To Write is to Follow Truth

One reason I'm anxious to write fiction is because of the tremendous power it can release in both the author and the reader to arrive at truth. In two discussions I've had with friends this week, the topic of novels came up. In one, we two mothers were sharing concerns over how to parent our children in their choice of novels to read. We both share a similar philosophy about mothering, and we both agreed on this matter too: basically, as a child grows in maturity, it's okay that s/he encounters difficult, even ugly, matters in fiction. The way I came to that reasoning is part and parcel of what drives me as an aspiring author: these difficult matters exist. Depravity and injustices exist! They are part of this universe. They grip us, tear into us and threaten to contort our whole outlook. Often, we shun any thought of them. Yet, they are out there. They make up truth. We tell our children that God is Truth. We go about our religious activities as if God is bigger than anything. That He is deserving of our whole self, our whole life, in worship and service. So therefore, He is bigger than anything that is known to man. Therefore, our fiction cannot deal in just what is trivial. (Of course it can, but that is less than all it can be.) The fiction I want to write will stretch clear out to the end of known pain and disgust, and also stretch clear out to the farthest understanding of hope and fulfillment, yet not be hokey or far-fetched. That is a tall order! What's more, I desire to be artful. I desire to write with amazing insight and clarity. I desire to be poetic. I desire to be quirky and witty. I desire to make characters that are unpredictable and very realistic. I cannot even find the words to describe this, but I can perhaps quote other authors whose writing I see as artful. Consider classic literature, the kind we were made to read in our high school English classes. Did not all of it contain something dreadful? Something dark and evil? And did they not also contain the human reaction to that and the sorting out of the pain and consequences? I remember that they did! On the subject of artfulness, Charlotte Bronte comes to mind, and her character, Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. He is rough, uncouth, absurd, demanding, and unpredictable, yet so lovable. And Jane herself is one of my favorite heroines. I will have to find quotes from that book another day....

I have begun reading Iris Murdoch out of curiosity. My dad was reading a biography about her and shared a little, and that piqued my interest. I also read about her on widipedia. I am very pleased with her writing style so far. I am not very far in her 1978 novel, The Sea, The Sea, but this I found quickly as an example of her writing that I admire. There may be better but I will not delay:

I can scarcely remember a time when I did not know Hartley. I went to a school for boys only, but the girls' school was nearby next door and we saw the girls all the time. As there were a lot of Marys around in those days she was always known as 'Hartley' and that was somehow very much her name. We paired off early on, but merrily, childishly, and without any deep shaking emotions, as far as I can remember, in those earliest days. When we were about twelve the emotions began. They puzzled us, amazed us. They shook us as terriers shake rats. To say we were 'in love', that vague weakened phrase, cannot express it. We loved each other, we lived in each other, through each other, by each other. We were each other. Why was it such pure unadulterated pain?
It is odd that I now write down (and will not change) the word 'pain', for of course what it was was pure joy. Perhaps the point is that whatever it was it was extreme and pure. (I am told that a blindfolded man cannot distinguish severe burning from severe freezing.) Or perhaps at that age emotions tend to be felt as pains because they are not lightened by reflection. Everything becomes dread and fear, and the more wonderful and the more joyful, the more dread and the more fear. But let me repeat that this was not reflection, not thought. I did not harbour intelligent doubts about whether Hartley would go on loving me, naturally I knew that she was mine forever. But as we closed our eyes upon tears of joy there was cosmic dread.

I just love the truth in those last lines, especially! Murdoch is both artful and insightful. Fiction can reach us in ways an essay attempting to pass along the same truth cannot. I find it an incredible challenge and a heady joy.