Make Believe in Film and Fiction Visual vs. Verbal Storytelling

Describing in detail precise differences between the psychological experience of reading a novel and watching a movie, Make Believe in Film and Fiction shows how movies' unique magnification of movements produces stories especially potent in exposing hypocrisy, the spread of criminality in contemporary society, and the relation of private experience to the natural environment. By contrasts of novels with visual storytelling the book also displays how fiction facilitates sharing of subjective fantasies, frees the mind from limiting spatial and temporal preconceptions, and dramatizes the ethical significance of even trivial and commonplace behavior, while intensifying readers' awareness of how they think and feel.

Karl Kroeber, Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, has published a score of books on ecology, the visual arts, and European, American, and Native American literatures, giving special attention to problems of narrative, interconnections between science and literature, and the relation of 19th century culture to post-modern aesthetics.