Deserving a Place in the Known Universe

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms – Muriel Rukeyser

It has never been easier in the history of humankind, to write and send out one’s writings to a larger potential audience in the world, than it is today.

The internet has not only opened up the possibility of creating stories to anyone who cares to do so but the technology now exists that has so simplified publishing to enable those stories to be placed in the hands of readers everywhere in as many forms as one can dream of, even going beyond the traditional form of books and their more recent electronic cousins. It’s mightily easier than finding and learning to use a Gutenberg press and sending finished manuscripts out on the backs of mules, taken by monks, to far away lands.

But what type of story works? Is there a type that’s sure to succeed at the expense of others? How different can successful works of fiction be?Take Salman Rushdie and his Midnight’s Children. It’s a story about a group of children born around midnight of August 1947, during India’s independence, who discover that they possess magical powers.  Winner of the Booker Prize in 1981. Winner of the 25th and 40th anniversary Best of the Bookers. When I read that book, right from the beginning, I was struck by his sheer command of the English language, how the language became such a malleable tool in his hands that he could not only twist, stretch and fold words back and forth at will to produce all sorts of constructs but he could figuratively transmogrify words to create entirely unimagined configurations. About halfway through the book, when a major twist is revealed about the hero of the story, all the clues that had been dropped here and there all drop into place and it clicks. But the shock of reading the words for the first time was like a physical assault. I really mean physical.

Now if that is what successful writing was required to be, we’d all despair of becoming writers and resign ourselves to being avid readers, envious of the beauties that populate the Milky Way and accept that a trip out there was forever beyond us.

If that is what writing was all about…but it isn’t. As a contrast to Rushdie’s book, consider the diametrically opposite An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. A retired artist reminisces about his career leading up to and during World War 2 in Japan. It has none of the fireworks seen in Midnight’s Children. In fact, it has nothing that could remotely be mistaken for fireworks. The characters do not forcefully express themselves through their actions or words. The inner world of Ishiguro’s characters is one where feelings, thoughts, truths and what is imagined to be truth, all occur subtly. If you’d watched The Remains of the Day, the Academy Award nominated movie starring Anthony Hopkins, you’d recognise the subtleness I am referring to. That movie was based on another of Ishiguro’s classics.

There is no single correct way that works in the Universe.

So An Artist of the Floating World is all subtle presence, sans fireworks and yet, possesses a palpable power in the storytelling – how the same events can be perceived entirely differently by witnesses, the weaving and revealing of what had happened in the past that (only just) hints at terrible things that occurred. Instead of a full blown hammer-punch to the face from Rushdie that knocks the stuffing out of you, Ishiguro delivers a subtle martial art-like bending of the opponent’s fingers that drops a large figure down to his knees, utterly helpless.

Both are masterworks. Examples of the variety of such successful literature are numerous. Take The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the novella with language that could be understood by a school kid. How powerful an impact has it had? Published in 1943, the book’s year-to-date sales have exceeded 140 million copies worldwide. It is a classic of 20th century literature, with deep messages about life that resonates in different cultures till this day. Simple words, enduring impact.

The point of this for us – readers, writers and everybody else – is that there is no single correct way that works in the Universe. As humans, we learn quickly what works and stick with it. We think there is one successful way to: Write a book. Build a startup. Take care of family. Dress. Eat. Balance work and home. Live on this planet. We look and think that there is the way to do it and if we can’t do it that way, we should stop right now.

But it turns out, like silent supernovas, lonely planets and sizzling comets, that each book is unique in its execution and purpose, as different as they come, and always without a doubt, deserving of their respective places in the known Universe. And instead of ‘each book’, we may as well substitute it with ‘each life’.

Footnotes:

+ Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, 1981. Winner Booker Prize 1981. Winner Best of the Bookers 25th & 40th Anniversaries in 1993 and 2008. In 1984, Indira Gandhi took Rushdie to court for a sentence in the book which she alleged had defamed her. Rushdie eventually agreed to remove that particular sentence.

+An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro, 1986. Shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize. Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award 1986 (later called the Costa Book Awards).

+The Remains of the Day, 1993 film adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 Booker Prize winning novel of the same name. Nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins) and Best Actress (Emma Thompson). Anthony Hopkins won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

+The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1943. In French, it’s known as Le Petit Prince. It has been translated into 300 languages and dialects, per Wikipedia. Translated languages include Korean, Portuguese, Sardinian and Esperanto. In 2003, a small asteroid moon, Petit-Prince, discovered earlier in 1998, was named after The Little Prince.