Kazuo Ishiguro -- Congrats!

So nice to see something good happening in the world. So good to see someone as deserving as Ishiguro win the Nobel Prize.

I heard clips of several of the many interviews he did yesterday. He talked about the many themes of his work -- how people miss opportunities, how they lie to themselves in order to continue in what would otherwise be intolerable situations.  His work is varied and always profound. He said that, although he was raised in the UK, he grew up in a Japanese household, so he saw things through Japanese eyes. Sounds like a thesis for some graduate student somewhere.

Congratulations to a great writer, and, maybe more important these days, a good man.

Toward an Enlightened Aesthetic 4: Fictional Characters

Today I read an article about writing by novelist Dan Barden.  He says we novelists need to create characters in conflict because it is only through struggle that characters grow.  And I'm wondering, from the standpoint of Eastern spirituality, what is growth?

One approach is to show a character's growth as linear: a character responds to an unpleasant situation, and as a result of having to learn how to deal with this type of situation, the character learns something important -- about himself or maybe about other people -- that makes him a better person.

And I think most readers would say that a character "grows" when he or she becomes a better person.  That's not too bad a definition.  But what if the ultimate goal is not just becoming a better person in relative terms but realizing one's true nature as consciousness, as that which doesn't move but within which all movement happens?  Maybe a character who realizes this is not even the same "character" as before she realized it. A character, after all, is by definition limited by certain qualities he does or doesn't possess.  And so, if the character's consciousness is completely transformed, is it still the same character?

I would classify a novel that demonstrates what I am trying to describe here as "Enlightenment Fiction":  A character is in a difficult situation and can't find an exit, and perhaps after many efforts, is finally graced with the ability to see everything from the standpoint of the whole, from the standpoint that is in fact no standpoint.  Compassion would arise, then, not simply because the character has learned to emphasize but because she no longer sees her own story as the central one.  And if she no longer sees herself in those terms, isn't it also necessary that the reader's view shift as well? 

Fiction and Unconditional Love

"The nonfiction writer has to express the spiritual message in a structure and style that satisfies the demands of artistic integrity while the fiction writer struggles to enfold a nonintrusive  message within a believable narrative." 1

Really?  Is this what a fiction writer does?  Not the best ones, anyway.  And maybe that is why, even though I help edit the Buddhist Fiction Blog, I wonder about whether a work of fiction can or should teach Buddhism, Christianity, or any other "ism," however "nonintrusive" the message aims to be.   

When I think about really good literature, it taps that in me which understands what it is to be human.  It taps the universal love we all share by making us feel that the characters are like us -- even though, if we met them on the street, we might want to walk the other way.  But with a good book in hand, we can suspend our needs for safety and status and allow ourselves to empathize:  even if we are in a loving relationship, we can know how it is to love in a hopeless way; even if we have never been to war, we can know how a soldier might feel; even if we have never been hungry, we can know how that man who hasn't had a decent meal in a month might be suffering.  And we can also know joys we have never experienced.

But the total is more than the sum of its parts.  We can know all of this because we tap into the unconditional love we all, at bottom, are.  A novelist helps us to understand the message of Christ or the message of Buddha by giving us the experience they point to -- an experience for which religious "messages" are a poor substitute.

1 Philip Yancey, in Introduction to The Best Spiritual Writing 2012, ed. by Philip Zaleski.