The Case for Realistic Fiction

I’ve been reading literature that keeps taking me back to narrow Parisian lanes and Shakespeare and Co. 

In ‘The Paris Hours’, I had the pleasure of meeting Proust himself, and walking around a lush green garden that I imagined would be swarming with families and children enjoying a weekend together.

In ‘A Moveable Feast’, I spoke to Beach, remembering her kindness in ‘The Paris Hours’. In that other book about artists’ habits, I connected with Gertrude Stein’s obnoxious coffee habits. 

And now, in ‘Time was soft…’ I live in the bookstore itself, marveling at cheap Parisian dinners and at interesting conversations with fellow inhabitants. 

The iridescent bubble bursts and sputters and I am left ashamed at the liberties I have taken with reality.

Good writing may engross you, but you can never leave the physical realities of your being. 

As for me, I’m bound to my chair, its cushion and plush backrest giving no comfort to the increasing despondence of my knowledge that I have missed an important part of one’s education: gaining worldly experience.

These books that remind me of a time in Paris unlived, that make me nostalgic of times not spent meeting people from around the world, witnessing the Sun gently dip behind monuments, chocolate and cups of coffee not having swirled delectably around my mouth.

Is there a German word for this? 

I’m writing this now, at half-past six, having witnessed the quiet pale depth of the morning sky, the freshness of dawn having reinvigorated me. 

I am writing this accompanied by the multilingual Pink Martini and I haven’t ever felt closer to understanding the human experience.

I could be but myself-- I could be the hungry writer, writing against the backdrop of a great city, a young parent enjoying the day’s first cup of coffee, perhaps with a pen in hand.

I could be an old couple, reminiscing their days spent in Paris. 

It pains me how there are countless mornings in countless places I haven’t woken up to; countless people and their conversations I haven’t been made privy to; innumerable puns and laughs left unshared with me, countless mind-boggling discoveries I haven’t even vaguely heard of.

And thus, I find my way back to realistic fiction.

That there could’ve been a pre-teen boy in 70s America, finding his way to center-stage in Shakespearean plays aided by an unlikely mentor, finding comfort in siblinghood, deeply impacted by a close friend’s bar mitzvah or a man who’d lost his brother to invaders and fled to France, only to find peace in the flames that consumed his kin, or in parents left dumbfounded at a child’s unexpected suicide -- the possibility of there ever having been a family like that, a person like that, a gregarious group of friends like that, fulfills me. 

Realistic fiction speaks to you directly, unabashedly. It calls out to your sliver of the human experience and hopes to expand on it, to fill it with someone else’s story, so you could have lived a little more.

The case for realistic fiction is simple:

It is because you are.