Read More, Become More

Fiction is a very powerful idea. I can't say that any other life form on our planet has ever graduated to using the full power of fiction like we have. The most they can rely on is the immediate knowledge from their genes and what they learn vicariously. 

But we have an unique advantage. We can put all our working knowledge of our culture, our traditions, things of practical importance into a tidy little capsule called a story. Once all this knowledge is filled in that capsule it is only a matter of time someone will come along and swallow it. It may not profoundly affect that person's world view but it will surely make a dent. How big a dent it can make depends on how potent the capsule is & how often he swallows it. 

Fiction in the form of books has changed the way people perceive the world. It has made our existence a lot more colourful and has added flavour to our experience which, at that moment, we couldn't have added on our own. A lot of times writers dissect their character's thought processes. This helps the readers clearly understand a character's actions. If a reader looks up to that character then the thought process seems like an incentive to improve ourselves to that standard. Even if we read of some character behaving disagreeably, we can always feel it and it reflects our own cultural & social upbringing. It brings out our ideas about good & evil & allows us to express them in our thoughts.

These thoughts wouldn't have come out on their own unless we were subjected to that experience directly. Fiction speeds up this process minus the pain of living through it.

The structure of fiction is also unique. There's no contents page, no acknowledgments, no introductions. We plunge directly into the narrative right from page one. This puts us front and centre of the events that unfold. No other form of correspondence or form of knowledge transmission works that effectively. Every other form needs some sort of qualifying introduction to set the tone for what's to come. Even a brilliant piece of music needs a right setting.

Since we humans are a bag full of feelings and emotions, whether we like to admit or not, fiction brings out the best and the worst of our feelings. We feel for the characters, we feel for their outcomes. Perhaps we feel for them more strongly than we feel for our own outcomes. That's because in fiction the characters' actions are always motivated by some thought. There's no room for purposeless actions. This is contrary to the way we humans go through life. We usually do a lot of things that are motivated by some thought but largely there are a lot of other things we do automatically. We have a subconscious drive that pushes us to do things we wouldn't do if we carefully consider them. Sometimes we are not even conscious of the purpose of our actions and are made aware only after someone or some event brings it to our attention. This possibility opens up a whole new world of exploration for us. Fiction can help us see the motivations behind the characters' actions & can make us question ours as well. Without fiction for our aid we would pay an hour's fee to a therapist to help us understand & untangle the subconscious intentions behind what we do. But the joy to figure it out on our own is totally different and it's much more vivid. 

We generally have these self biographies running in our head. They tell us who we are, what we must do, what we are like. These biographies change with our experience & knowledge of ourselves & the world around us. These biographies seem remarkably similar to reading character profiles in fiction. They are highly imaginative & very colourful. They make us look either good or bad in our own eyes which in turn determine the kind of mood they put us in. We have this remarkable tendency to observe our behaviour & deduce what kind of a person we are. Fiction is a similar process where the character is written & presented in front of us to figure out the labyrinthine thought behind each action. Fiction can helps us question what our biographies should be like. 

Aristotle said that "We acquire virtues by first having put them into action ... we become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage." What better way to get acquainted with our actions than to see us emotionally respond to what the characters do? Better yet, they can also change us into who we wish to become. A good story invokes all these thoughts & puts us in an inevitable position to answer these questions about ourselves. That's why reading novels involving existential themes are very difficult to accept. They force us to ask what is our purpose & may force us to consider that there may not be any.

Read More, Become More.

The Chequered Game of Writing

I think I have finally come across a nice analogy for why people write novels/stories (fiction, to be vague). This is mainly because, when I started reading fiction for the first time, it made me wonder why did someone take up so much time in their life to sit down & write this book, this story, this whatever?

When I wrote my first short story & posted it on my blog, I realized it instantly, but only subconsciously. It took me about 3 years to finally come to terms to understand consciously what it was I had learned while writing the story.

It is just like a game. To make the analogy better, let's assume a Game of Chess. What is a game of chess, really? A board with black & white pieces &, black & white squares with some rules. Same applies to writing fiction, there are some basic rules - there ought to be characters in the story, they have to do something, that should bring out something much bigger than the face value of the characters' actions. To simplify, the actions mentioned in the story (includes dialog, physical acts, emotions, etc) must represent some broader or a smaller, or any concept which is outside the story. A sort of underlying message or philosophy. The writer should make that connection instantly instead of lingering on & almost trying to reach it. But the best part about this process is evident from millions & millions of writers writing more or less similar plots in so many different ways. Just like a game of chess, despite being centuries old, still has the ability to come up with new moves as new players improvise their games independently.

So the game of chess begins when both players sit across facing each other's arsenal. One player has white which begins the game, the other has black. I think these colours also symbolize a lot more than their intended use of mere distinction. It is a difference in ideology of the writer & the reader. They don't come from the same background & same beliefs. So the writers' words are in fact bearing a different meaning for each of the readers. The white always begins, because the intention is clear, to start off with the game in a peaceful manner, no matter how it ends. The black represents the critical aspect of the game, which has to enter into the game with a defensive manoeuvre. Then the game can progress with one player being offensive & the other defensive irrespective of the colour of the pieces. The reader must be able to critically assess the work in his own head to better understand it within their own context. In short, it has to be understood in some relevant way.

So in the fiction business the game begins with actually writing and publishing the material. That's the first move. The reader being the other player enters into the game by deciding to read. This I presume is a defensive move because we have to react to an impulse which actually made us want to read that work of fiction. We don't know how the game is going to turn out just in the same way we don't know how a chess game is going to end because there is clever tradition of not including a contents page.

So after entering into the game, each player gets settled by aligning their pieces. The writer starts to transmit ideas in a variety of forms, through characters, through narratives, through examples, through analogies & so on. The reader reads these ideas & interprets what the writer is trying to say, literally trying to get into the writer's head. The writer through his words tries to elicit some emotional response to either uplift the reader or to break him down. This is exactly what chess players do. They try to get into each other's heads while the game goes on revealing layers after layers of intentions. These intentions best decide how the game turns out to be. Some players are more perceptive than others so they can guess the opponent's moves & plan better whereas some not so good players end up spending huge amounts of time deciding their next move by brute force. So in the same way good readers, will guess what the author is trying to say judging through the author's words & explanations, whereas bad readers end up hacking their way through the writer's work trying to make sense of the words. Most often without any success.

Similarly good writers understand their own ideas better & can project them in a much better way than bad writers. So the bad writers end up wasting a lot of time reaching any relevant point because they don't know exactly what they are getting at. I think this is also a serious reason for writer's block, not knowing exactly what we are trying to convey. In the game of chess, good players know their moves, styles & their ability to play so well that they don't over reach & set up game plans accordingly. A bad player sets up unrealistic goals & fails to plan or even change plans mid-game & doesn't think through moves because he doesn't really know how to steer the game. The bad player is always at the mercy of a good player's sword (I couldn't resist the pun, in case you missed the pun - you should know who the bad writer is by now).

A good chess player always knows if he is about to lose. That player will know when to forfeit a game, if the odds aren't in his favour. That's also a remarkable trait of a good writer. Sometimes it matters a lot what you don't send for publishing. If everything that the writer thinks is published then it may or may not be up to the same standards that he has set up for his work. This requires remarkable work ethic. It requires huge amounts of ego to suck it up & sit on it. The other end of the spectrum is again trying hard to change the outcome of an out-of-favour game. This usually fails since probability isn't biased. Also good readers tend to move around a book very easily & know when to throw a book away. Bad readers tend to keep reading crap even when they know it's crap, but hope that it might get better. 

I think the whole book publishing industry is based around catering to the really good readers & writers out there & making the bonus on being able to sell the stuff to mediocre readers who cannot differentiate good material from bad. Incidentally there are also good publishers that are different from bad ones who don't know when crap is crap. I think the new self-publishing platforms are pretty cool since it creates a good & fair market for good reading material & bad reading material. The crowd decides what is good or bad. I love free markets for this precise reason. The idea is of deserving the fate for a piece of work. Also in the game of chess, if you are pitted against a good player & you are a bad player, then you will consistently lose until you get the message & rework your game.

In the end, like I said earlier, it is a clash of ideas & opinions. The writer reveals himself as much as the reader reveals himself while reading. The only difference is that the writer reveals to himself & to the world but the reader reveals only to himself. 

But what is true for this game, is also valid for most of the things worth doing in life. All these things can be improved through focused practice & by slowly but painfully learning what not to do.

That's why good writing is as much fun as reading a really well written book, really well. Just like in the game of chess, there can be moments of great excitement when good players battle it out till one of them bows out.

Why is Literature Important?

"If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

This is a line from Thomas Pynchon's famous novel, Gravity's Rainbow. A similar situation arose from asking questions to businessmen while researching their companies. If the questions that I ask them are not relevant according to them, then they don't need to worry about answering them accurately. Any answer would suffice as long as my sense of curiosity is satisfied. It takes to be a really good financial analyst, to figure out the relevant questions & to be a very good conversationalist in order to put these questions in the right context. Unless these questions are asked properly, the relevant & really important information that we seek, lies hidden.

I think this is also the nature of literature (or fiction, in general). There are questions & there are answers - they are not always pleasing to everyone. But they need to be put into the right context so that their answers will have some relevance to our life. We humans lead contemplative lives throughout which we ask these questions, about ourself, about the state of the world, about nature of things around us. And mostly we fail. Most of us don't get to see the answers the way they should be because we have our own lens to look at the world. The questions are tainted by our own observation & interpretation of things. Things are unresolved in our minds which is usually mistaken as a clear viewpoint whenever it becomes part of a chain of thought. The belief that if its a thought in our minds then it must be a tangible understanding of some concept seems wrong. This misleading judgement pushes us in two directions. The first one is the passive, complacent acceptance of our own ideas as the right version of everything. The other is an unsettling need to find several other versions of the same truth. In our confusion we try to compare our life with how others are living theirs & come up with these hopeless benchmarks of right / wrong ways to live.

Truth is not some abstract understanding of the world, but perhaps a way to frame the question properly so the answer emerges out of it.

Why are these questions important & what is the use of those answers?

The questions are an inevitable part of being human. In our truly idle moments we spend painfully long hours in connecting the dots. Dots that would be any parts of our life. Life is an abstract concept which is only finalized by the reality of death. Such a binary outcome of our existence seems too daunting to go through without some clarity about who we are & what are we doing here. The questions seem to form a part of this process to connect the dots between our existence & its significance. Its significance to us & relative to the world around us.

The job of a writer is not just to create a fantastic world view & an entertaining plot. Its job is to create a world which we can relate to. Once we can relate to this world thats been verbally pulled over our eyes, we start imagining ourselves as a part of this world. We truly connect to the symbolism, to the characters & their relationships amongst themselves. We start seeing things from their perspective, just in case, to understand what we would do in the same situation. This adjustment of worlds leaves us totally vulnerable to these questions & thus we become more receptive to our own thoughts. We start treading cautiously into the unknown territory, we are wary of the imagery & begin to anticipate what might happen on the turn of the page. And when we least expect any looming thought around the curb of the next page, the writer introduces these questions. The very same questions that we ask ourselves, to get to know who, why, how, what we are. Of course they are not so obvious, but they start to emerge from the text. They build anxiety, they build doubt & they build confidence at the same time - that we can at least take a shot at answering these questions. In our fear of finding the ugly truth about ourselves, deeply hidden within a labyrinth of our thoughts, we finally start seeing light. It seems less embarrassing to ask ourselves those pointed questions & make meaning of our lives. It brings us the courage to come face to face with the fact that we have been what we have been so far, does it make sense? Is this the best I can get or do? Whats more? Am I pretending to be someone else?

Countless amount of wealth is spilt on psychotherapy, by millions of people to find the same answers. Or even to be able to face the same questions. Fear of the unknown is a natural part of our thought process & its evolution's ironic gift. It teaches us our limitations & at the same time keeps us from crossing them. But most of the fears that we have can be resolved mechanically, if not logically. But the fear of truly knowing who we are & to be afraid to find out that the answer might be unpleasant - is present in all of us.

The writer & his literature then becomes a tunnel for us to guide these thoughts to the light at the end. The light does not symbolize any clarity or the tunnel doesn't lead to any field of answers to our questions, but it leads us into a light of our own thoughts & our own ability to ask ourselves - 'Who am I'?

But one question remains, which only the reader can solve for itself - If we truly find out what we really are & it's unpleasant according to us, can't we do something about it & change it into something relatively better or do we seek comfort in not finding the tumour & let the cancer spread till it eats us alive?