it's amazing what people will do to avoid writing a novel
Not that I'm against them! A great novel is a beautiful thing, and I'm glad someone is out there to enjoy them.
I can see the argument that my experience of human interactions is a biased and incomplete sample. That's clearly true. But they are the relevant ones to my experience.
And I'm always disappointed at the bias in the human interactions portrayed by novels. They are almost invariably driven by unrealistically evil people, and the stakes are typically too high to bear any relevance to most of human life. Most conflict is between people none of whom can be well characterized as evil. There is substantial variation in peoples' values, and in the information they have, and those are the important drivers of what people do.
Damn, I should write a novel.
This very much depends on both the author and the genre of fiction. Not every fiction novel even has a notion of "evil" (or outright evil, there may be characters who are "bad" in some sense or the antagonist, but not outright evil in their nature or quality in an over-the-top fashion). From your description of fiction it sounds largely like the fantasy genre in particular which is very often written as good vs evil kind of stories (though not universally, just very common). Other genres or other writers within that genre are often more interesting.
And not without reason -- if you want drama, they give you that. But I don't think they often do much to usefully inform a person about anything.
After all, language is a poor simulacrum of life, but, then, we use it else "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" and forced to use shadow puppets deep in Plato's cave.
To your broader point, it depends what you want out of the novel. If you want world-building and dialog -- as I pointed out -- you won't get those from the Cliff notes.
I think that's fine, as I don't want them. Or rather, I don't want them as much as I want other things I can spend my time on.
And you're right, I don't read much fiction. The only piece I remember reading all year was The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, a short story by Hemmingway. It was fine.
Reminds me of my father, who claims there's no better wine than Carlo Rossi, and no good movie since Dr Zhivago.
But you're right, there do exist such books. I said "almost entirely". I admit I'm limited to the sample I've experienced personally but it's over 90%.
Also I admit it omits children's lit and romance novels, which are two huge omissions.
> I admit I'm limited to the sample I've experienced personally but it's over 90%.
You need to read a wider selection of books, then. Try, say, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Of Mice and Men, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, A Christmas Carol, The Grapes of Wrath, The Time Machine, Dune, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Foundation series, anything by Ray Bradbury... there's a very long list of books that are not driven by simplistic good vs. evil conflicts.
Usually authors try to make high stakes feel relevant by making you feel close to the characters or by connecting the high stakes situation to universal themes, although not always successfully. More interestingly, many good novels make relevant and fairly ordinary stakes feel like high stakes. Kurt Vonnegut's short stories[0] and The Bell Jar are great examples.
I don't want to pile on or try to convince you that novels are actually for you (sounds like they aren't), but I think this is an interesting distinction to make about "high stakes."
[0] Presumably his novels too, but I haven't read them yet.