A couple of weeks ago I recommended Rory Sutherland’s book, Alchemy. The Surprising Power of Ideas that Don’t Make Sense. One of the big challenges it raised was uncertainty and how strongly people avoid it, being willing to embrace a less good certainty rather than risk a possibly brilliant uncertainty. Moreover, we will pay more (and remember that payment is more than money. It includes our time and effort) for certainty.
I have thought and thought about this, particularly in relation to novels and publishing, and my conclusion (or one of them) is that novels’ appeal is that they connect us with people in a meaningful way.
In real life people’s actions often don’t make sense. Sometimes they confound us. But in a well-crafted novel, people are explicable. This is incredibly relaxing. It soothes us emotionally because the cognitive dissonance of real life, of people saying one thing and doing something else and us not understanding WHY is removed. There can be a degree of uncertainty in a novel, we can even revel in a complicated plot that leaves us with questions, but fundamentally we engage with a novel because we trust in its ability to reduce the uncertainty of life to a meaningful story.
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