On Western Adults Reading Fiction...

“The distinction I make is [between our own society and more traditional cultures], such as in Africa. They don’t take a thing apart to understand it. We do. Whether it’s a clock or a philosophy, we compartmentalize. Rather than do that [people in traditional societies] dance with it. They stand in relationship to it. They move with it. That’s what the child is capable of doing. That’s what we knead, or school, out of ourselves. If the adult can keep that, then the story is the same for the adult.

“[Another factor for the adult] is need. The more self sufficient an adult feels him or herself to be the less capable they are of rejoicing in a work of fiction or being blown back and forth by its winds.

“Put it this way. If they’re self sufficient, they would be rifling the story for something they could use. It would be utilitarian. They wouldn’t read fiction much. It would bore them. But yes, on the other hand, when someone is not self sufficient, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they come with a need. It’s that they truly live in a sort of communal atmosphere.

“This is why literature and storytelling were so good in cultures past. And the [reason why the] storytelling we hunger for doesn’t exist in this particular culture is that we live [for the] individual. Western Society says that the wholeness of the human is the individual human. Previous societies have always said the wholeness is the family. The wholeness is the tribe. The wholeness is the community.

Taken from http://www.etext.org/Zines/Critique/writing/wangerin.html