The very real importance of fiction

After reading all of the published fiction of David James Duncan, I moved onto his nonfiction. And I was surprised to discover I hated him a little when I read he struggled between his desire to create fiction and the more immediate drive to write nonfiction. Duncan's nonfiction is often in response to a pressing environmental crisis threatening rivers in the northwest. What a dick, right? But I did resent the implication that fiction is less important or impacting than nonfiction. I wanted to shake this celebrated writer, thump him upside the head and tell him the only thing nonfiction has (in his case) on fiction is that it's faster. And (in his case) it shows.

So! Imagine my horror when I read Duncan's latest piece of nonfiction, The Heart of the Monster, about ExxonMobil megaloads trucking through the northwest to the Alberta Tar Sands. Of course, the writing is solid, but who cares. Talentless hacks can pen moving pieces when they're about the impending and tragic end of the world as we know it. I completely fell apart. I put off fiction pieces I was supposed to be writing to email my senators, representative, governor, and even a senator in my home state. I missed deadlines to beg everyone I knew to go protest the megaloads with me. Hardly anyone showed up.

I ride my bike everywhere always and only wear used clothes and only buy food from my region and it has very very very little effect on the world. Next the Senate voted to cut a ton of Planned Parenthood's federal funding. I wrote to my government people again. Then NPR. I wrote again. I had this horrible feeling I'd never had before and I couldn't figure out what it was. It took me about a week before I realized it was depression. Don't tell my bipolar mother who has hoped my entire life I would feel this way, but that's exactly what it was. I called my dad.

At first I thought I was calling him because I wanted him to write government people about the megaloads. I tried, shrilly, to explain how big they are (seven times the legal limit previously allowed on the road!) He told me to stop reading the newspaper. I tried to convince him to subscribe to the paperless version of the paper. He said the world has looked like it was going to end forever. I told him this time it really was. All the fish and bees are going to die and we will be fucked. Tragedy is easier to see in the short term, he told me. When he was young he was refused service because he had long hair (much shorter than his hair now) and looked like a Native American. He regularly saw signs in businesses reading: "No Mexicans, No niggers, No dogs." This is in Idaho. There are dogs, but they can't read.

So I guess he had a point. I cried and he told me stop checking the the news for a couple days and to do something decadent. I decided to bake cookies and moodily thought about how when the world is going down all around me, I could at least probably bake some cookies because there's no way we're going to lose power. That's right, I said it. Cormac McCarthy, The Road doesn't work for me because we would all die of dehydration LONG before we'd stop getting digital TV and Facebook to every corner of the world.

Baking cookies reminded me of the line from Stranger Than Fiction when Maggie Gyllenhaal's character says if she's going to make the world a better place, she'll do it with cookies. So I embraced my decadence and watched it. I deleted all the form email responses I'd received from my government people and did something that would not make the world a better place.

And, have you seen that movie? It's lovely. It's clever and funny and sweet and sad. And it's about the importance of a good story. Oh, I cried. I love movies. And novels. I love crying at movies and novels. I've read almost all of David James Duncan's nonfiction, but I get them all confused. I can't tell you the titles of his essays or which companies or rivers each was about. But his fiction I remember in so many different ways. Quotes from the stories pop into my head at random times. I draw on them when dealing with difficult situations--all of the brothers from Brothers K and Gus from The River Why, for example all struggle with interacting with society to make change and holing up and staying to themselves. I feel things for rivers and nature in my gut that I can intellectualize, not through Duncan's essays, but through his fiction. I got depressed when I got entangled in the nonfiction. And what I think usually keeps me out of depression is very large helpings of fiction. I feel just as deeply and am probably more productive when I have fiction in my life. I still hope everyone reads The Heart of the Monster because I think it's important. But as much as I fear for rivers, I get very afraid when people shove aside fiction for more immediate things.