Why We Need Fantasy

William S. Burroughs and my father both said the same thing, toward the end of their lives: They said they had stopped reading fiction.

I have stopped reading fiction, too, but I still watch it on TV and I see movies.

Reading a book is more effort, and the reward is simply not frequent enough--there seem to be a lot of disappointing novels. Not to say there are not a lot of disappointing movies and TV shows, but it's easy to walk away from those and you have not invested much time or effort.

As you may have guessed, I'm now hooked on Downton Abbey.

Why? You may well ask.

For one thing I now have a whole group of new friends, and I can watch them do and say interesting things and I am disappointed infrequently.

One disappointment: Julian Fellowes needed to bring the baby heir, displacing Matthew as heir to a close, but rather than carrying that plot line across several episodes, he wraps it up abruptly by having Lady Cora fall on the soap left for her by the nasty, conniving Miss O'Brien. And, Heaven knows, all you have to do is to fall when you are 4 months pregnant and that fetus is dead, dead, dead.

But the device worked: It made Mary show her colors. She "loves" Matthew, but not enough to give up the upper class life for a middle class life, for a middle class place in the world.

This makes us each think, "What would I do?" You cannot help but mentally put yourself in that scene and begin playing out a part.

People do this with novels. If you were Kitty in the Hotel room when Air Ben Canaan comes off the balcony and through the window, would you have sent him packing? Or asked him to stay?

And this may be why older people stop reading: They stop dreaming. They know these adventures are no longer possible for themselves.

They move on.

Fantasy is an indulgence of youth.