The Death of Fantasy
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Photo by Caitlynne Crowley
When I was a kid, I loved to read. I wasn't picky, either - I read the classics (Little Women), the trendy (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret), and the sci-fi (A Wrinkle In Time, the Narnia series). I remember loving fantasy books - they just seemed so cool to me. A whole world out there, so different from the one I lived in, into which I could escape and let my imagination go wild.
That was then, of course, and this is now.
I still love to read. As I've mentioned here before, reading is my one truly transportative activity, in which I am my most relaxed and focused. But now, I read only reality books. I don't mean books about real people, but books in which only things happen that are plausible in the real world in which I live. No ghosts. No spirits or fairies. No dystopian futures in which civilization has been transformed into tribes of food-seeking anarchists. And definitely no vampires, despite the entreaties of my friends who have read, and loved, that trilogy - you know the one.
How did this happen? Why did my creative mind get replaced by one in which I cannot perceive or imagine that which I do not see or know in my daily life? How did I get so literal? There are many other adult readers who do not share my aversion to the unrealistic. Surf the web - there are tons of fantasy/dystopian/sci-fi book bloggers out there who are around my age. I know many moms who are as addicted to the Twilight series as their teenage daughters.
For me, reading is an escape, but it's also a way of understanding the world in which I live. I learn about human nature from the books I read and the characters I come to know over the course of a few hundred pages. I find solace in challenges and frustrations that I share with the characters I encounter, and gain insight into relationships that might mirror those in my own life. Perhaps because my reading time is so limited, I fear that books about fantasy worlds won't hold that value for me. They won't expand my real life worldview because they aren't even about this world.
I am sad for this new prejudice of mine, for I suspect it represents the loss of the feeling of limitless time that I had as a kid. Will I ever regain it? Unlikely.
In the meantime, I will go back to my books about relationships and parenthood and modern living, with the occasional historical fiction and memoir thrown in. Because at least I know those worlds existed - and continue to exist around me.
