Other worlds

What child after reading or listening to a parent read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis hasn't wished for a such wardrobe or a magic closet through which one could, by entering and going deep enough, walk into another world?

Scene from Outlander on Starz

Many adults who read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander may experience a similar fantasy. Why can't I find a place where I can be suddenly transported to a faraway time and meet the perfect lover?

Yet the best we can hope for is to realize that books, these two and others, are themselves doors into other worlds. Jeannette Winterson suggested this very thing when she said, "Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and go through into another world."

Are books a poor substitute for reality? Well, yes and no. Certainly a real romance is better than an imagined romance. Actually going to Paris beats reading a novel set in Paris. (When I visited England I read a novel set in England, enjoying the best of both worlds.)

Yet through our reading we can have experiences that would be impossible in real life. Or if possible, they would be dangerous, uncomfortable or morally wrong. How many women have imagined affairs with the men they meet in novels, such as those by Gabaldon, without having to break their marriage vows? How many men have imagined killing other men in crime stories or war stories or westerns and then closed the book without guilt?

Sometimes fantasy trumps reality.