Why We Read Fiction_ Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine [10]
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WHY DO WE READ FICTION?
I have mentioned earlier that works of fiction provide for the mills of our mind-reading adaptations that have evolved to deal with real
5: Why Do We Read Fiction .P
people, even though on some level we do remember that literary characters are not real people at all. The question of just how we manage to keep track of their "unreality" is very complicated and directly relates to an important issue taken up by cognitive scientists, namely, what cognitive mechanisms or processes make pretence (and imagination as such) possible.1 I will discuss here only a very limited sample of hypotheses currently on the table, focusing on those that offer, especially when considered together, some interesting insights into the larger question of why we read fiction. The first hypothesis is developed by a cognitive scientist; the second, by a cognitive literary critic.
To explain why autistic children do not engage in spontaneous pretence, Peter Carruthers suggests that they lack access not only to other people's mental states but to their own mental states as well.2 Carruthers thus argues that the "awareness of one's mental state makes possible the enjoyment derived from the manipulation of this state." It could be, then, that "the awareness of the attitude of pretending does not even have to include the content of what is pretended. Rather, it need only—at most— metarepresent that it is now pretending."^ Therefore, autistic children "do have the capacity for pretence if prompted," but they rarely exercise this capacity. Deprived, through mind-blindness, "of ready access to their own mental states, they are at the same time deprived of the main source of enjoyment present in normal pretending . . . [and] do not find the activity [cognitively] rewarding."4 And if, as cognitive psychologists argue, "the function of pretend-play is to exercise the imagination," then having so little "practice at imagining," autistic children do it less well than others.'
The cognitive rewards of reading fiction might thus be aligned with the cognitive rewards of pretend
Keeping this in mind, let us now turn to the second hypothesis. Developed by the influential cognitive literary critic Reuven Tsur, it also focuses, albeit from a different angle, on the pleasure attendant upon our awareness of our cognitive functioning. Tsur's larger argument is that fictional narratives affect us by delaying or disrupting "i one literary genre, jokes:
[Jokes] crucially depen dling changing situations in extralinguistic reality. The use of these two (opposing) kinds of adaptation mechanisms may yield different kinds of pleasure. Mental set is a typical instance of gaining pleasure from saving mental energy. The shift of mental sets yields a kind of pleasure that is derived from a certainty that one's adaptation mechanisms function properly. .. . The sense of humor, or the ability to apply wit to difficult situations, is usually regarded as a sign of mental health. . . . Joke their witty effects by inducing some marked shift of mental sets, usually involving some changing situations. They are, then, an obvious case in which an adaptive device is turned to esthetic ends.
I will turn to the question of aesthetics shortly. First, however, let us see how, played off each other, Carruthers's and Tsur's respective hypotheses illuminate an important aspect of our relationship with literary narrative. Carruthers suggests that we may find pleasing the awareness of our attitude of pretending. Tsur argues that jokes are particularly pleasing because they serve as a fast test of one's cognitive well-being (i.e., "I laugh; therefore I must be generally able to shift mental sets quickly"). It is possible, then, that certain cultural artifacts, such as novels, test the functioning