tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post5307520748968022840..comments2024-03-19T02:14:31.704-04:00Comments on <center>OnFiction</center>: The Role of Empathy in FictionKeith Oatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-55473955891773040352011-08-19T06:56:31.422-04:002011-08-19T06:56:31.422-04:00Thanks very much for this comment, and I am glad y...Thanks very much for this comment, and I am glad you like our blog. Our view on empathy is that not only is it a subject that has come to be of great interest recently in psychology, and even in political science, but that it is something that reading fiction is well suited to cultivate in readers. We have found that empathetic abilities are closely associated with the amount of fiction people read.Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-36123962045646331712011-08-18T20:54:07.532-04:002011-08-18T20:54:07.532-04:00Great stuff. I am a new writer. I grew up a Stephe...Great stuff. I am a new writer. I grew up a Stephen King fan, and that is what makes Mr. King so great--the empathy he demonstrates toward his characters.H.S. Castlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14393208923400589181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-80515575838249700902009-05-05T22:45:00.000-04:002009-05-05T22:45:00.000-04:00Sevahne,
Thank you very much for this quote. I am ...Sevahne,<br />Thank you very much for this quote. I am very glad to see that people are rediscovering our old posts. Toibin's idea is a fascinating one, that by providing less information regarding a character the author demands greater participation on the part of the reader. To my knowledge this has not been empirically tested, although it is certainly amenable to such study. Perhaps we will tackle this hypothesis at some point in the future. Thank you again for bringing this to our attention, and for reading.Raymond A. Marhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07521492403638340957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-52575502181466175392009-05-05T20:53:00.000-04:002009-05-05T20:53:00.000-04:00My comment comes almost a year after this post. Yo...My comment comes almost a year after this post. You might be interested in a paragraph from an article on the writer Colm Toibin, which appeared in the May 3, 2009 issue of The New York Times Magazine (p. 34). The reporter, Alex Witchel writes,<br /><br />"While some people strive for romantic love and others crave the love of children, the union most enveloping to Toibin...is the one between writer and reader. One way he makes that bond even tighter is to avoid describing his protagonists. 'If you describe them physically, you actually remove them from the reader, you distance them,' he said. 'By not describing them, you begin to make their perception so intimately involved with the reader's perceptions that it allows the reader to enter into their spirit and become them. It's first-person intimate rather than first-person singular.'"Sevahnenoreply@blogger.com