The Writer's Venture into the Unknown

Undoubtedly, greatness comes from the challenge of our most fundamental paradigms. That challenge throws us into the unknown and the unknown is always frightening. Fear, as common empirical knowledge demonstrates causes pain, like Aristotle’s clichéd, “Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.” Though moving on to the realm of fiction, fiction is never wrong, because it does not attempt to be right. But it does intend to express truth, through and beyond the banality of its events, it intends to inform the reader with something that the author considers to be true. Inevitably, to achieve greatness and truth, pretentious though not presumptuous objectives, the writer must venture into a daunting endeavor: the unknown. The novelist Jonathan Franzen has said fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money. A piece of fiction, if done truthfully, is the best way a writer can cope with reality. It is not just a series of shuffled thoughts or a career, but the only thing the writer can do, a very personal obligation with oneself. Much evidence of this great endeavors flood libraries and roam streets, though unfortunately, falsity stalks society and infiltrates even in the literary realm, which would seem like a logical contradiction, but then again, we could not even conceive a world without contradictions. Rather than condemning the writer’s intent, I want to examine certain elements that, due to the sincerity of this undertaking, either create a successful piece of fiction, or barely scrape the sticky surface of entertainment.

Most contemporary novels, specially the two under my myopic eye, are indubitably a technical success. Both writers, Yoko Ogawa and Amelie Nothomb, have a great command of the written expression, but we all know that it takes much more than knowing the mechanics of a language to write an important book. Writers write for many different reasons, but there has to be some sort of splinter in their heart for them to get truly invested in the piece. And how does one get truly invested in something? By searching and, regardless of the treasure one might covet, a search always involves an adventure into this unknown. It is very clear that an author does this when there are contradictions in the book. I have previously mentioned contradictions and since they seem to be an important part of my commentary, before I continue, I would like to make a necessary clarification.

There are many kinds of contradictions, but mainly I distinguish them due to their intent. One, the logical contradiction, creates a mental block, limits understanding and therefore hinders thought. Like saying, “God exist” and at the same time, “God does not exist.” This does not illuminate the thinker in any way, but rather amputates the possibility of advancement. The other kind is a congruent contradiction. These are necessary contradictions. This one provides profound insight of an ambiguous kind, depicts an idea that cannot be expressed in objective terms or through scientific methods, and creates a sort of sagacious satisfaction in the mind. An example of this congruent contradiction can be found in Yoko Ogawa’s sincere and precise novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor, “Math has proven the existence of God because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it.” This beautiful congruent contradiction somehow illuminates an idea that, if not for the contradiction, would remain in darkness. Human understanding and the arts (all seven of them) make much use of this sort of contradictions; they intend to express the ineffable. In fact it is the necessity of this kind of contradictions that much of the art that exists is based on. These congruent contradictions can be found as subtle indicators in books where it is clear that the author has endured an arduous adventure through the unknown in order to create a novel. Congruent contradictions are left in the pages of a book as the vestiges of the struggle.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a novel in which the writer herself seems to be meddling with issues of the most essential kind, such as meaning, memory, truth, God and love. Particularly in regards to love, it explores the different aspects of such a complex sentiment, which the Greeks divided so well: agape, eros, phillos and storge. To some level, all kinds of love develop in the book clearly. There is a profound relationship between each of the three main characters: the Housekeeper, the Professor and Root (the housekeeper’s son). And although Eros, romantic love, remains hidden and almost unseen, it is there, in a subtle way, “I’ll be there. You see, my brother-in-law can never remember you, but he can never forget me.” Says the sister-in-law, a mysterious character that remains in the background as a hazy memory, though brings out the feelings of Eros and even a taint of jealousy, but the kinds of love in this book would be the topic of a different essay.

The Housekeeper is a humble, single mother who begins to work in the shabby home of a brilliant professor of mathematics whose memory, due to a previous accident, lasts only eighty minutes. His malady left him confined in his reduced world of a frugal home and mathematics. Upon her arrival, the housekeeper begins to face the crude and tender reality of a beautiful broken memory. The professor (with all his teachings and attributes) and his home represent the unknown. Simultaneously the Professor must face the unknown every morning as he wakes up, “These sobs were very different from the ones he’d cried when Root cut his hand; they were private, desolate, and for no one other than himself. The Professor was reading the note clipped in the most prominent spot on his jacket, the one he could never avoid seeing as he got dressed. ‘My memory lasts only eighty minutes.’ I sat down on the edge of the bed, unsure whether there was anything more I could do for him. My mistake had been the simples one –and perhaps the most fatal. Every morning, when the Professor woke, a note in his own hand reminded him of his affliction, and that the dreams he’d had dreamed were not last night’s but those of some night in the distant past back when his memory had ended– it was as though yesterday had never happened. (…) Somehow, I had never quite understood what it meant for him to wake up alone each morning to this cruel revelation.”

Everything in the book by Yoko Ogawa seems to be an adventure into the unknown. The book speaks of the ineffable, tries to point out the invisible and to hear the shouts of silence, “Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression –in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.” She seems to constantly venture into the search for truth using mathematics as a metaphor, as the invisible backbone of ultimate truth.

On the other part, Amelie Nothomb’s writes a novel titled Tokyo Fiancée, which narrates the story of a young girl (Amelie) living in Tokyo and falling in love with a local boy (Rinri). Their relationship is a first journeying into the world of love (in its cheapened and overused sense), “Rinri and I had no idea what we were doing together or where we were headed. While pretending to be visiting places that were only relatively interesting, we were exploring each other with a kindly curiosity.” The novel acts as a way of coming to terms with a dual identity that the author feels. In this way Tokyo Fiancée is also the writer’s venture into unknown territory, an effort to cope with her personal reality that seems to be divided between Belgium and Japan. But why is it then that Nathomb’s novel leaves behind a certain aftertaste of superficiality? The author uses language as an axle for the story. It is from language that she draws conclusions and the relationship of Amelie and Rinri revolves around linguistic differences. Language and personal discovery are very complex subjects, although much less sentimentalist is the first than the latter, and they should be treated, if the desire is to treat them at all, with full attention and the necessary reverence.

Before I begin talking about what seems unsatisfactory about Amelie Nothomb’s novel, I must give her the valid escape route that she deserves. “Koi, in classical French, might be translated by gout, liking. (…) In modern Japanese, young couples who are not married qualify their partners as koibito. Visceral modesty banishes the word love.” Here she describes what this Japanese term means, a sort of liking, lighter than love. It is a beautiful linguistic distinction that serves as a symbol for a much larger theme; for it is this that informs us of the true vision that she has of herself, though we will touch on that later. With much honesty, though it does not save her completely from triviality, she validates her attempt by saying, “There is nothing banal about the fact that I’m writing a story where no one wants to massacre anyone. That’s what a story about koi must be all about.” She recognizes that her story is just about koi, just about liking, rather than something grand like ‘true love’. But the problem of this novel relies on the issue that, although the writer does engage in an adventure into the unknown, it is too mild and timid of an endeavor.

Tokyo Fiancée is a sort of superficial attempt on depth. The last line of the book takes place in a scene where she is already a writer. The lovers have gone in different ways, in fact he is getting married to someone else, and they see each other as she is signing books. After an apparently sassy though reminiscent exchange of words, he walks away and she writes, “I was the samurai who had to sign a book for the next person in line.” which might seem at first like an intense punch line. The theme of the samurai appears in the book a few times, but it seems as if she does not possess the credentials to call herself a samurai. It is as if the narrator needs much more than what she has, more layers and more bravery to hang this grand denomination upon her head. The issue is that her venture into the frightening is a partial venture into partial frightening, a rather childish game. The way she treats the themes of the book has a certain immaturity and simplistic intellectuality to it, with the exception of her own remorse of course, but that just makes the character appear even more self-absorbed. Personal finding, for instance, through language, can only be a sliver of the magnanimous potential that the topic of language has. But the grand vision that the narrator has of herself prevents these more profound topics from developing. Amelie views herself as a fatal woman, as an infinitely interesting character, yet disguises this intellectual narcissism with self criticism; and a disguise, although entertaining, cannot be a true venture into the unknown and frightening. If she writes it for money or for necessity is a rather unfair and arrogant accusation, but the book does not explore all the layers of its possibilities. This said I want to remember that she did admit in a brief glimpse of courage that the book was just about koi.

When Jonathan Franzen makes his statement regarding the writer’s venture, which seems to be very true, he leaves out something perhaps much graver than money, a slyer evil: vainglory and its stealthy never-ending ambition. The untamable desire for money seems to be quite blatant, and vulgar enough to be distinguished easily. But the desire for vainglory, this obsession for ornamenting ones head with laurel leafs, this superficial yearning for admiration that many writers seem to need, sneaks up upon us and many times breaches all security and makes it to the high podium of literary prizes. When asked for advice for writers, Christine Schutt responded, “The advertisers of tennis shoes have it right: just do it. A real writer has no choice but to do it, regardless of publication.” Although this statement lacks any elegance, it is very honest. If it is true then that the writer needs to write, it would not be false to say that a writer needs to venture constantly into true frightening endeavors, into very personal adventures that challenge the very foundations of our surroundings and the human condition.

Enrique Pallares H.