea that students cannot understand textbooks when they finally reach college. I guess they figure that nonfiction is more difficult to read than fiction. It's true that not all fiction is hard to read, but all fiction can be used to discuss issues our society is facing today. Teachers can and should be using fiction to teach ethics, self-development, cultural differences, and whatever else is packed into that story they decide to read with their students (the possibilities are endless, honestly).

My biggest reason for including fiction as a major component of a child's education: For the vast majority of children, reading fiction is more fun and entertaining than reading nonfiction. Learning to enjoy reading leads to a lifetime of reading. A lifetime of reading is a lifetime of not only imagination exercise, but also a lifetime of learning.