Today we are delighted to share with you a guest post from Claire Swinarski. Claire is the author of our book club pick for April - The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County. This is Claire’s debut adult novel, but she is an accomplished middle grade author and regularly writes about the real challenges young girls face but always through the lens of courage and hope and embracing your true self.
Today she shares her thoughts with us on “escapism” in fiction and what we are really looking for when we dive into a good book.
~ The Book Tide
I was recently in a group of fellow moms as we discussed which books our kids had been reading lately. One of them was eschewing the fantasy books her fourth grade daughter had been lapping up.
“They’re escapism,” she said, with a slight sniff that I don’t think I imagined. “It’s not helping her in the real world.”
I cringed when I heard it and I cringe now repeating it. Because what this woman misunderstood was not just what her daughter was reading, but why her daughter was reading at all.
We don’t read to escape.
When we claim a story is “escapism”, what we usually mean is that it’s helping take our mind from our troubles. Sometimes, this is true; great books can temporarily distract us from real problems in front of our faces and provide us with much needed respite. But even when we feel like we’re escaping, a good book—a truly good book—doesn’t send our mind spinning thousands of miles away. It grounds us.
Whether you’re reading The Chronicles of Narnia (“unrealistic”), The Overstory (“realistic”), or All The Light We Cannot See (“realistic”, but feels far away from most of our modern lives), you are, in a sense, escaping. CS Lewis writes in An Experiment in Criticism that all reading:
“involves a temporary transference of the mind from our actual surroundings to things merely imagined or conceived. This happens when we read history or science no less than when we read fiction. All such escape is from the same thing; immediate, concrete actuality. The important question is what we escape to.”
~ C.S. Lewis, An Experiment In Criticism
We’re not actually escaping our troubles or trials; instead, a good book is able to help us safely imagine both the best and worst of humanity in any given situation. It can give us the full spectrum of human emotion and strengthen our spirits for the road ahead. Lewis’ dear friend, JRR Tolkein, wrote in On Fairy Stories that people who accused readers of escapism were misunderstanding “'the escape of the prisoner” vs “the flight of the deserter”. After all, we don’t travel to far away lands in books to eschew the difficulties of reality but to return with a refreshed mind and heart.
Author Heidi Johnston has been quoted as saying “the most faithful stories are not an escape from Reality, but an escape into Reality.” The best stories might feel like an escape, and sure, Miss Minchin’s boarding school or Camazotz or Middle Earth may feel otherworldly. But while we’re temporarily inhabiting those other worlds, we’re connecting our hearts to those of the characters within them and challenging our views, beliefs, and thought patterns. We might be escaping from our living room, but we’re escaping into larger truths that can best be exposed through story.
When we read good stories, whether they be contemporary romance, epic quests, or historical dramas, we’re faced with the reality of the world around us. We’re faced with virtue to chase or vice to eschew. We’re faced with choices that will help or hinder our fellow man. And we’re faced with both the best and worst of ourselves.
I hope that the girl that woman was talking about dives into whatever books she chooses, be they high fantasy or historical mystery or contemporary friendship dramas. And when they become a source of comfort for her, in a world of tangled relationships and complex feelings, I hope her small solace of escape is bolstered by a deep, interior seeking—and that she, too, can escape into her reality.
~Claire Swinarski
What reality are you escaping into today? And don’t forget to check out Claire’s new book The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County.
~The Book Tide
I was often accused of escapism by the same adults who were intimidated by my knowledge of history, nations, inventions, scholars, and scientists. still happens occasionally. But not my parents. It has been a deep family bond shared across generations. They saw books as a pathway to a great big world. We were too poor to travel other than camping here and there but their love for reading and talking about stories made us succeed- even more than their emphasis on education! I don’t care if you read or not but don’t ever judge me as escaping reality. I learned about thousands of realities beyond my own very lower white middle class life as a child and that was a gift that changed our lives.
I'm sure you didn't imagine the sniff! I love that you wrote, "we are escaping into larger truths". I feel that almost all stories teach us something about our world or ourselves. That they help us decide the type of people we want to become, and the way we want to act. They also help us develop empathy and better understanding of others that are different than us. I, too, hope that the girl is bolstered by a deep, interior seeking. Well said!
I finished your book and loved it. Although, it should come with a packet of tissues for those of us who easily cry. I recommended it to my friend who grew up in Wisconsin and now lives in Holmen. I think she'll love it too.