Why We Read Fiction: Theory of the Mind and the Novel

by Lisa Zunshine

Book Overview

Why We Read Fiction offers a lucid overview of the most exciting area of research in contemporary cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" and discusses its implications for literary studies. It covers a broad range of fictional narratives, from Richardson's Clarissa, Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment, and Austen's Pride and Prejudice to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov's Lolita, and Hammett's The...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081425151X
• ISBN13: 9780814251515
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An Important Book and Important Trend

This interesting book argues a number of points. First, one of the reasons that we have survived and prospered as a species is related to our ability to read others' minds, i.e., to infer their beliefs, desires, and intentions from their words, behaviors, demeanors, visual cues, and so forth. (Societies that were story-intensive, Paul Hernadi suggests, may have been particularly successful in developing these advantages.) The ability to do such things is highlighted by the difficulty with such behaviors exhibited by the autistic and the schizophrenic. In addition to reading minds, we qualify and contextualize representations made by others by being attentive to the fact that the representations are not necessarily straightforward, unvarnished and reliable. They are, rather, metarepresentations and it is important that we learn to recognize them and absorb them in specific ways. The novel is particularly suited to mirror these processes and, hence, both hone our own skills and recapitulate the importance of those skills in our evolutionary development. Different genres do this in different ways and at different levels of intensity. The novel has triumphed as a form for other reasons; this is only a single nexus of reasons for its success, but it is an interesting one for the literary student to observe, since it highlights the importance of cognitive science for humanities research. In general, the humanities have (in their recent incarnations) been wary of science, fearing its dominance and seeking to undermine its truth claims. This is ultimately self-defeating, to the degree that the insights of science are relevant to humanistic study and have existed, in effect, as a grand, missed opportunity. Scholars such as Professor Zunshine are seeking to alter that situation and their efforts should be applauded and encouraged. The book is relatively `easy going' for literary scholars, for its insights are embedded in both the more recent `theoretical' traditions and the more historical/traditional work of worthies such as John Cawelti and Wayne Booth. I leave to the reader to decide whether the work of such figures has stood the test of time more effectively than that of more recent commentators. It is certainly true that they speak with a degree of clarity and point that stands in contrast to the poststructuralist/postmodernist language of theory. Even within the context of Professor Zunshine's laudable intentions and palpable successes, one sometimes has the feeling that `theory' complicates the obvious by substituting a vocabulary less transparent than that of earlier practitioners. The notion, presumably, is that the material is so complex that it requires language commensurate with that complexity, but one can argue as well that the complexity requires simpler, clearer terms and that it is one of the chief responsibilities of the specialist to clarify rather than further complicate. That point turns on the intended audience, fo

Why do YOU read fiction? I know why I do . . .

Of the reviews/comments posted so far, I believe mine might be the only one grounded in having had the opportunity to hear Ms. Zunshine present the core of her arguments which are so wonderfully filled out in this book; or, at least, none have admitted to that fact so far. And, that is really the reason I purchased and read her book. Having recently heard her speak on "source monitoring" and "metarepresentation," which are key and crucial elements of her argument, while at a conference in Ottawa, Ontario, I decided I NEEDED to read this book. There is much she has to say that is relevant to my own readings of Joseph Conrad and the presentation of characters' minds within his texts. While I am not well steeped in current cognitive theories, I never once felt "in over my head" reading her book. Ms. Zunshine has carefully written a highly theoretical text in so tightly focused a way that her arguments concerning Theory of Mind--our innate, though sometimes inadequately developed, ability to sense and grasp the thoughts of others through observation and interaction--and its relation to our reasons for reading fiction are accessible and pleasing to readers of a wide range of experience and education. Having gone through the book but once I am not wholly in agreement with some of her points, but I am sufficiently in agreement that I intend to read it again--particularly after I finish reading Lolita, one of the texts to which she applies her theories. I just hope there is room in the margins for more notes. Other notions I felt were relevant to the ideas presented in this book can be found in Aldous Huxley's concept of "mind at large" as presented in his essay "The Doors of Perception," and a variation of Theory of Mind in the psychological works of R. D. Laing, particulary Politics of Experience. Ms Zunshine's work shares another connection to that of Laing: schizophrenia, and its affect on our ability to accurately track the sources of our own notions.

A new approach but not the single answer

Anyone who has studied Literary Criticism knows how rich it is in theories which claim to explain it all, and in the end become one more milestone in a vast intricate network of interpretations. The problem of course is that in the discourse of the Humanities there are no ways of simply excising out all the over- interpretations. This means that a new exciting way of 'reading Literature' is not for experienced readers the 'answer' but rather another creative contribution, hopefully more insightful, cogent, and aesthetically pleasing than most. Lisa Zunshine presents such a new way of reading. Drawing from evolutionary psychology, and the new cognitive sciences she makes an effort to read Literature in relation to these new ways of understanding ourselves. And in fact the center of her effort is on the 'theory of the mind' and the way we as readers read novels, put together clues about people in a way similar to the way we do in our everyday lives- and of course in a way similar to our ancestors have done in their historical struggles for survival. We read according to Zunshine in order to figure out what others are thinking and feeling, and in order to develop an understanding of them which will enable us to better live. She reads a variety of texts in an effort to illustrate these points, and does so with a certain insightfulness and perceptiveness that make the enterprise richly worthwhile. This book provides a 'new way of seeing' which helps us ' see more' than we would otherwise, and thus is a valuable contribution to readers, and especially to those who love to read about reading.

A Remarkable, Exciting Approach to Literature

I purchased WHY WE READ FICTION after reading a number of strong books on evolutionary psychology written for non experts, including Dennett's CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED, Wright's THE MORAL ANIMAL, and Pinker's THE BLANK SLATE. After reading these works and finding myself fascinated by their insights and their explanatory powers, I was curious to see how evolutionary psychology might be applied to my own discipline of literary criticism. I was not disappointed. WHY WE READ FICTION is readable, well conceived, and patiently executed, and it shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the cognitive perspective can be brought to bear on literature in extremely satisfying ways. Zunshine's major focus in the book is on the phenomenon that that psychologists (and many others) refer to as "Theory of Mind," the cognitive process by which we collect facts about another person, assign various labels and levels of reliability to those facts, and construct a narrative about that person's thoughts, feelings, and motivations. It is our theory of mind that allows us to make reasonable guesses about another person's intentions and future actions while, at the same time, understanding that the other person's perspective is different than our own. Most people exercise their theory of mind automatically without realizing that it is an extremely complicated process built into the human mind through hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection in environments where understanding other people's perspectives was vital to survival. It is not until we encounter people with difficulties forming a theory of mind--such as individuals with autism or Asperger's Syndrome--that we realize what a complicated cognitive process it really is. After introducing this concept, Zunshine theorizes that fiction of all kinds acts as a kind of exercise program for our Theory of Mind. Much as bodybuilders train their bodies by lifting heavy weights, readers can train their theory of mind by deciphering complicated texts. And to prove it, she uses her critical vocabulary to read and explicate dozens of literary texts, including sustained readings of Richardson's CLARISSA and Nabokov's LOLITA that must be considered interpretive masterpieces. As a practicing professor of English literature and an occasional author of literary criticism, I have been, for the last ten years or so, increasingly dissatisfied with the dominant critical paradigms available in my field. WHY WE READ FICTION has changed that and introduced me to an exciting new critical vocabulary that is rooted in contemporary scientific discovery and offers the potential for meaningful, sustained interaction between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.