Bear with me as I think out loud.

Various people over the years have told me that they do not read novels. "Oh, I don't read fiction," they said, "I don't have time to read that stuff. It's not REAL." You may have heard something like this as well at one time or another. Hell, you may be one of the people that says that kind of thing.

For some reason though, these same individuals never have any problem with looking at paintings. You never hear from a one of them, "Oh, I don't look at paintings. I'm a photograph man entire. Photographs are REAL. That painting there by --who is it?-- Magritte, I'll look at that when he's painted a proper face for that man. A green apple for a head? Absurd."

No one says things like that because it is so obviously a silly point of view. But then I would argue, so is the first. Incidentally, the only person who has ever said that they have no time for fiction that I believe is Sherlock Holmes. He's fictional though (and more real than I am in another sense) so who can say?

I shall continue this line of thought another time.