Ian McEwan on Believing in Fiction

I have a couple of hours before heading back to work, so I thought I'd catch up on a little reading. Came across this article from The New Republic, wherein Ian McEwan engagingly describes his love-hate relationship with fiction.

In the past few weeks, my friend Sabio and I have discussed this very issue (here and here in the comments)--what importance can fiction have in a world of fact, the Actual? Why read a novel or poem about imagined characters and scenes, when you can read science, history, philosophy or some other supposed factual account and actually learn something true about the world? I think it's the wrong way to look at it, since I believe fiction can work as a vehicle for truth (Sabio, maybe this is why I'm still a believer ;) !)