Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so

"Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel." Thus spoke Hilary Mantel, a weaver of stories whose words cut to the heart of what it means to read. For in fiction, the reader is not a mere spectator, but a creator alongside the author. The page provides the bones, but the mind supplies the flesh. The words are sparks, but the imagination is the fire. To read is to labor, to dream, to awaken images so vivid that though the body sits still, the soul journeys across worlds.

The ancients themselves knew this truth. Did not the bards of Greece sing epics that lived only when their listeners imagined them? The Odyssey was not just Homer’s tale, but the tale of every listener who, in the theater of the mind, saw the seas, heard the sirens, and felt the salt spray upon their skin. Mantel’s words remind us of this eternal task: that a story is incomplete until the reader joins it. To read is to become co-creator, traveler, and companion to heroes long dead yet ever living.

She speaks also of the madeleine, recalling Marcel Proust’s remembrance of things past—the small cake that, dipped in tea, opened vast chambers of memory. In this image lies the truth of fiction: it awakens senses that are not literally before us. We do not taste sugar on the tongue, yet our memory supplies the sweetness. We do not walk the streets of Combray, yet the mind places us there. Thus, the work of fiction is an act of resurrection—of places unseen, voices unheard, lives unlived—brought to life through the reader’s own participation.

Consider the story of Don Quixote, who, inflamed by the books of chivalry he devoured, took to the roads as a knight. Though a fiction within a fiction, it shows the power Mantel names: a man sits in his chair, his body still, but his soul aflame with journeys so real that they carry him into action. His windmills may have been illusions, but his courage, his madness, his nobility—these were as real as flesh. Fiction is not escape, but transformation, and the reader must labor to bring it forth.

Children of tomorrow, learn this lesson: to read fiction is not idleness. Though the world may see you sitting still, you are moving across continents of thought. You are shaping images, feeling sorrows and joys that are not your own, and in doing so, enlarging your spirit. The chair is not a prison—it is a vessel. The page is not an end—it is a beginning. And the journey it offers is as real as any voyage upon the seas.

Practical wisdom lies here. Do not read passively, letting words drift past you like clouds. Engage with them. When you read, pause to see, to hear, to taste. Let the scenes become vivid in your mind, let the characters breathe, let the world expand. Carry the story within you, and when the book closes, let its echoes remain. In this way, fiction will not only entertain you but shape you, opening your heart to other lives and your mind to other worlds.

Thus the lesson is clear: fiction is a journey that demands your effort, your imagination, your spirit. Mantel’s words remind us that the reader is not passive, but a traveler whose path winds through the landscapes of story. Sit, then, in your chair, but know that you are not still—you are moving across time, across memory, across the vastness of the human soul. And when you return from these journeys, you will be larger, wiser, and more alive than before.