Sisyphus, Happiness, and the Abyss
By David Corbett | July 12, 2016 |
Titian’s Sisyphus — Art Gallery ErgsArt
Last Friday, H.M. (Heather) Bouwman posted a wonderful piece here titled “Writing (in the) Happy Middles.” In it she discussed the “guiding myths of our lives,” and how a writer friend had identified Sisyphus as the hero whose story best conformed to her publishing career as she’d experienced it so far.
Heather responded that, by learning to “love the rock,” i.e., embracing and enjoying the process not the result, the nonstop effort to once again push the boulder up the hill could come to feel not just worthwhile but noble, even joyous, instead of odious or depressing or futile.
As it turned out, this post came a day after I’d had a chance to talk with fellow Unboxer Don Maass at Thrillerfest. He’s working on a novel, and he spoke about some of the scenes he’d found particularly challenging to write.
Specifically, he talked about how, in the character’s search for identity—and in our own as well—there come moments not of self-evaluation or reflection but utter, silent dread—as though peering over a cliff, or into the abyss. Moments when we don’t know what to do, but must do something. And do it sooner than we’d like.
As it turns out, these two notions—staring into the abyss and rolling that rock up the hill—are not entirely distinct.
This became clear when I went back and re-read Albert Camus’ essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” I hadn’t read it since college, and I’m not sure I really understood it then. Camus, like youth itself, is wasted on the young.
How refreshing to re-read “The Myth of Sisyphus” and find that a downbeat interpretation is utterly wrong-headed.
The essay, despite its profound influence on 20th century thought, is deceptively brief. And I would bet that most of us, given our American optimist mindset, think of the core idea of this essay as: Life is “futile, meaningless, inescapable labor.” The cheeriest insight to be had is: “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”
Oh, those frolicsome, fun-loving French.
How refreshing to re-read the thing and find that such a downbeat interpretation is utterly wrong-headed.
Camus finds most interesting that moment when Sisyphus looks at the rock rolling downhill again: “That is the hour of consciousness.”
This is also akin to the moment of staring into the abyss that Don, I believe, was getting at. That moment of silent, paralyzed doubt or indecision, when we simply don’t know what to do, and our fate seems to be swimming in the darkness at our feet.
Imagine a lifetime of coming back, over and over and over, to that exact same spot, that exact same empty, fathomless silence–the fabled dark night of the soul.
And yet, for Camus, Sisyphus is far from a tragic figure. Instead, he “is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.”
Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. The universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
I think that this is an ethos a great many people have difficulty with. Even though Camus considers Sisyphus loyal to a higher calling and therefore happy, most readers would feel a kind of terror in his plight—one more abyss to stare into. I’m sure for many people consciousness is not enough.
But Camus, by “the hour of consciousness,” doesn’t mean mere cognition. He means understanding, and through understanding acceptance, no matter how difficult that acceptance is to come by.
This ethos animates a great deal of modernity—one hears echoes of it in this from Martha Gelhorn: “It is cowardice or laziness to ask: what can I do about it anyway? Every squeak counts, if only in self-respect.”
I hear it in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, when Maggie the Cat insists that life must go on even after the dream of life is over.
I hear it in the Zen adage: Death is like the falling of a petal from a rose—nothing more, nothing less. Or this from the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön: To give up fear, we must also surrender hope.
I hear it in war stories, because there’s no concept in the lexicon more wildly misunderstood than that of victory, and no more insidious lie than a “war to end all wars.”
Which brings me to the other coincidence involving Heather’s post: It appeared the day after snipers killed five police officers and wounded several others plus two civilians in Dallas—that tragedy itself coming on the heels of two officer-involved shootings of innocent African-American men in the preceding days.
The fact that senseless violence only led to more of the same reminded me that the search for justice is never complete, that it consumes the whole of our lives, fighting each day for a way to coexist that’s more civilized, decent, compassionate, fair.
And yes, isn’t that the writing life? Trying, with each book, each story, each essay, to honor a bit more the truth as we now see it, after so many boulders down the hill, and to share that truth with our readers?
Heroism cannot always be measured by its triumphs, if only because they’re often such a long way off.
Sometimes the heroic is the simple refusal to back away from the edge of the abyss before making the decision that waits for us there. Courage isn’t a lack of fear, but persisting despite our fear.
Put another way, bravery is the refusal to close the book despite the overwhelming evidence that there’s no big reveal at the end of the story. No magic sword. No elixir. There’s just this. And it is everything.
Do you find this interpretation of the Sisyphean myth heartening or depressing? If so, how do you perceive hope and courage, meaning and purpose? How do they appear in your writing?
Have you had to craft—or personally endure—a “staring into the abyss” moment lately? How did it go?
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
I find it heartening, David. I think, perhaps, that non-writers often view our struggle as a depressing one. We’re undertaking a task that, more often that not, leads us to a net loss, both of time and money.
But what they don’t see is the inward struggle, and therefore the inward growth. For every word we write, we learn a bit more of ourselves and the world. I suggest that there has never been a writer who did not profit from his task.
Most of us here will never see great riches from writing. Most of us will never make back the money and time we’ve put into it. But I doubt that there’s anyone here who will look back from their final moments on Earth and declare it time and energy wasted.
Thanks for the post.
Well said, Ron. I’d add that we’ve also benefited if someone — no matter how great or few the number — has read our work and been moved by the outer effects of our inward growth. It’s not just in the writing but the sharing that we grow. Thanks!
It’s funny, but I had one of those abyss moments right before I read this. My wife and I just got back from a tour of Scandinavia, and everyone there presumed she was a local (she of the big blue eyes and fair hair). Odd since both sides of her family identify as Irish-American. So we decided to do one of those genetic tests. The results came in this morning. My family always identified as German/Scandinavian on one side, and Dutch on the other. Turns out about 48% of my DNA originates from Great Britain (where I thought I had none). Her surprise was that she’s only forty-some percent Irish (where she thought she was virtually 100%). The remainder of her DNA originates in Germany and Scandinavia.
None of the specific results provoked that brief abyss moment. That came because, as I studied the results and looked at the associated maps, I thought of my mother, who passed away a little over a year ago. She would’ve really loved digging into this, and jawing about it. And I thought about all of those ancestors, and how they led to her, and she to me. And how I never gave her the grandchildren she longed for. The abyss was the reality that this is it – that sort of creeping despair that Denethor flips out on when he thinks Faramir is dead, and that his line shall end with the doom he faces outside the gate (a doom he knows he helped to bring about).
Know what almost immediately shook me out of it? The writing. Yep, my stories brought me comfort. Heather spoke about our own personal myths, and I suppose this is mine. I’m in a weird place right now, almost finished with a new draft of my fourth manuscript. I know in my heart it’s my best work (understanding that quality is both subjective and an evolving continuum). It’s been neither accepted nor rejected, and I’m guessing this very moment is about as close as I’m going to get to being at peace with it. And even that brought a lovely feeling of acceptance.
It’s like I’m poised between hope and resignation. It’s a place I’ve never been before. And I guess it feels sort of like a moment of quiet courage, if I may say. Thanks for deepening my contemplation this morning, David.
Wow, Vaughn. That’s so incredibly moving.
The end-of-the-line moment has occurred to me as well, since I’ve had no children in either of my marriages. If I “live on,” it will be through my work, and it sounds like that’s true of you as well?
Even if it isn’t, realizing you’ve somehow let your mother down — if that ain’t a dark night of the soul, what is?
And I’m sure you’re not the first writer to find solace in the words on the page. As Ron noted, it’s one of the reasons we write, and one of its great rewards. That place of courage and acceptance you find yourself in — take a moment to let it sink in, fill you up. You’ve earned it.
As for genetic backgrounds — take heart from the fact people moved around a lot, even when it was hard to do so. Irish mythology speaks of several waves of invaders, the first from someone along the Danube (the Danaan influence), the last probably from Galicia (Spanish Celts). And the fact your wife discovered a Scandinavian element to her Irishness — the Vikings were all over Ireland, and weren’t kicked out until he Battle of Clontarf in the 11th century. By then they’d intermarried with a great many local families, etc. Dublin was actually founded by the Norsemen, not the Celts.
Thanks for the wonderful comment.
“If I “live on,” it will be through my work, and it sounds like that’s true of you as well?”
Oh yes – exactly that. And I take solace even though I don’t have the evidence of any such perpetuation… Yet.
Great point about movement, migration, and conquest as they relate to genetics, too. Another excellent essay and conversation, David. Thanks for everything!
“The hour of consciousness…Sisyphus…is stronger than his rock.”
That is how I see it. We do peer into the abyss, frozen, empty, lost. I do that more often than I care to think about.
But do I tumble in? No. I pull back. I find something. In myself. A deep well of…well, what? Will. Determination. Belief. Hope. I don’t know where that comes from, it just does. I go on.
The same day that you and I talked at Thrillerfest, I had the pleasure of lunching with our fellow Unboxer Lisa Cron. Lisa believes (if I have this right) that everything we do is driven by our back stories.
As Fitzgerald wrote, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
I still don’t know if I agree with that. (Not that I should. It is so very enjoyable to debate story principles.) Sometimes I find that there is inside me a core of something that has nothing to do with my history. It’s just a core of my being. It’s my shoulder against the rock. I know I can push it. Perhaps it’s because I’m not French, qui sait, but I am happy.
In fiction, just as there is the abyss moment, there is the pull back. As important as it may be that we understand why our protagonists brink and pull back (nod to Lisa), I think it’s simply important that they do. Pull. Back. Go on. No reason. Shoulder to the rock. Happy.
And, like Vaughn, I am never happier than when writing.
So great to see you, David. Again soon, please.
Hi, Don. I always enjoy our talks. I’m game to continue anywhere, anytime.
I’d put myself between you and Lisa on the backstory continuum. I believe that each of us exists in a state of lack, where we sense something is missing, however consciously or unconsciously we do so. This is as fundamental to life as hunger, thirst, and the need to draw the next breath.
This lack speaks to a fundamental yearning: the deep-seated desire to be a certain kind of person, living a certain way of life. That life may be defined by love, wealth, power, giving to others, whatever. But it forms the deepest level of longing in our souls.
Our backstories — our past — shapes but does not create that yearning. The specific form our yearning takes gets molded by what happens to us in our lives, especially our early lives.
But there’s still that eerie, inexplicable thing called consciousness. Stoppard’s latest play deals with this (so I learned from the NY Times last week). His main character makes the point that all scientific attempts to explain consciousness possess the same leap of logic that would explain, for instance, divine intervention. We don’t understand it, and perhaps can’t, just as “fish cannot see the water.”
I don’t think this is unique to humans — owning a dog or reading about elephants will cure you of that pretty quick — but i think it defines us in a very unique way. We don’t just do. We are aware of the doing, and crave understanding as to why, if only to return to the task more wisely.
Maybe Plato is right — we’re all pure spirit, fallen from the light by contamination with mortal existence. There are worse explanations.
Hope to see you again soon. (I’m really, truly enjoying the book, btw.)
Molte grazie!
Excellent post and guidance. Each of my characters needs the abyss, the stare, the rock, and the push. I already knew that in a fuzzy kind of way; now I can make that clear (but ever so subtly, of course). Gotta go back, now, and construct those abysses and rocks so they will be ready for the stares and pushes (which may or may not occur–stay tuned).
Thanks for the chuckle, Anna. Nicely put. Yes. All of us should have a post-it stuck to our screens: Stay tuned. Because the effort is endless. But not joyless.
David, I’m heartened by this interpretation of Sisyphus! I think that when anyone has a burn to create, they begin rolling that rock (didn’t Grace Slick sing about this??) around. To persist in chasing a vision requires physical and emotional endurance. And yeah, the abyss. I’ve been paralyzed on the edge more than a few times. I wasn’t thrilled in those moments, but I couldn’t write about them if I hadn’t been there. Lately, the abyss consists of watching a parent decline. This particular abyss started out pitch dark and bottomless, but has since become a fascinating portal. I’ve never considered my own mortality at this level. It’s been very odd and surprising to find light there. One of the things I love most about myth is that it reveals so much to us about our own humanity. Awesome post. Thank you so much!!
Thanks, Susan. I think all moments of staring itno the abyss have an element of recognizing our mortality, and a greater awareness of death. The most transformative moments of my life have been the deaths of my brother and my first wife. But wrapped up in that is the deepening awareness of myself and others that came from that. I think those experiences made me a better man, and as a result my current marriage has the benefit of great self-awareness and insight (so I’m not such a godawful pill to my wife)..
I’m sorry to hear that your parent is at the declining stage, but I’m glad to hear it seems to have plateaued, at least for now. That should give you time to regroup internally and reconnect externally. I hope so.
But your insights also apply to the comments earlier by Vaughn and Don. We have these deep-seated yearnings, but they get shaped and redirected by our experiences, especially with loved ones and especially around death. We long for a much different life once we’ve been through the death of a loved one than we did before.
Take care of yourself. As a former caretaker, I can attest to the need to take a break every now and then, to reflect and regroup. Don’t deprive yourself of that.
David, it’s a wonderful essay with much to chew on. I’ve had many moment of staring into the abyss. Is this all there is? I have wondered. But the reactions are so different depending on the stage of life I’ve been. When I was a child, the question never appeared because life stretched out ahead, with all its many possibilities. Even in the bleakest of times (and no child should have these) I had hope that things will be better. And they did. As a hardened young woman, if the present didn’t serve myself to hell with it. Marriage and children have softened me, made me a better person. I began to write, to examine the things I do not understand, even the little cherubs who are now bigger than I am. It was that time staring into the abyss eight years ago that I turned away and looked up and I sensed the Father gazing down on me. With a faith I did not know I possessed I placed my trust in Him, took a step toward Him and although the abyss remains, I keep my eyes fixed on heaven; the here and now matter much less. It is a journey, filled with flowers and rocks. I stumble, I fall, smell the flowers, but I get up and carry on. I am doing what I love, what I’m supposed to do, and I know God senses my pleasure, also my sorrow. I embrace the cross because this is all there is and it’s enough.
My characters, too, must decide if this is all there is, if it has a purpose. Suffering without meaning serves no purpose. I’ve noticed in all my stories there is an element of sacrifice — for a higher good. Perhaps there is only one story and we keep writing it over and over in various forms because that is what resonates deep in our hearts.
HI, Vijaya:
What a lovely, personal comment. Thank you.
I think the universal story, if there is one, is simply to fashion a response to the question: why?
And I think the great variety in answers simply reflects our inability, as mortals, to get our heads around the whole of the problem.
But the more we continue to try — picking ourselves up, caring for others, growing, learning, taking to heart the lessons of the great teacher: humility — the better chance we have of finding an answer that makes us braver, more honest, more loving.
Good luck with those larger-than-Mom cherubs.
Thanks for this thoughtful post, David. In my WIP I allude to the myth, only that my character can’t imagine beating the odds, but he takes on the challenge, finds much in that rock that could defeat him, yet must embrace it. A mirror to life, a cornerstone to life. Susan talking about a dying parent. In six months time I sat with my mother, holding her hand while she died and then went home to encourage my husband, then entering a clinical trial for leukemia. He survived. Life is meeting the “rock” now and again, and whether through literature or the bare bones of living, we all have our Sisyphus moments.
Hi, Beth:
I’m glad your husband came through, but I also know that that transition, from dying parent to endangered spouse, must have created more than its share of abyss moments. And I imagine those, in turn, created a deeper understanding of yourself, your heart, your loved ones, and why it all matters. Thanks for chiming in. Be well!
I guess I’m a glass-half-empty guy when it comes to Sisyphus – I always found the myth depressing, and in particular, a bit too accurate a metaphor for life in the corporate world.
While I agree with you in theory, and my brain definitely thinks your perspective is a far more positive and useful one, I’ll confess that my heart isn’t walking the walk just yet. But you’ve given me some great food for thought – both as a writer, and as a human. So thanks for that.
I do, however, find one consistent upside in the Sisyphean myth. I can’t help but smile when I picture Daffy Duck saying the word “Sisyphus.” Yeah, I’m deep like that.
Yeth. Thithyphuth. Thufferin’ without the Thucotash.
I’d like to take credit for the more positive spin, but it really does come from Camus. But I don’t think it’s all that different from Heather’s take, which is you have to love the grind, as it were, or it will, well, grind you down.
But yeah, it takes some getting used to, I’ll grant you that. Not the kind of thing you’ll find on a Hallmark card.
Also keep in mind that the essay was written after WW2, when the “new world order” wasn’t looking like it may have been worth the horrific disaster that brought it into being. And Camus was trying to find a way of looking for the never-ending struggle for peace, justice, and meaning as something of mythic proportion — something that elevated man, even in a world without God (or the gods), and made the struggle noble, not just futile.
–Duck Dodgers
“There’s just this. And it is everything.”
David — I would say I’m neither heartened nor disheartened. I love this metaphor and relate to it on many levels, writing being one of them. But like Sisyphus, as I roll the boulder upward, I find instead of feeling joy or frustration, a feeling of total immersion. For me, this very act of doing is a Zen-like mental state. When I write, my mind is free and it is the act of creating that matters to me, not the end result. When I write and focus on the opportunities to grow, to improve, to discover a new edge to what it means to write, I enter a dreamy land, a sort of Nirvana. It’s only when I’m away from the act of writing that I apply joy or frustration to the process — joy when I reflect on progress, frustration when I see the flaws and the rock rolling down the hill and realize that writing, like a game of chess, is something where mastery is progressive, and at best, relative.
I am right now leaving my fourth novel behind and moving on to a fifth, and even as I so I do it with the conviction that it will be better than what I’ve written before, but that is all. If this rock rolls to the bottom too then so be it; I’m excited to be in front of it again, looking forward to what I’m going to learn about myself and the world through the rich informative process that opens up to me when I write.
Speaking of pushing the boulder ever higher, I loved Steven James’ Story Trumps Structure. Thanks so much for recommending it — any suggestions for further reading?
Glad you liked Steven’s book. If you haven’t read The Art of Character, I might suggest that (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Frankly, so many people on this blog have written incredible writing guides: Donald Maass, Lisa Cron, James Scott Bell to name the first three that come to mind.
I also think the trance metaphor is an apt one. While we create, time and space often seem to slip away. It’s in the inescapable left-brain moments of critique, analysis, and revision that we can sometimes get bogged down in negativity. But that’s the writing life, he says wistfully. Thanks for chiming in, John.
The Art of Character it is (if your WU posts are indication, I think I’m going to love your work and it will make these Sisyphean limbs stronger). I was transformed by Lisa’s Wired for Story and have read every one of Don’s books (such wisdom in those, like his posts here!), but I’ll check out James’ books too. A new adventure begins. Thanks!
David– I especially like your singling out instances when there seems no way to know the way, and yet we must choose and act. For me, that’s the essence of Camus’ vision: we can’t pin the rap on others, on circumstances, bad luck or parents. Fairness has nothing to do with it, and we either turn to distractions to avoid hard choices, or we choose and accept responsibility.
Yesterday, Jeb Bush declared that he can’t decide which is the lesser of two evils, Trump or Clinton, so he isn’t going to vote. When asked what his parents were thinking, he said hadn’t asked, because he didn’t want to know.
What a failure.
“Every squeak helps, if only in self-respect.” Your comment reminds me of why I like that quote from Martha Gelhorn so much. Thanks as always for insight, Barry.
I found this blog so profound that I immediately bought David’s book Killing Yourself to Survive. I had heard many author’s speak of David, and always intended to buy his books, but it was still on my to do list. This is the benefit of blogging. An author gives an appetizer that means we readers, with stacks of bought books in the to be read pile, are moved by the author/blogger to consume the author’s feast/novel. I look forward to reading all of David’s books.
Oh how nice of you, LaDonna. Though I need to caution you, that story collection is a bit out of date. I recently published a new one, titled THIRTEEN CONFESSIONS, which includes five of the stories in the earlier collection, plus eight more recent ones. Sigh…
Anyhoo, thanks so much for giving my work a look. Means the world to me.
Thank you David for a thought provoking post, and to your commenters. I most strongly agree with John Robin and his quote “There’s just this. And it is everything.” This is the true Zen of it. I hadn’t looked at Sisyphus this way before but I agree. The trouble is seeing the rock as burden and the abyss as terrible. If one can accept that they are the same, and part of ourselves, then there is no struggle, just being. I find it’s when I lose this vision that I feel the struggle most. I even struggle between acceptance and yearning, and have trouble reconciling the two, believing on some level that the yearning is necessary for the writing to happen. But with acceptance comes the flow and that’s when the writing is the being and I am happiest and most fulfilled, as well as most connected with what and how I am writing, and why. And so I find your post encouraging and a helpful reminder of what I sometimes forget. Thank you.
Thanks, Mary Ann. I think truly meaningful acceptance includes recognition of the inescapability of yearning. But I’m a lousy Buddhist. (More on this below relative to another comment.)
I like that…acceptance of the yearning…maybe that’s my new mantra. And we’re all lousy Buddhists, eh?
I am loving this discussion and have nothing to add that would be more thoughtful and inspiring than what others before me have said. Just this: I’ve taken classes from you, David, Don, and Lisa and I’m so much the better writer for what I’ve learned from each of you. I’m no longer so frightened of staring into the abyss.
Thanks, Mary. That’s humbling company.
Lots of good stuff in this post and the comments, but I have to take exception with the idea that overcoming fear means surrendering hope. Perhaps “expectations” would be a better word. To suggest fearlessness equates with hopelessness . . . does that bother anyone else?
I was wondering when someone was going to bring that up, Christine. I thought it would be Don, but I think I distracted him with the other stuff.
Pema Chödrön is a Buddhist nun, and her remark has to be seen in the context of mindfulness and “living in the moment.”
Her point is that we are often afraid not of what is in the present, but some future event that might happen if this happens, or that happens, or …. Fear often requires projection out of the moment into this imagined — and thus illusory — future.
But the flip side of this is hope. Hope also projects us out of the present into an imagined and therefore illusory future. And the more we get invested in that illusion, the more fearful we become that it might not come to pass.
Putting this together, many of our fears are based on apprehension that the future we hope for won’t come true. This is what she means by that statement.
So, you’re right to think of hope in this usage as “expectation.” And she is definitely not equating bravery with hopelessness, i.e., despair.
I frankly consider this idea radical, even a bit shocking, and I’ve held onto it ever since I first encountered Pema Chödrön in her book WHEN THINGS FALL APART, which a friend gave me after my wide died. I understand it in the context of balancing expectation and anxiety, but because I’m not the best Buddhist in the world, I also see how foreign this idea is to our concept of storytelling.
In fact, I remember Don Maass giving a talk at ThrillerFest titled “Why Your Thriller Isn’t Thrilling,” and the core idea concerned the simple truth that if you want people to feel dread or terror, you must first give them hope.
And I don’t know if you can even have stories without hope. Les Edgerton said at the most recent Writers’ Retreat Workshop in San Antonio that all stories are about one thing: trouble. What does trouble create? The hope that we can do something to get out of it.
I think this aversion to projection is what makes Buddhism, of all the major religions, the one least reliant on parables, myths, etc. What it lacks in that regard it more than makes up for in a method: meditation, mindfulness, being in the present, loving kindness toward all beings.
It reminds us that there are ways of understanding the world that don’t rely on story. But it’s a tough row to hoe.
Thanks for the comment.
Well, it’s surf-on-a-wave-of-quotes day. I think when Henry Miller wrote in Tropic of Cancer “I have no money, no resources no hopes. I am the happiest man alive,” he was pointing to that kind of false hope built on expectation, and not a concession to despair or anomie.
Or maybe he was drunk.
David, another thoughtful, probing post—thanks.
As Voltaire said, “Life is a shipwreck, my friend, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
Oh God, I love that. Thanks.
Of course, as for those who didn’t make it into a lifeboat…
Those in the water must content themselves with singing to the waves.
Wonderful, David.
Not depressing.
“Imagine a lifetime of coming back, over and over and over, to that exact same spot, that exact same empty, fathomless silence–the fabled dark night of the soul.”
Since we are progeny of a ‘doing’ culture, this exact same spot stuff often terrifies us. We measure ourselves by quantities accumulated or finished. So to come upon blank space or to be stuck doing the same thing negates our existence.
As a meditator, though, I’ve come to learn to love the abyss, well, perhaps treasure is a better word. Part of the threat of the abyss comes from not trusting we will survive if we don’t DO something, which is I think where Don’s characters’ dread arises.
Whereas if we choose to not do something (just be), over time it is possible to give birth to something akin to perhaps as you describe Sisyphus taking joy from the worlds of the particles of his rock. Perhaps our characters can discover this as well.
Translating this to the blank page, it’s as if the language yet to be born is in the particles (pixels) that reside there waiting, much like some sculptors have expressed that the statue is in the block waiting to be freed.
And of course writing is as much ‘doing’ as anything else. We authors work very hard! But space is not the end, not death. It is the introduction to doing. Everything happens inside vast space (physical and temporal.) When we look at it, our passion to communicate comes from that void, doesn’t it?
My days are trying to fuse doing with not doing and bringing that to the daily writing session. Instead of a word count, I employ something that might be termed a process gauge. What is the nature of this universe that is coming now, I ask, as I go, knowing tomorrow that universe may be shifted by rewriting or enhanced by what comes around it. The end is less the goal than the unfolding. And then, as a writer with deadlines and dreams, I’m buoyed by the fact that if there is no unfolding, there can be no book. The two go together.
That’s beautiful, Tom. Thanks.
I was struck by this comment: “When we look at it, our passion to communicate comes from that void, doesn’t it?”
It reminded by of Pinter’s comment that all of his plays are about silence. And there are two kinds: the one where there is no sound, and the other where we try to obscure the dread of that nothingness with a barrage of words.
Great to hear from you. Hope all is well.
This is truly food for thought. As a student of Buddhism myself, you are always forced to sit with yourself… and stay there. There’s an old meditation saying: Don’t just do something, stand there.
We hear it said all the time that the journey is all. There is no destination, and it’s hard to truly internalize that.
Great article!
“Don’t just do something, stand there.”
I cannot begin to tell you how much that tickles me.
One of the first things I noticed when I began sitting meditation was just how anxious I was. The need to DO SOMETHING is like a life-defining tic.
Thanks for the comment, Heather.
David – Brilliant post and discussion.
Philosophy, real life, and writing – a stimulating exchange.
Great thoughts. Much appreciate it!
You are so very welcome, good sir.
Reading your insightful post and the comments people haved shared reminds me of using LOTR to describe inner and outer journeys for one of my classes. While the outer journey is pretty obvious, it seems to me that the inner journey is learning how to go on when there seems no chance of succeeding–something that Tolkien and many others struggled with during and after the Great War. I think part of the wide and long-lasting appeal of that story is due to the way that journey resonates with so many of us. Thank you for this discussion!
Thanks, Barbara. I think that’s something that’s often overlooked — the devastating effect that WWI had on the young men of that generation, and the need to make sense of such utter, senseless, depraved slaughter. People fault LOTR for its seemingly black-and-white morality, but it makes much better sense when viewed through the lens of suffering through that war.
I love that, Tom. ‘The language yet to be born is in the…pixels.’ That was Michelangelo, by the way, who claimed to see and work only to release the figure that already exists within the block of marble. And that’s exactly how I feel about my stories and my words. They come out of the void and I merely channel them, exposing them to the light. (And then polish them up a bit) It’s part of the mystery.
Mary Ann,
Thanks for reminding me about Mike E. Langelo as the source of that world view.
From your website: “At 23, Sophie had yet to learn whom she could trust.” Anyone that can use whom correctly in a sentence is high on my list. Tried to reach you there for this compliment, but I don’t have a WordPress account. Cheers. (I’m via FB as Thomas Henry Pope.)
David, I’m so sorry I missed your blog post yesterday when it actually posted! I’m still jet-lagged from a trip earlier this week, and everything is behind, including reading WU posts.
I wanted to say thank you for writing about Sisyphus–I do think there’s something special about that myth, and I love what you have to say about it. (I also need to read that Camus essay!) I particularly love the final paragraph of your essay:
“Put another way, bravery is the refusal to close the book despite the overwhelming evidence that there’s no big reveal at the end of the story. No magic sword. No elixir. There’s just this. And it is everything.”
There’s so much here, not just about the writing life, but about ALL of life. We (or maybe I should say: *I*) have a tendency to reconstruct our lives into stories that have arcs. But if we consider how fiction works–how stories work in general–we can see a problem. In fiction, our characters at any given moment can’t see the arc of the story, not until it’s all over, so for all practical purposes, from THEIR perspective there IS no arc. And for us too: there may be an arc (and if you’re a person of faith, you likely believe there is): but you can’t SEE the arc. So, practically speaking, there isn’t one–at least not for you, not right now. In that sense, every moment is equally important, every moment is the moment to be brave, every moment is the moment to stand up for what you believe in. Maybe we can stop, take a deep breath, and live this moment.
I fear I’m rambling, so I’ll stop. :)
If that’s your idea of rambling, Heather, ramble on!
I love the idea of how, both in our own lives and our characters in our stories, people are unable to see the arc of their narrative. We may believe we know the story of our lives, and we may even act in accordance with a code or set of values we believe define or guide that narrative, but we can never know the ending — i.e., whether we chose that code or values wisely or managed to stay true to them — which inevitably returns us to “the eternal moment.”
BTW: I had a completely different post in mind until I read yours. Thanks for the inspiration. (And, as it turns out, I’m still emerging from jet lag as well. Good luck!)
Funny. Before reading this post I’d just commented on Blocking the Block, lamenting the lack of my character’s motivation. Now, I think I know exactly how to rectify the situation.
Thank you, everyone.
Highly useful and translatable.
If you’ve never stared into that abyss, you’ll never know how it feels to overcome it. I’ve got that book in my hands, written and edited and published, and it tells me that I’ve done it. It doesn’t tell me that I’m rich, but that’s not why I write. I write to change the world, and every time I finish a novel, I’m trashing the Sisyphus metaphor by pushing that rock over the top of the hill and rolling it down the other side, where it lands on all the self-doubts and squishes them to a bloody pulp. Rock on.