Novels and Planning/Consumer Insight

I'm currently trying to get through Middlemarch, and 800 page Victorian period novel about a provincial English town. So far it's really good, very wordy though. It's also considered to be one of the greatest books written in English of all time, though I think it's fallen out of favor recently.

Anyway, what's struck me the most about the novel is how relevant most of it is for modern society, and how little has changed. I mean we're men aren't wearing those funny clothes anymore and women are allowed to inherit property now. But human relationships haven't changed much and people still react with the same facial expressions. I often forget this book was written over 130 years ago.

Part of what makes the book so long is the author's attention to detail. Not necessarily the detail of how each estate is laid out, but all the details that go into the character's train of thought. Every sentence is usually followed by a very long explanation of how the character came to that conclusion, and how their pasts, station in life, religious views, number of siblings, morals, etc. shape their present situation.

Though Middlemarch is a work of fiction, I think novels like this have a lot of implications for planners (and aspiring planners like me). Though these characters are not real, they are based off of the writer's real experiences with people. A good writer makes characters come to life by giving all sorts of details into their train of thought, and good planners make assumptions about people based off of research. Except novelists aren't trying to solve modern marketing problems, they're just tying to tell a story.

Do I think that planners should read novels to learn about consumer insight instead of doing research, no. But I think planners can learn a lot from the way novelists observe people in real life and turn them into characters. I mean, how often do we see ourselves in books? Everybody is different, but there certainly are patterns to human behavior and the way that people think, and a great writer can take all these patterns that we don't normally think about and create very real characters. A good writer will shape a character in our minds based off their past experiences, income level (or in Middlemarch, class), number of children, married or single, interests, political dispositions and so on and base a character's actions on them. Isn't that what planners are trying to do too?