Can fictional stories comfort you?

[noname223]

DFW (an American author who ctb) often wrote fictional stories. He thought fiction had a unique usage to convey certain messages to the readers. I personally like his stories a lot. Though I am not really a big fan of fiction. I have different thoughts on it than DFW. Many fictional stories cannot really convince me. Maybe I am consuming the wrong ones. I can be more catched by real life stories. I think DFW was critical about contemporary mass culture. I agree on that. When I was younger I watched a lot of bullshit on TV. Shit I feel now pretty ashamed about. Yeah my parents did not really care and TV was one method to keep us quiet.

Some fictional stories really contain a certain wisdom. But I am not sure whether fiction really has a unique trait in that. Can't real life stories convey similar values? I am not sure about that. Probably there is a unique value of fictional stories. For me personally I am more impacted if the story really has happened to a living person. I draw too often parallels from ficitional stories to the real life of the author. Normally you should not make that this easily.

I really like stories of Kafka or DFW because it can make you feel like you was in the skin of another living being. And if the other person has a lot of pain it can comfort me because I am not the only one who underegoes mental torment.

Still I am more obsessed by real life stories. It makes a different for me whether someone is raped in real life or in a fictional story. That is a huge difference. Though for example someone who was raped can have therapeutic benefits if he/she writes a fictional story about that event.

 

[Smart No More]

It's always cathartic to relate to a story. When it's a true story it's great but even when fictional it's good because it's come from another human and therefore it feels like you're understood in some manner somewhere. It's kind of a mental hug.

I massively rely on media for this.

 

[Nolan96]

Kafka is one of my favorites actually. Especially The Trial. There was also a well-done American film made of the book.

 

[AnestheticVoid]

Fight Club for sure.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

For me, yes. Often quite easily at first, especially when I can find something to latch onto to relate to any major character in said fiction. Comfort does not mean cure though. As time goes on this method gets less and less effective with continued use. Fictional stories are like most over the counter medications; they can only really treat the symptoms and maybe provide temporary relief but rarely can they cure the actual disease except maybe through the power of placebo (which also becomes less effective as fiction gets smarter about calling out such things).

 

[Ashu]

Fiction, and literature generally, has always been among my chief consolations, along with music, sexual love, walking, nature, and, once, alcohol. None of them "solves the problem" (that strange notion), but they make it appreciably more bearable while I'm waiting for it to be solved.

 

[motel rooms]

Still I am more obsessed by real life stories.

All serious literature/art is about very real things. Kafka's world is so horrifying & mesmerizing because he wrote about our traumas & nightmares.

Kafka is one of my favorites actually. Especially The Trial. There was also a well-done American film made of the book.

https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/selected-prose-by-franz-kafka.74825/

 

[Sherri]

Yes, the notebook inspires me so much, wish life was like that. Old fashion type of life, where little things counted but love.

 

[Smart No More]

Anyone watched Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love or Reign Over Me? I think some here might enjoy and relate to some of the characters and/or scenarios in those films.