How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [104]
The great majority of books that are read are stories of one kind or another. People who cannot read listen to stories.
We even make them up for ourselves. Fiction seems to be a necessity for human beings. Why is this?
One reason why fiction is a human necessity is that it satisfies many unconscious as well as conscious needs. It would be important if it only touched the conscious mind, as expository writing does. But fiction is important, too, because it also touches the unconscious.
On the simplest level-and a discussion of this subject could be very complex-we like or dislike certain kinds of people more than others, without always being sure why. If, in a novel, such people are rewarded or punished, we may have stronger feelings, either pro or con, about the book than it merits artistically.
For example, we are often pleased when a character in a novel inherits money, or otherwise comes into good fortune.
However, this tends to be true only if the character is "sympathetic" -meaning that we can identify with him or her. We do not admit to ourselves that we would like to inherit the money, we merely say that we like the book.
Perhaps we would all like to love more richly than we do.
Many novels are about love-most are, perhaps-and it gives us pleasure to identify with the loving characters. They are free, and we are not. But we may not want to admit this; for Suggestions for Reading Stories, Plays, and Poems 221
to do so might make us feel, consciously, that our own loves are inadequate.
Again, almost everyone has some unconscious sadism and masochism in his makeup. These are often satisfied in novels, where we can identify with either the conqueror or victim, or even with both. In each case, we are prone to say simply that we like "that kind of book" -without specifying or really knowing why.
Finally, we suspect that life as we know it is unjust. Why do good people suffer, and bad ones prosper? We do not know, we cannot know, but the fact causes great anxiety in everyone.
In stories, this chaotic and unpleasant situation is adjusted, and that is extremely satisfying to us.
In stories-in novels and narrative poems and playsjustice usually does exist. People get what they deserve; the author, who is like a god to his characters, sees to it that they arc rewarded or punished according to their true merit. In a good story, in a satisfying one, this is usually so, at least. One of the most irritating things about a bad story is that the people in it seem to be punished or rewarded with no rhyme or reason. The great storyteller makes no mistakes. He is able to convince us that justice-poetic justice, we call it-has been done.
This is true even of high tragedy. There, terrible things happen to good men, but we see that the hero, even if he does not wholly deserve his fate, at least comes to understand it.
And we have a profound desire to share his understanding. If we only knew-then we could withstand whatever the world has in store for us. "I Want to Know Why" is the title of a story by Sherwood Anderson. It could be the title of many stories. The tragic hero does learn why, though often, of course, only after the ruin of his life. We can share his insight without sharing his suffering.
Thus, in criticizing fiction we must be careful to distinguish those books that satisfy our own particular unconscious needs-the ones that make us say, "I like this book, 222 HOW TO READ A BOOK
although I don't really know why" -from those that satisfy the deep unconscious needs of almost everybody. The latter are undoubtedly the great stories, the ones that live on and on for generations and centuries. As long as man is man, they will go on satisfying him, giving him something that he needs to have-a belief in justice and understanding and the allaying of anxiety. We do not know, we cannot be sure, that the real world is good. But the world of a great story is somehow good.
We want to live there as often