Who Needs Literature?

FROM TIME TO TIME I ask myself: Who needs literary fiction? Why invent things when nature and life supply so many strange events? Because — aside from our imagination never being able to keep up with the factual and psychological surprises of reality — not even the greatest master’s pen can be as consistent and accurate as a factual history that is told in documents or that comes to light during a trial in court. Just as heaven and earth have conspired that there is no such thing as a perfect murder, so there can never exist a perfect novel. Even Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary have their faults, familiar inconsistencies that appear in every piece of fiction. I myself have reached the point that a newspaper report or a “case history” in a book interests me more than a literary work. Why all the psychological explanations when they clarify nothing about the emotions? Why bother proving a lie when truth needs no preface?