From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue May 03 2005 - 20:23:56 BST
Hello everyone
>From: "Ant McWatt" <antmcwatt@hotmail.co.uk>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: MD Lila's Child - A question for Dan Glover
>Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 10:08:43 +0000
>
>Tim Chizmar asked May 2nd 2005:
>
>I am not sure if this is the proper area to ask this.... but I do have an
>important Pirsigian question.
>I have read, studied and currently love both of Pirsig's tomes. Spent my
>summer studying LILA actually.... But in my wanting to take his ideas and
>even those of you philosophers as possible truth,..... I see one problem.
>
>Why is "Lila's Child" marked as a fiction novel?
>
>
>Ant McWatt comments:
>
>Tim,
>
>As one of the people whose old MOQ Discuss posts were used throughout
>"Lila's Child", I also wondered why "Lila's Child" is marked as a novel as
>only the editor's introduction could possibly be fictional in any sense of
>the term. Pirsig's introduction and contributions and the contributions
>from the people on MOQ Discuss are all non-fictional.
>
>Dan Glover, the compiler and editor of the text will know. With a bit of
>luck the re-titling of this thread will alert him to your question,
Hi Tim, Ant
Thank you for drawing this to my attention, Ant. I've been busy, have much
reading from moq.org to catch up on, and I did miss Tim's original question.
To answer ... here are some definitions of "fiction" from dictionary.com:
1. a. An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent
actuality but has been invented.
b. The act of inventing such a creation or pretense.
2. a. A literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is
not necessarily based on fact.
b. The category of literature comprising works of this kind, including
novels and short stories
In addtion there is this:
Word History: To most people “the latest fiction” means the latest novels or
stories rather than the most recently invented pretense or latest lie. All
three senses of the word fiction point back to its source, Latin ficti, “the
action of shaping, a feigning, that which is feigned.” Ficti in turn was
derived from fingere, “to make by shaping, feign, make up or invent a story
or excuse.” Our first instance of fiction, recorded in a work composed
around 1412, was used in the sense “invention of the mind, that which is
imaginatively invented.” It is not a far step from this meaning to the sense
“imaginative literature,” first recorded in 1599.
Dan Glover comments:
If a person were to look at Lila's Child as non-fiction, everything said
therein could be taken as truthful, set in stone (so to speak), and
unchanging. However, it's clear that everything contained in LC is instead
provisional and subject to change should something better come along. So it
seemed best to classify LC as a fictional body of work despite the fact that
real people wrote it. I'm not saying Lila's Child is a made up or invented
story but rather it's an invention of the mind and not a so-called objective
truth as a non-fiction designation would imply.
I hope this answers your question and I welcome any further comments.
Thank you,
Dan
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