![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/forkedtongueatwindowrock_jamescosgrove_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C380&ssl=1\" "\\"Forked")
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[Image: <\/em>Forked Tongue at Window Rock, one of\u00a0 a series of “Arizona Postcards” by Scottish artist James “Jimmy” Cosgrove. To view the entire collection, see this page<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n A science-fiction story I read long ago tells of a visitor from another planet who simply cannot understand why human beings lie. I don’t remember much about the story — no author, title, catchphrase, so I can’t even Google it easily — but I seem to remember that it went one level further: Once it had received (and reluctantly accepted) the explanations (to gain an advantage over someone else, to inflate one’s self-image, etc.), the alien asked, So then why do you write fiction, which serves none of those purposes?<\/em><\/p>\n I have no idea how I’d answer an alien with a question like that (or with any others, for that matter). In general, though, one simple answer is: We write fiction in the expectation that someone will read it<\/em>. Even if only the story’s author will ever read it, without at least one reader I myself can’t see the point, either.<\/p>\n But still that ducks the question, which is really: Why do people <\/em>read fiction? <\/p>\n As it happens, writers aren’t the only ones interested in that question. An article<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em> last week reported on neuroscientists who want to know about it, too — and related questions. What goes on in our brains when we read fiction? How does that <\/em>whatever’s-going-on differ from what goes on when we read non-fiction?<\/p>\n Now, the Times<\/em> article doesn’t answer those questions, exactly — just raises them, and points (albeit indirectly) to several resources which might end up answering them. But reading the article did exercise my mind quite a bit, both during and after.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> If you’re feeling ambitious, you might want to follow up on one of those implied leads. The article opens with a discussion of some theories of Lisa Zunshine, a professor of English at the University of Kentucky. By tracking down some of her writings, you can pursue this all much further. I particularly direct your attention to her essay<\/a> (12.6KB PDF), “Why Jane Austen Was Different, and Why We May Need Cognitive Science to See It,” and her book, Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel<\/em> (available here<\/a>, in limited preview on Google Books).<\/p>\n Selfishly, what interested me particularly about the article were these two passages:<\/p>\n Humans can comfortably keep track of three different mental states at a time, Ms. Zunshine said. For example, the proposition “Peter said that Paul believed that Mary liked chocolate” is not too hard to follow. Add a fourth level, though, and it’s suddenly more difficult. And experiments have shown that at the fifth level understanding drops off by 60 percent, Ms. Zunshine said. Modernist authors like Virginia Woolf are especially challenging because she asks readers to keep up with six different mental states, or what the scholars call levels of intentionality….<\/p>\n At the other end of the country Blakey Vermeule, an associate professor of English at Stanford, is examining theory of mind from a different perspective. She starts from the assumption that evolution had a hand in our love of fiction, and then goes on to examine the narrative technique known as “free indirect style,” which mingles the character’s voice with the narrator’s. Indirect style enables readers to inhabit two or even three mind-sets at a time.<\/p>\n This style, which became the hallmark of the novel beginning in the 19th century with Jane Austen, evolved because it satisfies our “intense interest in other people’s secret thoughts and motivations,” Ms. Vermeule said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Why did this interest me? Because this “free indirect style” (also referred to as “free indirect discourse,” or FID) turns out to be the way I write nearly all the fiction I’ve ever written. (And I didn’t even know it! *slaps forehead*<\/em> See, for example, this work-in-progress excerpt<\/a> from last year.) I mean, I sorta knew I was doing something<\/em>, but couldn’t put my finger on it. Funnily enough, I’d even halfway decided — and asserted to The Missus at one point — that in the WIP I’d “stop doing that interior monologue thing” and just write it all in straight third-person form.<\/p>\n Apparently I’m incapable of shutting off the FID valve. And now I wonder if subconsciously, I knew<\/em> I’d have to use it, if I wanted to represent (counting) up to six different “levels of intentionality” at the same time without hopelessly confusing readers…<\/p>\n Naaaah.<\/em> I was just making it up as I went along. (And for all I know, readers will be confused anyway.) But it’s nice to be able to point to literary theory — and now brain science — and imply, sniffing with condescension, that I knew what the heck I was doing.<\/p>\n __________________________<\/p>\n
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