True Fiction

"It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious it could also be true or false, not with the truth or falsehood of a news item but as to its disinterestedness, its intention, its integrity."
-- Chinua Achebe

50
Years ago since Chinua Achebe's masterpiece Things Fall Apart was published. I love his above quote, because many great novels give me a feel for a place or historical period better than a historical work can do. I know more about the 19th-century U.S. whaling industry from Moby Dick than any of the non-fiction I've read about the times. Same goes for Magic Mountain and pre-World War I Europe, and Tender is the Night and post-World War I Europe (well, the French Riviera and Switzerland, anyway). I haven't read "Things Fall Apart" since college, but Ruth Franklin's New Yorker essay on him is a good read.