synthetic philosophy

My earliest childhood memories are of my parents reading me fiction. Since then I have explored fiction relentlessly, only to find that yes indeed, “the reading of books is endless.” What began with The Hobbit continues with Dickens and Dostoevsky and Percy. Somewhere along the way self-awareness struck, and I had to ask myself the questions, “what is this I am reading and why do I like it so much?” These are two questions with which I continue to wrestle.

For the first question, I haven’t the knowledge to give an accurate history of the novel, but I am willing to wager a guess that many modern novelists seem to have a desire, an urge, to capture that which C.S. Lewis indicates cannot be captured, the enjoyed, life as life is actually lived. What else is raw realism of subjectivity but an endeavor to do just this, capture life as it is? Portions of The Sound and the Fury show what I mean. Perhaps, Faulkner pined to capture it, life, but alas he captured what C.S. Lewis called not the enjoyed but the contemplated. Faulkner strove, perhaps subconsciously, in vain to display the enjoyed, but as soon as he began to write the enjoyed was but an imprint, the contemplated version of the enjoyed. But this does not reduce the novel to triviality.

The novel’s capacity to literally multitask astounds me (naturally, for this discussion I will assume the novel to be written by a good novelist opposed to a poor one. Other more derogatory discussions may be saved for the cheap novelists and their fast-food-fiction). An anthropology, theology, psychology, etc., may be discoursed with no more than a wink, nod, and a scream. For this reason, the novel is synthetic philosophy, capturing in a single dialogue or description or gesture a treatise of life. But a novel is more than a single dialogue or gesture; it is an ocean of dialogues and gestures. Thus, the novel, in a mere hundred well used pages, is ten volumes of anthropology, theology, and psychology. A novel may be a contemplated version of the enjoyed, but with a mere sentence a mirror is set in front of nature to divulge her virtue. A page-long dialogue in a novel has the capacity to possess more meaning than a classroom full of textbooks.

The second question (“why do I like it so much?” ) baffles me because in part it is a complex question, a question involving more than one question. The “I” must be considered, and the “it” must be considered. What is it about me that draws me toward the novel? How does “it” relate to that aspect of me that so desires it?

With the aforementioned considerations regarding novels, it comes as little surprise that throughout history traditions have been preserved with stories. Furthermore, it seems to make rather good sense that the Scriptures involve myriads of stories. It must be true then that I am drawn to stories and more particularly to novels for a multiplicity of reasons. For one, stories are integral to my faith, and second I have a certain fondness for stories due to a host of childhood memories. Furthermore, stories do what nothing else can do, recount life. And life is something worth recounting; we humans live and die for our memories.

Stories aim at uncategorized life, nearly the enjoyed; if nothing more, stories are a way of preserving a version of especially important enjoyed moments. It’s the critics who vivisect stories and make them what they’re not, themes and caricatures. If my parents had read only critics’ reviews of stories to me when I was I child, I suspect I would never have mustered the motivation to read a story. Fortunately, they introduced me to sprawling adventures wrapped in paper and ink. I am in their debt.