The Power of the Novel

[Yes, this is a non-Tuning Slide, non-Buddy's War post. I will try again to get back in this blogging swing. More on that at another time.]

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I stood in the kitchen and couldn't stop crying. I was almost a blubbering fool. Nothing had happened, other than I had just finished reading an amazing novel. I had spent the last 20 pages or so trying to focus through tears and now I was able to let the emotions go.

There was absolutely nothing new in the novel. I did not learn anything new about World War II or the Holocaust. I have been reading books like this, fiction and non-fiction since I first heard of Adolph Eichman in 1960. I have cried many times over these nearly 60 years.

But here I was doing it again with as much emotion as the first time, whenever that might have been. The good novel is not about learning new facts but experiencing a story of something we have always known in a new way. There is truth in the old line that there are only so many different plots to write about, we just repeat them over and over. But it is not the story that's new. We are new each time we read something. I am not the 12-year-old who first learned of the horrors of Hitler's Final Solution. But I experienced it yesterday for 2019. (That will be another post in a few days or week.)

It was so powerful that when I stopped crying I pulled out my journal and started writing what I was feeling. I wrote for almost five pages. It flowed more powerfully than the tears had. These were thoughts and emotions hooked by a story I knew, only this time with different characters and tugging on my heart in new ways.

Hence the importance of the novel. I have had people tell me they don't bother with novels, after all, they aren't true. Oh, but they are Truth in ways that facts can only hint at. Yes, the novelist wants to hook the emotions of the readers. The novelist is trying to get our attention and force us to look at life from a new perspective. That works best when our emotions are engaged.

Is that fair? Of course, it's fair- it is part of the unspoken contract between the writer and the reader. I read novels to give me new perspectives and new insights by looking at people responding to life as it happens. I want the novelist to be there with the story and to open me up.

But I've heard the story before. No, not with the awareness and experiences you have today. Hence my nearly five pages of longhand writing in my journal about a story that I pray will never become old, but will always challenge me and the world to want it to never happen again.

Yes, facts and histories can do that. Well-written non-fiction can have all the power of novels, but the novel has the advantage of taking us places where the facts my at times hide some truths that we may not want to see. The novel can sneak through our emotional backdoor and wake us up.

Novels are dangerous which is why they are so often the target of groups who want to control others. Banned books often contain uncomfortable sights. They can shine a spotlight of truth on what may be hidden in plain sight.

We are better for the work of the novelist. May they continue to take us to depths of emotion and so lead us to hope.