The potency of the unreal

A.N. Wilson

In his book The Mystery of Charles Dickens, A.N. Wilson uses the phrase "potency of the unreal" to describe not just the power of Dickens's fiction but virtually all fiction — novels, movies, TV shows, folk tales, whatever. 

Why do stories we know to be untrue impact us as they do? Why do they stir us emotionally, bring tears to our eyes, make us want to re-experience them even if only in our minds? Perhaps it is because fiction concentrates life, bringing it into sharp focus, leaving out the routine.

For most us, one day tends to melt into another, relatively few days in a lifetime of days worth storing in our memories for very long. Even if our lives have been interesting to us, they usually soon bore others when we start talking about them.

Fiction, if it's any good, leaves out the boring parts. Characters in stories rarely stop to eat meals, brush their teeth, mop their floors, work eight-hour days or even go to bed (unless with a new lover). Meanwhile fiction gives us sparkling conversations, sinister villains, intense confrontations, dramatic love affairs and other experiences that, even we have them in our own lives, happen only rarely.

Thus, when we find a chance to relax, we open a book or turn on the television and allow the unreal to overpower the real.