Then why read fiction at all? It's all a diversion. - Edit 2
Before modification by Werthead at 05/12/2009 04:19:49 PM
Also, I know you really, really like A Song of Ice and Fire and I'm not looking to open old disagreements, but I don't really see any deep messages or themes there. I think your predisposition to the series has elevated it a bit in your eyes. Yes, it talks about power. Yes, it's got a lot of intrigue. It's a lot like the HBO series "Rome" in that respect, and I think that's part of what drew HBO to it. I would still classify it as primarily a "diversion", however. A very good diversion (leagues better than Dan Brown's books or Terry Brooks or Goodkind), but still primarily a diversion.
Of course, and the political commentary in ASoIaF is not particularly prevalent (although it is deliberate; GRRM's earlier short fiction is more notably political, as is FEVRE DREAM, if a bit more obvious in its pre-Civil War setting). The message or theme is not as developed or central as in many other works.
And even if there is a message in a work it may not be particularly well-handled. Erikson's attempts at political or social commentary are getting increasingly embarrassing in their ham-fistedness, whilst Robert Jordan's claim that he wrote THE WHEEL OF TIME as a fantasy addressing the same issues as WAR AND PEACE may lead to guffaws (although WoT does open up some interesting topics on the mutability of knowledge and the flaws in pre-modern communications, such themes are not particularly well-developed).
But then all fiction is a diversion, regardless of what valid points it might raise. WAR AND PEACE and CATCH-22 say interesting things about war and people caught in it. But neither are even remotely as effective as Harrison E. Salisbury's non-fiction THE NINE HUNDRED DAYS or Beevor's BERLIN: THE DOWNFALL. No murder mystery can be as discomforting or effective as IN COLD BLOOD. No fictional culture clash Southern drama is as powerful as I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS.
If we should primarily be reading for some kind of intellectual stimulation, then why not go the whole hog and insist we read non-fiction instead (or at least as well)?