In the current issue of Poets and Writers, Mary Stewart Atwell discusses the question of whether writers have the right to portray the inner life of people very different from themselves -- whether urban writers can write about rural characters, men about women, or one race about another. One point of view, she states, is that "if you have the writing chops to convince a reader of the authenticity of a character's inner life, no one's going to care whether the character is based on yourself or made out of whole cloth." Of course, many of the best writers do manage to convince us of the inner life of characters they resemble very little -- people of differing cultures and nationalities, for example. But I'm wondering if there isn't a broader question here.
Since this blog focuses on books by people who have written about their journeys to different parts of the world, I find this topic particularly relevant. Of course, with memoir, people don't usually try to get inside anyone's head but their own, so I'm thinking here mostly of novels. Particularly when I was reading two of those I've reviewed here -- Audrey Hepburn's Neck, by Alan Brown, and Country of Origin, by Don Lee -- I pondered this question, as both of these American writers have peopled their novels not only with Westerners living in Japan but with Japanese characters whose inner lives are also explored. Without doubt these portraits convinced me of their plausibility. But at the same time I asked myself whether Japanese people would be convinced.
So, I think we need to look a bit more deeply at this question -- because people of the same culture as the author of a book may be convinced that the character from another culture is authentically described, but that may not in fact be the case. Instead, the author may unwittingly be perpetrating a stereotype. We see this most clearly when we look at American literature of the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries in which African Americans were portrayed by white authors. So it is not, it seems, just a matter of being convincing but of actually knowing enough about the people who are portrayed to be able to tell the truth about their souls.
And I think this is true not only with respect to the individual characters from another culture but with respect to the culture as a whole. The author may convince us that such-and-such behavior is typical of a certain culture, but if we know nothing about that culture, that is not a difficult task -- nor is it proof that the portrait drawn is accurate. How many times have I heard someone who spent a week in Japan pontificating on the "Japanese people"? Authors are not immune from this kind of over-simplification -- especially if it serves the wider goal of the story. Myself, I would beware of believing a writer who has not spent a good deal of time living with or, if that is impossible, at least seriously studying, the culture of people he is describing in his work. "Writing chops" are no substitute for knowledge.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Eat, Pray Love: On Being Oneself
Many of you have no doubt already read Elizabeth Gilbert's EAT, PRAY, LOVE, but I'm just getting to it. I'm in the middle part now, about Gilbert's time at an Indian ashram. For people who know a lot about Eastern spirituality, it's a bit redundant in the places where she's laying out Eastern philosophy, but the personal parts make it worthwhile.
One of those is where Gilbert describes herself as a social butterfly -- even at the ashram, she admits with dismay. She determines that she will change, that she will become the quiet one, and everyone will admire her for her steadfastness. All day long, including while she is scrubbing the floors -- her job since she arrived -- she will not utter a peep.
And, wouldn't you know it, she is almost immediately called to the job assignment office and told that she will have a new job -- hostess for arrivals at the retreats about to be held!
And life is like that, too, isn't it? Our ego has some ideal of what we should be, but then life comes along and says, "I don't think so. Try just being yourself."
In Thomas Hardy's JUDE THE OBSCURE similarly we have a character who wants to be what he is not. The whole book is about how Jude thinks he is too smart for his station in life. He's a snob -- and yet, although he's not likeable and we know he will get his comeuppance, we somehow want him to succeed -- at least I did.
Although Gilbert is a likeable character and Jude isn't, in both cases we care what happens. Maybe it's because this characteristic is so universal. We all want to think we are special and that we deserve more credit than others have given us. But as a therapist once said to me, "Give yourself credit." When we really do that, maybe it's not so necessary to try to earn it from others by putting on a suit of clothes that doesn't fit.
One of those is where Gilbert describes herself as a social butterfly -- even at the ashram, she admits with dismay. She determines that she will change, that she will become the quiet one, and everyone will admire her for her steadfastness. All day long, including while she is scrubbing the floors -- her job since she arrived -- she will not utter a peep.
And, wouldn't you know it, she is almost immediately called to the job assignment office and told that she will have a new job -- hostess for arrivals at the retreats about to be held!
And life is like that, too, isn't it? Our ego has some ideal of what we should be, but then life comes along and says, "I don't think so. Try just being yourself."
In Thomas Hardy's JUDE THE OBSCURE similarly we have a character who wants to be what he is not. The whole book is about how Jude thinks he is too smart for his station in life. He's a snob -- and yet, although he's not likeable and we know he will get his comeuppance, we somehow want him to succeed -- at least I did.
Although Gilbert is a likeable character and Jude isn't, in both cases we care what happens. Maybe it's because this characteristic is so universal. We all want to think we are special and that we deserve more credit than others have given us. But as a therapist once said to me, "Give yourself credit." When we really do that, maybe it's not so necessary to try to earn it from others by putting on a suit of clothes that doesn't fit.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Wisdom, Writers, and Real Life
In the American Masters film on Alice Walker recently shown on PBS, I learned that Walker's daughter doesn't speak to her and that Alice has never seen her grandson. Apparently, Walker's only child felt ignored when she was growing up and is not about to forgive a mother who, at least to her mind, put her art ahead of her.
Last month, when I told a member of my writers' group that I was going to be in a workshop led by Andre Dubus, she said, "Oh, I read a story by him in college that's always stayed with me. It was called, 'Adultery.'"
Since this woman is nearly my age, I knew the author of this story had to be not Andre Dubus III, with whom I would be spending eight days, but Andre Dubus II, his father. And since I was in the middle of reading Andre III's memoir, TOWNIE, I had to stop and ponder when I came upon "adultery" as one of the sources of the divorce that so devastated young Andre. I haven't read the story, "Adultery," but the subject was certainly, at some point in time, much on the senior Dubus' mind.
These very different writers in very different family situations raise the question of the intersection of real life and art. I don't know about others, but when I read a writer I like, I usually imagine the kind of person that writer is based on what he or she has written. But then I come across something like an estranged child, or one who committed suicide (two in Eugene O'Neill's case), or the alcoholism so prevalent among writers of a certain generation, and I have to reconsider my assumption. Andre III said about his own father that his writing was bigger than he was. Maybe that is true for all writers. Where does the genius, the wisdom, come from, then? And why is it that so many writers are unable to manifest in their own lives the wisdom they display in their books?
Last month, when I told a member of my writers' group that I was going to be in a workshop led by Andre Dubus, she said, "Oh, I read a story by him in college that's always stayed with me. It was called, 'Adultery.'"
Since this woman is nearly my age, I knew the author of this story had to be not Andre Dubus III, with whom I would be spending eight days, but Andre Dubus II, his father. And since I was in the middle of reading Andre III's memoir, TOWNIE, I had to stop and ponder when I came upon "adultery" as one of the sources of the divorce that so devastated young Andre. I haven't read the story, "Adultery," but the subject was certainly, at some point in time, much on the senior Dubus' mind.
These very different writers in very different family situations raise the question of the intersection of real life and art. I don't know about others, but when I read a writer I like, I usually imagine the kind of person that writer is based on what he or she has written. But then I come across something like an estranged child, or one who committed suicide (two in Eugene O'Neill's case), or the alcoholism so prevalent among writers of a certain generation, and I have to reconsider my assumption. Andre III said about his own father that his writing was bigger than he was. Maybe that is true for all writers. Where does the genius, the wisdom, come from, then? And why is it that so many writers are unable to manifest in their own lives the wisdom they display in their books?
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Twenty-five and foolish; thirty and disillusioned
In a recently published short story, Elizabeth Crane's character, after recounting how foolish she was at 25, writes, "I wouldn't trade places with anyone under thirty if you paid me."
I read a lot of memoirs by Westerners who go abroad seeking enlightenment. I do this partly because I enjoy all the varieties of this kind of experience and partly (mostly?) because I'm trying to write my own memoir about living in a Buddhist temple in Japan when I was 22 and I want to see how other people have dealt with this subject. Now, I'm almost finished with a memoir by Suzanne Morrison, YOGA BITCH. At 25, the author went on an extended yoga retreat in Bali. She had Western teachers and all of the students were Western, so even for that reason alone, her experience, while stressful in some ways, was not nearly as traumatic as mine was. But it's interesting to see the similarity, too -- the way, if enlightenment is what we ourselves want, at that age we project it onto our teachers. Then, of course, when our eyes are opened later on, when our teachers are revealed as imperfect, there is disillusion.
I read a lot of memoirs by Westerners who go abroad seeking enlightenment. I do this partly because I enjoy all the varieties of this kind of experience and partly (mostly?) because I'm trying to write my own memoir about living in a Buddhist temple in Japan when I was 22 and I want to see how other people have dealt with this subject. Now, I'm almost finished with a memoir by Suzanne Morrison, YOGA BITCH. At 25, the author went on an extended yoga retreat in Bali. She had Western teachers and all of the students were Western, so even for that reason alone, her experience, while stressful in some ways, was not nearly as traumatic as mine was. But it's interesting to see the similarity, too -- the way, if enlightenment is what we ourselves want, at that age we project it onto our teachers. Then, of course, when our eyes are opened later on, when our teachers are revealed as imperfect, there is disillusion.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Male and Female Memoir: Part II
I finished two memoirs about Japan recently -- Pico Iyer's THE LADY AND THE MONK and Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's HIROSHIMA IN THE MORNING.
Granted, these writers went to Japan at different times -- Iyer in the 1980s and Rizzuto in 2001 -- and for different reasons. Iyer didn't have any family connection with Japan at all but had been fascinated with the country ever since a brief stopover with his mother when he was young. And his interest in Zen led him to choose Kyoto for his stay as well as to contact many people practicing Zen. He even lived in a temple himself for awhile. From my point of view, I have to say, I think his interest was much too intellectual to really lead anywhere, but nonetheless it was a focus for him.
Rizzuto went for completely different reasons. She is half-Japanese and she wanted to explore the impact the bombing of Hiroshima had on Japanese Americans who were caught up in that event. Perhaps these unfortunate people were visiting relatives in Japan at just the wrong time or had left the States rather than live in a relocation camp. Naturally, she chose Hiroshima as her base. She didn't know people personally ahead of time but she had several connections, and she had also received a grant to write a book based on her research -- a novel that seems to have been abandoned in favor of the memoir she finally published.
But, although these differences are very real, what strikes me more is the difference in tone. I have been trying to pin this down, to put in words this difference which I've noticed again and again in memoirs of men and women, and maybe I'm getting close. I think it is that the main question around which men form their narrative is, "How did this experience change me?" while the main question women ask is, "How did this experience help me discover who I really am?"
Maybe this seems like a subtle difference but, really, I think it makes all the difference. It seems that men, as a rule, already assume that they know who they are. Their experience, especially in a foreign country, will add to who they are and perhaps cause them to reconsider things they have always considered true, but the self who is having those experiences is never basically in doubt.
But with women, the result seems almost always to be, "I thought I was this sort of person, but through this experience I have now discovered that I am not that person I always thought I was: I am a quite different person, or maybe I am someone I have not yet completely discovered." So, for example, with Rizzuto, she went to Japan leaving her family in New York, but her research into the effect of the bomb on the lives of survivors could not be separated from the effect of those she interviewed on her own personal life. She had thought she was one kind of wife and mother but before long began to question the roles she had played so naturally up until that time.
Iyer's outcome is more modest. There is no doubt that he has been affected deeply by his experience -- and especially by the "lady" with whom he became involved -- but he goes home with his basic "self" in tact. Of course, if he'd taken Zen more seriously, that might not have been the case, but one doesn't usually find what one doesn't know one is looking for, and Iyer does not seem to have thought he was looking for a deeper, truer self.
Granted, these writers went to Japan at different times -- Iyer in the 1980s and Rizzuto in 2001 -- and for different reasons. Iyer didn't have any family connection with Japan at all but had been fascinated with the country ever since a brief stopover with his mother when he was young. And his interest in Zen led him to choose Kyoto for his stay as well as to contact many people practicing Zen. He even lived in a temple himself for awhile. From my point of view, I have to say, I think his interest was much too intellectual to really lead anywhere, but nonetheless it was a focus for him.
Rizzuto went for completely different reasons. She is half-Japanese and she wanted to explore the impact the bombing of Hiroshima had on Japanese Americans who were caught up in that event. Perhaps these unfortunate people were visiting relatives in Japan at just the wrong time or had left the States rather than live in a relocation camp. Naturally, she chose Hiroshima as her base. She didn't know people personally ahead of time but she had several connections, and she had also received a grant to write a book based on her research -- a novel that seems to have been abandoned in favor of the memoir she finally published.
But, although these differences are very real, what strikes me more is the difference in tone. I have been trying to pin this down, to put in words this difference which I've noticed again and again in memoirs of men and women, and maybe I'm getting close. I think it is that the main question around which men form their narrative is, "How did this experience change me?" while the main question women ask is, "How did this experience help me discover who I really am?"
Maybe this seems like a subtle difference but, really, I think it makes all the difference. It seems that men, as a rule, already assume that they know who they are. Their experience, especially in a foreign country, will add to who they are and perhaps cause them to reconsider things they have always considered true, but the self who is having those experiences is never basically in doubt.
But with women, the result seems almost always to be, "I thought I was this sort of person, but through this experience I have now discovered that I am not that person I always thought I was: I am a quite different person, or maybe I am someone I have not yet completely discovered." So, for example, with Rizzuto, she went to Japan leaving her family in New York, but her research into the effect of the bomb on the lives of survivors could not be separated from the effect of those she interviewed on her own personal life. She had thought she was one kind of wife and mother but before long began to question the roles she had played so naturally up until that time.
Iyer's outcome is more modest. There is no doubt that he has been affected deeply by his experience -- and especially by the "lady" with whom he became involved -- but he goes home with his basic "self" in tact. Of course, if he'd taken Zen more seriously, that might not have been the case, but one doesn't usually find what one doesn't know one is looking for, and Iyer does not seem to have thought he was looking for a deeper, truer self.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
BUDDHIST FICTION COMES OF AGE
Although Ruth Ozeki's A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING didn't win the Booker Prize, its being a finalist says something important: Buddhist Fiction has come of age.
No book is even going to be nominated for Britain's most prestigious literary prize unless it appeals to a general readership -- I mean, of course, a general literate readership. Such a book has to have virtues beyond a Buddhist theme: the prose has to be outstanding, the subject matter serious and worthy of thoughtful people's time and energy, the theme of universal significance.
And yet -- this book is also Buddhist. I mean, lots of writers explore the nature of time -- fiction is so well-suited to that kind of exploration because the stroke of the pen can take readers to any time and place, or multiple times and places in even a single chapter. But when quotations from Zen Master Dogen frame the exploration, as in Ozeki's book, then we are in Buddhist fictional territory.
Or again, the nature of reality is also easily explored in fiction: a few keystrokes make things appear and disappear. But when the analogy to the nature of consciousness is made clearly, then we have Buddhist fiction.
There's always a danger that a genre with a religion as its modifier -- Buddhist fiction -- is going to be dismissed as parochial or didactic, as not worth reading by those who don't share the faith. A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING is not alone in showing that Buddhist fiction can be bigger than this. But the fact that this book has gotten so much attention can draw the attention of readers -- especially non-Buddhist readers -- to a genre that they may have dismissed before.
Note: My interview with Roland Merullo, another Buddhist fiction writer, appears here:
http://buddhistfictionblog.wordpress.com/
No book is even going to be nominated for Britain's most prestigious literary prize unless it appeals to a general readership -- I mean, of course, a general literate readership. Such a book has to have virtues beyond a Buddhist theme: the prose has to be outstanding, the subject matter serious and worthy of thoughtful people's time and energy, the theme of universal significance.
And yet -- this book is also Buddhist. I mean, lots of writers explore the nature of time -- fiction is so well-suited to that kind of exploration because the stroke of the pen can take readers to any time and place, or multiple times and places in even a single chapter. But when quotations from Zen Master Dogen frame the exploration, as in Ozeki's book, then we are in Buddhist fictional territory.
Or again, the nature of reality is also easily explored in fiction: a few keystrokes make things appear and disappear. But when the analogy to the nature of consciousness is made clearly, then we have Buddhist fiction.
There's always a danger that a genre with a religion as its modifier -- Buddhist fiction -- is going to be dismissed as parochial or didactic, as not worth reading by those who don't share the faith. A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING is not alone in showing that Buddhist fiction can be bigger than this. But the fact that this book has gotten so much attention can draw the attention of readers -- especially non-Buddhist readers -- to a genre that they may have dismissed before.
Note: My interview with Roland Merullo, another Buddhist fiction writer, appears here:
http://buddhistfictionblog.wordpress.com/
Thursday, October 10, 2013
"Enlightened by the ten thousand things"
Lately, I keep coming across the above quotation from Dogen, the ancient Zen Master. But apparently the phrase has an earlier origin because a bit of on-line research also yielded this:
This is a bit more to the point for most people, perhaps, but Dogen's way of putting it is more dynamic, expressing how seeing from the right viewpoint (which is no viewpoint) can result in (although "result" isn't the exact word, since it's already there) instantaneous enlightenment.
I'm pondering all this with respect to literature, and more specifically with respect to a thoughtful article by Ruth Ozeki I read recently: http://www.ruthozeki.com/archives/1174
The article is about a very old Japanese nun and former novelist, Jakucho Setouchi, who, according to Ozeki, stated once in an interview that love affairs were the best subject for a novelist. Ozeki takes issue with this point of view, although she doesn't explain why, so this post is not a reply to her, but rather a musing on where that statement took me.
Love affairs take the life energy and run with it. We get carried away -- and most of us enjoy losing ourselves in such passion. There's an old song, "I Wish I Were in Love Again" that expresses this well. But if one is writing a "spiritual" novel, are love affairs still the best topic?
Or, more to the point, is there really such a thing as a "spiritual novel"? As the above quotation makes clear, there actually is no such thing as enlightenment, nothing at all that separates the "ten thousand things" from the consciousness that appears to witness them. And so, for a writer, can there be any separation between "spiritual" and "worldly" topics?
Nothing is inherently "spiritual." It is all in the eye of the beholder. If we really get to the bottom of what a love affair is about, we must be in wonder at how life produces such passion. And, because we can never really get to the bottom of what a love affair is about, it produces endless opportunities to mine the wealth hidden in its depths. That wealth is spiritual because everything that is is spiritual when it is seen truly. So what makes a novel "spiritual" is not any particular content but simply the urge, the determination, to see things as they actually are -- as Dogen did.
"The ten-thousand things and I are of one substance."
Zen Master Seng-chao (384-414)
This is a bit more to the point for most people, perhaps, but Dogen's way of putting it is more dynamic, expressing how seeing from the right viewpoint (which is no viewpoint) can result in (although "result" isn't the exact word, since it's already there) instantaneous enlightenment.
I'm pondering all this with respect to literature, and more specifically with respect to a thoughtful article by Ruth Ozeki I read recently: http://www.ruthozeki.com/archives/1174
The article is about a very old Japanese nun and former novelist, Jakucho Setouchi, who, according to Ozeki, stated once in an interview that love affairs were the best subject for a novelist. Ozeki takes issue with this point of view, although she doesn't explain why, so this post is not a reply to her, but rather a musing on where that statement took me.
Love affairs take the life energy and run with it. We get carried away -- and most of us enjoy losing ourselves in such passion. There's an old song, "I Wish I Were in Love Again" that expresses this well. But if one is writing a "spiritual" novel, are love affairs still the best topic?
Or, more to the point, is there really such a thing as a "spiritual novel"? As the above quotation makes clear, there actually is no such thing as enlightenment, nothing at all that separates the "ten thousand things" from the consciousness that appears to witness them. And so, for a writer, can there be any separation between "spiritual" and "worldly" topics?
Nothing is inherently "spiritual." It is all in the eye of the beholder. If we really get to the bottom of what a love affair is about, we must be in wonder at how life produces such passion. And, because we can never really get to the bottom of what a love affair is about, it produces endless opportunities to mine the wealth hidden in its depths. That wealth is spiritual because everything that is is spiritual when it is seen truly. So what makes a novel "spiritual" is not any particular content but simply the urge, the determination, to see things as they actually are -- as Dogen did.
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