But first, let’s clear definitional problems. What’s fiction? What kind of fiction?

I specifically avoid the term Literature mainly because of its other meanings and didn’t want the title to have scientific or strictly academic connotations. But let me also be clear from the start: I don’t consider it art if it’s not literature, and most of the modern fiction doesn’t qualify.

So when I ask that question, I have originally or truly meant: is there value to be had in reading great works of literature? Your midwit neighbor would have probably framed it this way: “I have no time to read someone’s make-believe story”.

And then what do I mean by value? Actually, our value here is philosophical. If it contributes to your living the good or even better life, then yes, it’s a proper value, desirable and to be had.

I remember one of my ex-bosses (my work was computer-related). One day he saw me read a novel at lunch time. He was curious and took a look, then grimaced with a sneer and said he had no time for the “unessential”–is what he termed it.

Even then I disagreed with him, but only by smiling. Like most other people, I wasn’t sophisticated enough to know that literature, real, good literature, was extremely valuable; I was mainly reading it for the entertainment value. At the time, my feeling was that literature is a means to escape, to be diverted, and perhaps, to learn something about other cultures and times.

So, I didn’t stop reading (was reading Count of Monte Cristo then), but so far, I hadn’t read anything that would change my assessment of literature. At 22, however, I was in the Far East, and embroiled in a would-be-nasty affair with a married woman. She was married, and had a kid, too. I had met the husband and the kid. The husband was obnoxious, and had said something nasty to me when we first met (at that time, I didn’t know his wife) and though I was angry, I decided that life was too short to punish everyone slighting me, so I made a mental note to avoid the midwit.

But life is life and somehow or other in my social circle, I came in contact with this young woman (who was a few years older than me), and when she told me who she was, I discovered that she was his wife. Now was a chance to get even! So I began seducing her. Of course, it worked. She was even willng to leave him, and marry me, who was a nobody, without a penny in my pocket! (She was very rich). However, conscience. Her kid’s image would pop-up in my head, blaming me for being unfair to the kid. Sure, he was a nasty person who had insulted me, but what had his kid done to me to deserve a broken home?

This consideration weighed heavily on my youthful mind and I couldn’t shake it. She came to my house, and I had the chance to do whatever I wanted, one day, but I couldn’t bring myself to it. She sensed my reluctance and asked me if anything was the matter. I told her that upon deep considerations, I had discovered that it was a bad idea; we all make mistakes, but better is the mistake that one stops right before committing it. I told her about her kid’s future, and the repercussions that might follow.

Mother’s love trumps all else. She agreed and even praised me for my far-sightedness. We remained friends but I couldn’t stay there anymore, and when a new job beckoned, left that city and country, altogether. Two years after that, I accidentally got my hands on Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina, which was a somewhat accurate description of my own situation, and the repercussions and consequences that could have occurred for us, too.

That’s when I realized that literature was not about ’entertainment’, though it must be entertaining, as a bonus. I read a few more Tolstoy novels, but he was unimpressive and even his Karenina was a slog at times, and at other times, he was philosophizing too much. It was ok, but nothing dazzling.

Still, I kept on reading until I read books that really dazzled me, and left me in a state of wondrous shock; Gogol’s Dead Souls raisede my standard of what sort of literature I should have been reading, and E.T.A Hoffmann’s works made Goethe’s look sophomoric; Dickens was meh, as were Thackeray and G.Elliot. Hogg was astounding, Dostoevsky was astounding, Pushkin was superb, Richardson was worth reading, Dumas piere was meh, Dumas fils was superb, Leskov was excellent, Stendhall was sort-of meh, Zola was unbearable, Conan Doyle was meh, Christie was meh, Weinbaum was memorable and worth it, Defoe was bee’s knees–and so forth, began my reading odyssey.