"You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer.

For example, we've all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.

Is it true?

The answer matters.

You'd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it's just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen -- and maybe it did, anything's possible -- even then you know it can't be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it's a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, 'The fuck you do that for?' and the jumper says, 'Story of my life, man,' and the other guy starts to smile but he's dead.

That's a true story that never happened."

(PS I still read and enjoy fiction. I don't get why everyone's so up in arms about Bill Gate's mild preference for non-fiction)

Just because something happened doesn't mean it's useful to think about. Conversely, just because something never happened doesn't mean it isn't useful to think about. I've read fiction books that made me examine my perspective or way of life in a way that nothing else has, and I've read non-fiction books that didn't register a single change in me.

As one of "them" who often prefers non-fiction, I enjoyed the book for that reason. Incidentally, I think it's stronger in this fictionalized form than as it would have been as a straight-up autobiography.

And what is fiction based on, if not real life? Fiction is the number one way to learn how to see the world from the point of view of a completely different person, only in fiction can you leave your own shoes. I'm pretty sure that reading fiction makes you a better person, and it's proven that reading fiction improves a person's empathy [1]. Increased empathy means that you can put yourself into other leaders' heads and guess what made them make their decisions, thereby learning how the world works.

And yes, you can learn about dating from a romance novel, except that about 99% of them are not about real life.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/08/liter...

Your point is moot. Even non-fiction is fiction in a way. The writer may have changed details, selected only specific facts, hidden some parts of the truth. You never know. At least with fiction you KNOW it's made up, but with non-fiction you can not really tell what is true or not because of your limited knowledge of how it was written and redacted.

   It is difficult
    to get the news from poems
		yet men die miserably every day
				for lack
    of what is found there.

As for dating, here's some good advice (assuming you're a man): grab a copy or Pride and Prejudice and read it to get a grasp of the female psyche. And if you don't read it at least carry it around where she will see.

Now, I know that many critics and authors I admire consider P&P to be one of the finest English-language novels ever written, so I have to ask: what am I missing?

With Austen, for a modern reader, there's a lot to appreciate. Her books give a perspective on what life was like as a member of a class (females) in a society which terribly oppressive for them. What would it be like to be a very intelligent, well-read person who is not allowed to hold a job at a professional or managerial level, not allowed to get a college education, not allowed (generally speaking) to travel freely or own property without restrictions. In many respects, this world is as alien to us as anything found in scifi or fantasy and is therefore a fascinating and horrifying view.

Austen will give you this perspective. If you pay attention closely, you can also learn quite a bit about the ground level view of the English class system in the regency period and how it worked for people on varying social strata. Her novel, Emma, is particularly good at this.

Even the focus on courtship and marriage, which many people will find completely frivolous, has an interesting message. I can't find the exact quote so this is from memory, Austen once remarked that her focus on marriage was because the marriage proposal was the one free choice (in terms of refusal) women were allowed to have. And considering the social and legal power the husband would have over the wife, the woman's choice becomes the thing which will determine the course of her life. From this point of view, there's no wonder why marriage is presented as such an overwhelmingly important event.

I hope you'll give her books another chance.

    Are you gonna learn about dating by reading romantic novels or real life stories?

You may not learn about dating by reading Ishiguro, but it's the case that the profound humanity of his writing makes you a more compassionate and confident person and that's the kind of stuff that can and will make you more desirable to be around.

I contend that you'd learn an awful lot more about love and relationships from a novel like Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, than you ever will from 'non-fiction' like The Game (which you've mentioned up-thread).

Drawing a clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction is in my opinion pointless - you can tell any story you like by using selected facts, you can tell multiple stories with the same facts, and people often do twist the truth when reminiscing and celebrating the past, or present the truth from a very limited, insular point of view in so-called non-fiction books. So in this sense I see non-fiction as very similar to fiction; it's used to tell stories, to present the world as the author sees it, and to educate and entertain. All of these functions are performed by both fiction and non-fiction, and in both cases we're trusting the author to tell us something about the world from their perspective.

The best stories (be they memories of a real-world event, or imagined events based on life experience) transcend the particular and become lessons about human behaviour and life.

Well, if you are straight guy, you could learn a lot (everything) about what women want by carefully reading the romance novels they read.

There's also this embedded assumption in your statement and in BG's that non-fiction tells some sort of factual truth about "real life." Negatory.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke#The_Geostation...

Well, since romantic novels aren't really about dating, I'm not sure the question makes sense. A better question would be: "Will you learn more about love from reading fiction or by reading nonfiction?" And for that I think the answer is obvious.