Truth and fiction

I'm sitting here, just presently, with the movie "School of Rock" playing on television in the background (and incidentally I love this movie in the way only someone who went to an incredibly uptight, academically driven high school can) and thinking about the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

The way I learned the difference was this - non-fiction is truth, fiction is made-up and therefore not truth.

The trouble is, something's been tricked out of that definition.

I read far more fiction than non-fiction. Mostly because I find it more readable as a general rule.

But here's the thing - I've often felt guilty for preferring that which wasn't true to that which was.

And so, today, I've been thinking about the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

And I realized something - the definition I grew up with is wrong. The difference isn't truth, it's facts. Non-fiction recounts facts. Fiction recounts fables. Both can contain profound truth.

Take, for example, the novel I just finished. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. A good novel, though not superbly profound. There was, however, one paragraph that took my breath away with the truth it shed on a particular relationship in my life.

This past year I've kept track of only the non-fiction books I've read, essentially a very small percentage of my total reading. I think, in the new year, I'll keep track of everything.

A friend of mine was sharing with me recently about her commitment to live a life without lines. Without lines separating things. This year I'm not going to draw lines around what contains truth. I'm going to look for truth wherever I can find it - in a memoir, or in the words of an Afghani novelist.