Writing Right with Dmitri - Building Your Mythology
Created | Updated May 19, 2013
Writing Right with Dmitri: Building Your Mythology
Last week, I suggested that the Hindu god Prajapati had influenced my writing.Which he has. After all, one of my most enlightening experiences was when I watched Peter Brook's Mahabharata film on successive nghts on public television from the discomfort of my hospital room in western North Carolina. I'd just had major surgery, been near-death, as my doctor assured me, and was on morphine at the tme. The drug-induced torpor was highly conducive to philosophical revelation, let me tell you. I've been very fond of Hindu mythology ever since.
You may or may not be impressed by Krishna and Arjuna. The dance of Shiva may not haunt your dreams. In fact, you may be convinced that you are a dyed-in-the-wool materialist, or what Brendan Behan called 'a daylight atheist', or simply uninterested in questions that occupy the Journal of Dharma Studies or the Journal of Ultimate Reality and Meaning. (Those are real publications, by the way, though Dharma Studies, which is printed on very cheap newsprint in Bangalore, should be approached cautiously. Sometimes there are dead insects embedded in the paper. The content, though, is top-quality.) As I say, you may not be interested in epistemology – but you've got one, like it or not. And it's going to show up in your writing.
I can guarantee you that after reading a few pieces of your short prose, an astute reader is going to suss whether you believe there's an immaterial reality out there, what it wants from us, and whether you think it's worth finding out. That reader is also going to make a judgement about your ethical choices. Since it's there, you'd do well to be aware of it, and more conscious in your use of the epistemology you have.
Better to do things on purpose than leave them to chance.
Directed Sympathes
When we write fiction, we often reveal more than we think we do. The choices we give our characters, the decisions they make, and the consequences we assign to those decisions tells the reader way more about us than we realise.
Case in point: Stephen King. One might expect a horror novelist to be an atheist – or at least, to harbour resentment against religion. But even a cursory reading of King would reveal that this is a New Englander raised around Calvinists. Do you recall Cujo, the story of the rabid Saint Bernard? If you forget about the terror and the possession and the dogbite issue for a minute, you'll see that the author is pretty condemnatory of adultery. The protagonist's moral dilemmas, in fact, are related to her fate in the narrative. And what about the alcoholic father in The Shining? A closer reading of King leads you to the conclusion that this writer can be surprisingly hopeful about redemption – at times. At others, characters fail themselves, their loved ones, and perhaps in some obscure way, their God.
If you do not approve of your characters, you will make them pay. You may not even be aware of this. You should be, though – you may not change your mind, but the manipulation of the facts should be a conscious decision on your part. That way, you can do it more effectively.
Nothing alienates readers more quickly than assigned virtue. A self-indulgent or completely materialist writer who decides that the main character deserves fame, fortune, and his choice of romantic partner, just because he's tall, dark, handsome and equipped with 'the most dreamy blue eyes', will soon be allotted his/her proper place in the shallow end of the literary pool. You like this person? Figure out why. You don't? Know that, too.
Who's Out There?
Unless you're writing a Sunday School lesson1, your theology is probably not overt. And unless you're writing a new version of Faust, such things as demons and angels may not darken/lighten your page. But they're there, nonetheless.
Eoin Colfer's The Wish List is ostensibly about life, death, and the judgement of God. His main character is a dead teenager who is trying to avoid going to Hell. Is this book religious? Pah. It's perfectly obvious the writer doesn't take his mythology seriously. This is just another way of discussing the ethics of the here and now.
Read Constantine Fitzgibbon's The Rat Report Mere science fiction? Nah. This author believes. Possibly in too many things. Try Paradise Lost and More, if you don't believe me.
As Salman Rushdie discovered, coming out in the open, and mucking about with people's established mythologies can be tricky. Nobody called out the religious cops on his first book, however. It's called Grimus, and it's a wonderful tale involving interdimensional travel and the nature of reality. If you read it, you'll see that Rushdie is very well informed about major theological systems. He also knows his Dante. Nobody from Kaf Mountain issued a fatwah, though.
So what are we saying? As you read, start noticing. Ask yourself, 'What do I know about this writer's world view? How do I know it? What kinds of tells am I leaving in my own writing? Do I want to? Do I want to change what I'm saying, by the way that I choose to say it?'
Only you know the answers to these questions. But they're worth asking.
Homework
Your assignment:
Read this text. In the comment space below, leave an assessment of 25 words or more, describing what this text tells you about the writer's personal philosophy. Is he/she a materialist? What do they believe about the purpose of life? What kind of person would they admire?
"I've watched you ever since I came. You have not won. You have surrendered. You have made terms with the enemy. You have made confession that you are tired. You have flown the white flag of fatigue. You have nailed up a notice to the effect that life is ebbing down in you. You have run away from life. You have played a trick, shabby trick. You have balked at the game. You refuse to play. You have thrown your cards under the table and run away to hide, here amongst your hills."
He tossed his straight hair back from his flashing eyes, and scarcely interrupted to roll a long, brown, Mexican cigarette.
"But the gods know. It is an old trick. All the generations of man have tried it... and lost. The gods know how to deal with such as you. To pursue is to possess, and to possess is to be sated. And so you, in your wisdom, have refused any longer to pursue. You have elected surcease. Very well. You will become sated with surcease. You say you have escaped satiety! You have merely bartered it for senility. And senility is another name for satiety. It is satiety's masquerade. Bah!"
And no, I won't tell you who wrote this. It would spoil the fun.
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