This reminds me of "How to Tell a True War Story" in the Things They Carried, and The City & The City by China Mieville and "NK Jemisin's Dream Worlds" in the New Yorker. Like JRR, all three contend that fiction can be more true than what we perceive as reality - that done well it can illuminate and stretch our own abilities to comprehend.
I love this from your excerpt: "It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things"- it was through fairy-stories that he understood the truth of words and of the true wonder of the world around him.
The best fiction, I think, breaks and remakes you. Changes you rapidly from your core so that you do not see the world the way you did before you picked up that story. Instead you see it more truly than you did previously, with the blinders you weren't even aware of pulled away. Fantasy has a unique ability to do so by taking you deep into a world where something (or some-things) are flipped on their head, and you can see your whole world from upside down or sideways, perceiving reality in a way you couldn't before...
a book I love as an adult is The Girl Who Drank the Moon! I really recommend it.
Yes! I love her and this was my favorite of her books!
This reminds me of "How to Tell a True War Story" in the Things They Carried, and The City & The City by China Mieville and "NK Jemisin's Dream Worlds" in the New Yorker. Like JRR, all three contend that fiction can be more true than what we perceive as reality - that done well it can illuminate and stretch our own abilities to comprehend.
I love this from your excerpt: "It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things"- it was through fairy-stories that he understood the truth of words and of the true wonder of the world around him.
The best fiction, I think, breaks and remakes you. Changes you rapidly from your core so that you do not see the world the way you did before you picked up that story. Instead you see it more truly than you did previously, with the blinders you weren't even aware of pulled away. Fantasy has a unique ability to do so by taking you deep into a world where something (or some-things) are flipped on their head, and you can see your whole world from upside down or sideways, perceiving reality in a way you couldn't before...