A while back I did some Googling to find out whether someone out there had written a book similar to mine, and in my research I came across Charles Johnson’s novel, Faith and The Good Thing. Too good to be true. He too makes use of the most powerful centerpieces in Plato’s works: The Allegory of the Cave and The Divided Line in the Republic, and Diotima’s Ladder in the Symposium. To name a few. 
(See this for more on the meaning of Diotima’s Ladder.) I wondered how he turned these theories about the relationship of reality, truth, and beauty into a story that people would be able to appreciate as fiction.
I’ve always felt that Plato’s ‘harmony of the soul’ would make for a great story, if only I could figure out the right angle. I know the phrase sounds antiquated, but if we change the language a bit, we’ll find a remarkably current philosophy of lived experience, a nuanced one that doesn’t ignore all-too-human truths, and, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t ignore the world we inhabit. But it’s true that Plato’s more concerned about the inner workings of our minds, and for him this needs to be understood before we can make sense of the world. We have complicated emotions and desires that can really mess us up, in so many ways, even intellectually, and we might not realize it. But Plato also says that these are an integral part of us, and necessary for attaining knowledge. Without desire, there’s no impetus to do much of anything, much less study philosophy. And yet, philosophers tend to think of emotion and desire as something that ‘gets in the way’ of reason, if they bother to discuss it at all. Plato plunges headfirst into the mess of the human psyche, and leads us to ask: How do we make sense of ourselves as creatures with noble ideas in a world that doesn’t seem to live up to our expectations? Should we lower our expectations, give ourselves a so-called ‘reality’ check? What if we get it wrong, and don’t realize it? What if transcendent ideas actually are real? What makes something real anyway? How can something be said to be not real?
I think Plato has meaningful answers to these questions. My challenge is to turn something as technical as the Divided Line into an engaging story, to bring these questions back to life.
I was surprised to find that Charles Johnson and I came up with the same idea—we both independently thought to create characters that represent segments of the line. (Of course, he did it first.) My “Faith” character is also a religious young woman who represents picture-thinking on the line. Johnson’s characterization makes perfect sense to me, obviously, but it might not make sense to those who don’t know the intricacies of the allegory.
But that doesn’t matter. Faith’s plight as a religious young black woman whose mother dies, leaving Faith to roam the earth (well, Chicago) in search of “The Good Thing” makes for an intriguing story. She wonders what The Good Thing is, and so do we. Faith becomes a prostitute in order to survive, constantly searching, constantly changing as she encounters dodgy characters, each of whom represent other aspects of the divided line. She’s moving up the line or ladder, but from her original standpoint as a fairly stable innocent figure (representative of right opinion), moving up to higher levels of knowledge and sophistication is dangerous. Plato would agree, and the events in the novel exemplify what would otherwise be a yawn-inducing epistemological threat. Johnson has shown that the theoretical has serious, material consequences. Plus, there’s an element of magic to the tale, which lends an epic feel to the novel, a bit like John Gardner’s Grendel, (Gardner was apparently his writing mentor.) There’s a surprising merging of science and witchcraft, of art and reason, of myth and truth, and these create a thematic tension that sustains us throughout.
All of these elements make the philosophy come alive, but Johnson may have lost a broader audience was when he had characters dropping references to philosophers/philosophies that the average reader might not understand. What worries me is that I didn’t even notice that these references were problematic until I got feedback from my book group. So much about this novel was, in my opinion, brilliantly successful. Members of my group all agreed that the writing sparkled. And yet, these references were enough to make erudite people, some of whom are professors, dislike the book as a whole. The online reviews echo this complaint. Yet I missed it, so eager was I to make my comparisons and theories. This was an eye opener for me.
My takeaway from The Good Thing:
Don’t reference without clearly explaining. Better yet, don’t reference without being prepared to integrate the point into the plot and theme in such a way as to make the idea come alive on its own, with no need for you to call attention to the reference. OR—reference with such a light touch that readers who won’t get the reference won’t feel that anything’s missing.
Don’t make the characters wooden in order to drive home a theme. Give your reader time to figure out what’s being exemplified, and don’t worry if the philosophical theme isn’t crystal clear from the get-go. Don’t worry if it never becomes crystal clear. If you stick too closely to the archetype, you lose that breath of life that makes fiction fiction. Johnson juxtaposed his children’s fairy tale narrative style with a dark subject about modern life to make his archetypes worth following. But what he did is hard to do. And while I don’t know what segments of the Divided line all his characters represent, I got his overall interpretation well enough to let those details go.
Be funny. Yeah, easier said than done. But humor makes readers more likely to forgive you your heavy ideas. Johnson did just this, and it worked. He had a way of spinning out yarns that I’m incapable of. But there are more ways to be humorous than telling jokes. Consider goofy ordinary things that people do, and bring those into a heavy philosophical moment, grounding that scene in the mundane. Consider the setting and how that can contrast or illuminate the point in humorous ways. If all else fails, just put a dog or a baby in the mix. Interruptions can do double duty by being both funny and revealing, especially if your characters react in different, revealing ways.
Don’t be tempted to put all your philosophical ideas inside heads. This is sort of the default for philosophical fiction: dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. It’s a kind of info dump when you think about it. When I don’t know how to convey some idea, I tend to just stick it into dialogue and run with it. Or I have someone thinking about the idea. But that’s lazy of me. Try conveying those ideas with no dialogue, at least as an exercise, and see where that leads. You might be surprised.
Don’t be too brief. If you want an idea to resonate, make it resonate. Don’t whittle it down to nothing out of fear of being boring. More than likely, you’ll make it boring by scraping away the meat of it. There are other ways to deal with dense material than to strip it down to a Cliff’s note. And if you want to let readers get their geek on, but you’re worried you might still be putting out too much info, put the diagrams and equations in an endnote. That way everyone can have their cake.
That said, brief nuggets of wisdom can work well. Especially when repeated in a certain thematic rhythm. Johnson used a few snappy lines to crystalize various ideas, and the repetition of those lines gave a sense of movement in its own right. Also, these gave a sense of finality: “Don’t be interrupting to ask if the tale is true. Was it Good? Was it Beautiful? All right.”
Use subtext. The best of all possible worlds is when material conflict converges with ideological tension. When one character has something to hide from another, he or she might speak in generalities—in our case, in dry philosophical terms—while really being concerned about something much more mundane, which is, in a sense, more important. Make that mundane worry crystal clear for the reader, make it clear that this worry is bubbling beneath the surface of what’s being said or done, and you’ve virtually given yourself a free pass to go wild with theoretical musings.
For instance, when Faith meets Tippis, one of those dodgy characters she encounters on her travels, he takes her to a bar and drowns his sorrows in pontifications: “Everything you want is an object for the satisfaction of drives developed in childhood, and you, in society, are an object for others, hardly ever yourself…” and so on. This doesn’t feel like a lecture in the context, because they’re at a sleazy bar, and we know Tippis is eager to use Faith as an object for his sexual gratification. Faith realizes this too, and now we wonder how she’ll react to his professed philosophy. We also get a sense of just how pathetic Tippis is, and can feel sorry for him in this sense, just as Faith does, even when she’s powerless to stop him.
Give those ideas relevance by making them a stake in the game. If you can make the philosophical idea a necessary feature of your plot, you’re golden. If the protagonist doesn’t figure out the mind-body problem in time, his lover will literally lose her head. Well, maybe you can tell me how that might work.
By the way, tomorrow I’m going to the Tucson Festival of Books to see Charles Johnson do a workshop. Maybe I’ll get to thank him in person!
Any ideas on how to write a philosophical novel? Or a novel about ideas? What tricks or tools would you use?
Diotima's Ladder 
Wonderful article. I did a few philosophical novels (novellas actually) with Nanowrimo and ran into the same issues and tips. The one that really got me was dialog. The problem for me s I’m trying to present philosophical ideas, so my first inclination is to exposit. After all, my books were less novels and more concrete examples of philosophy examples. I’ve went so far as to invent a character specifically to allow for an inner dialog. At times, it worked out ok, but at other times it was obviously an expository device. You hit the nail on the head.
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I know exactly what you mean. It’s really hard to avoid talking heads when you have ideas you want to share. Sometimes that’s actually a good way to hash out the idea and make sure it makes sense. Maybe it’s a building block, to write it as a dialectic first. There’s something to be said for using a character to play devil’s advocate, with you or with your fictional counterpart. You can even build character through their positions. “What does Nietzsche say to Plato?” could evolve into questions like, “What does a Nietzsche fan look like when he’s been defeated in argument? What are his mannerisms? How old is he? What is his education level, his economic status? What does he fear the most? What does he think he wants and what does he really need? How can I show some of this when he orders at dinner? Etc.” What’s great about starting with a certain philosophical position is that the possibilities for his characterization close in, making your job a bit easier. You probably already know a great deal about this person just by knowing his position, or at least what this person would not be or do. And you can even make that philosophical stance contrast sharply with his external self. For instance, what if our Nietzsche fan turns out to be a picky vegan who hates vegetables and only eats things that are the color of Wonderbread?
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Yes, definitely don’t lecture, but explain. And I think it is vital that the protagonist is asking questions, not giving the answers. And you can mix things up by having characters that think they know the answer, but are wrong, and letting the reader work out which answer is the right one.
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I agree. In fact, when I submit chapters from the POV of a student who isn’t sure whether he gets the concepts or not, my readers tell me they appreciate being led on that intellectual journey WITH the character rather than simply trying to follow the point. In this POV I’m able to get away with a bit of exposition in dialogue from another character, because readers are eager to hear my character say he doesn’t get it…maybe they didn’t either, and now, whew, they’re not alone. Then he might privately consider it, tentatively, unsure of himself or what he really believes, even while conjuring up objections—maybe really good ones—that he never voices. Add humor here, mix things up, give the scene a proper place, and the ideas won’t seem so heavy.
Also agree that characters should get it wrong. That’s the great fun in reading philosophical novels, when characters get it wrong. And even better when they get it wrong and this mistake has serious material consequences. I find this fairly hard to do, but I aspire to it, since it makes for a true philosophical novel. What would Crime and Punishment be as pure exposition? How unbearably preachy that would be. But senseless murder as a way of acting on a philosophy? Suddenly the idea itself becomes the centerpiece.
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An excellent post Tina!
I think the challenges of writing philosophy in fiction are, in many ways, similar to the challenges of writing science in science fiction. How we handle it depends on what we want the reader to come away with. If we’re satisfied with them coming away with the general idea, then it seems like the best strategy is introduce them while never mentioning their official name or who they originated from.
An excellent example of this is Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’. How many people came away from that movie knowing the phrase “the prisoner’s dilemma”? None. Yet a large part of the story was exploring exactly that, with the Joker literally setting up a situation with prisoners on two barges with a dilemma of whether to blow up the other barge before the prisoners on that barge blew them up.
Star Trek often explored philosophical issues, but almost never named them explicitly. In the Next Generation episode ‘The Measure of a Man’, Data is forced to go on trial to prove his sentience. The problem of other minds never explicitly gets mentioned, but that is basically what gets explored.
If we do cover philosophical concepts in dialog, I think it helps if we can figure out a way to have it not sound like a lecture. For example, in the quote you gave, I might have had the character sound a little less like a professor. Instead of
““Everything you want is an object for the satisfaction of drives developed in childhood, and you, in society, are an object for others, hardly ever yourself…”
I might have done something like
“Ain’t nothing you want in this life you didn’t learn to want as a kid, and to get by in this world you gotta be what someone else once learnt to want, not yourself…”
The regional dialect could be different, but the idea is not to sound professorial.
If we do want readers to come away knowing the proper names of concepts or, even harder, the philosophers who authored them, then the difficulty level seems much higher. I’m actually not sure if it’s possible to do it in a story you want to get wide appeal.
I especially like your advice to be funny. Here’s the thing I think most people don’t realize. It’s okay to try to be funny and fail to some extent. (Well, as long as the fail isn’t offensive.) The very effort sends a message to the reader that the story doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that the reader can relax that this isn’t going to be a relentlessly SeriousTM work that you must be a serious person in a serious frame of mind to seriously understand and enjoy.
I mean, consider how many philosophical ideas get explored in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker books. It’s the contrast between the funny and the profound that probably make those books as successful as they are. I’ve heard similar things about Terry Pratchett’s books.
I do agree with Steve that a big part of this is giving the readers space to work out the answers themselves.
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Thanks for the thoughtful reflections!
I think you’re right about Sci-Fi, since there are so many technical ideas involved, as well as philosophy in many cases. Funny, I don’t watch Star Trek, but I’ve seen parts of that episode, if not the whole thing. I sense that’s a popular one? Or highly referenced one?
So far as I can tell, a lot of Sci-Fi readers are likely to have a great deal of knowledge about the concepts already. I also get the sense that Sci-Fi readers really want to see these concepts and philosophies and science fleshed out, otherwise they’d simply turn to non-fiction to get information. In other words, they want the details, possibilities. Readers can actively engage with the concept they’re familiar with and check whether or not those details in the novel make sense. Plus, it’s a way of stretching the imagination, considering other possibilities, and ethical implications that don’t get considered elsewhere, etc. Maybe? You would certainly know better than I would.
I’m in a weird position with mentioning philosophies explicitly. I have a professor as my protagonist, so it’s not that hard to include named philosophies without straying from the world I’ve created. The hard thing is to keep these relevant to the plot, if I choose to expand on these ideas.
Good point about lecturing and voice. For me, it’s hard to use voice to make the lecture seem less like a lecture, since my protagonist is a philosophy professor. I tried to make him very different from the cliché windbag academic, but I’ll have to get my husband to help me with the final edit. Because I’m a windbag.
I tend to use POV to help with this aspect. As I was telling Steve, if I’m including a big concept in dialog, I’ll tell that scene from the POV of someone who’s not lecturing, someone who’s not familiar with the ideas, that way readers have someone on their side.
Really good point about humor. I think a big reason authors don’t use it is out of fear of failure, but you’re right, even failure creates a certain relaxed mood, a willingness to listen without feeling intimidated. And that’s important. Thanks for the tip! I’ll have to share this one with my group.
I really need to read Terry Pratchett. I’ve heard nothing but praise.
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On Star Trek, the episode probably is cited a lot, along with ‘Who Watches The Watchers’, but I’m not sure if they’re any of the most popular ones. I imagine the popular ones involving more Klingons, Romulans, and/or explosions.
I think sci-fi readers span a wide range in how interested they are in the details of a particular topic. If an author goes into a deep dive on how a space drive works, there will be a hard core segment of their audience that will geek out on it, but the majority will probably glaze over, even if it is germane to the plot. The time honored tradition is to stow that kind of detail in appendices (or these days, web sites). That said, the sci-fi audience probably is more tolerant of infodumps, by necessity. My experience is that most sci-fi readers want to be lightly exposed to concepts, but only lightly exposed, except for perhaps a few areas where they crave more details, but exactly which area varies by the person.
Ah, well, if your protagonist is a professor, then sounding professorial is a feature, not a bug. Maybe a good way to add humor is when he starts to pontificate, let him do just enough to whet the reader’s appetite, then have something humorous interrupt him before he is able to get into eye glazing territory.
Of course, the above paragraph is advice if you intend the story to be the main attraction and the philosophy the seasoning. If philosophy is the main show, then I’m sure the approach changes. If people are going to pick up the book primarily to get the philosophy, then having your characters go on long soliloquies would, again, be a feature.
I need to reach Pratchett myself. It’s been on my to-do list for a long time. I think what’s held me up is he tends to focus on fantasy, and I’ve been on more of a sci-fi bent in the last few years.
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Here’s another vote for getting your ass to Discworld without delay!! He is, in my view, one of the best writers ever when it comes to hiding grand ideas in amazingly good ripping yarns. Each novel has an underlying theme which is explored (with delightful humor).
Every few years I re-read all the Discworld books again. I’ve probably got a dozen or more readings on the earlier ones.
Seriously. Put Discworld at the top of your fiction reading list. You won’t regret it.
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Hey Wyrd! Good hearing from you. I think I might have asked this before, but if so can’t recall your response. Given that the first book isn’t always the best intro to a series, which Discworld book would you recommend starting with?
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(My reply got long, so I’m putting it on a fresh indent; see below.)
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Thanks Wyrd. Did you other post make it?
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Yes, but it has a couple links in in, so it’s waiting to be moderated. Should appear soon in a blog near you! 😀
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Sorry about the delay! I just noticed that it needed to be approved.
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Thanks Tina! No worries.
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Oh you must read Terry yes. Esme is named for one of his characters you know! My favourite is ‘Good Omens’, written with Neil Gaiman. Homage.
https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Granny_Weatherwax
Though a small liberty was taken and an ‘e’ replaced by an ‘a’.
Amazing post as ever, well done that woman!
– Esme waving and slowly managing to visit her favourite blogs upon the Cloud
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I hadn’t realized that! Thanks for reading… I’m also slowly managing to visit my favorite blogs. Maybe ‘managing’ is giving me too much credit.
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Imagine if they aren’t at the heady heights of ‘favourite’, they haven’t got a chance! Hahahaha *hugs her*
– Esme knowing just how tricky it can be upon the Cloud
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Since Mike brings up sci-fi, and since I have no useful direct advice, I think I should just mention some writers who do an excellent job. I’d put Stanislaw Lem on a plane all by himself. At the merely awesome level, Ted Chiang, Isaac Asimov, Greg Egan, and Vernor Vinge come to mind. Now if you can figure out how these people do it, you’re all set.
I do have some useless direct advice, though. I think you do need to put a few things in characters’ heads and voices, while letting events do as much work as possible. Some situations just demand comment; it wouldn’t make sense for characters not to hazard opinions. There can be many opinions, mere gestures in some direction(s). I wrote a philosophical short story once that probably overdid the thinking and talking, but I’m still pretty happy with it. The later part is more event driven, and that helps.
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Thanks for stopping by to comment!
I loved Solaris. I usually get bored by world-building “info-dumps” in Sci-Fi, but Lem’s descriptions are so beautifully done, and so crucial to the plot. Fabulous book.
Totally agreed on the need for characters to express opinions and comment on what’s going on.
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I really like what SelfAware said about exploring the idea without naming it. That said, I don’t necessarily assume that a broader readership is the goal. It depends on the author’s conception of his or her audience. With historical novels, some authors take elaborate measures to unobtrusively explain the period details so that they can have the widest possible readership. Others positively revel in the detail while demanding a high standard of the reader. One might think that this would ruin the chances for commercial success, but sometimes these authors gain a devoted following. I’m thinking of Patrick O’Brian’s novels of the British navy in the Napoleonic period, and anything by Dorothy Dunnett–who includes numerous foreign languages and does NOT translate them for the reader.
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This is such an interesting observation. I’ve heard there’s something to be said for really targeting your audience, and playing to that niche. This runs contrary to the standard advice to be broad. It’s a tough call for writers! I think we like to be everything all at once. I certainly do.
I tend to think about my audience as the people I can count on to read something I write. Which would include my blogging friends and my writer’s group, and they aren’t as up to speed on philosophy as my blog readers are. So it’s a balancing act of so many factors. Do I consider my audience as it might be? Or do I consider my audience as it is now? I tend to think the latter, but that’s a complex matter already. I want the philosophy to be interesting for people who know it, and illuminating for those who don’t. So now I’m writing on different levels, hoping to satisfy both groups. Tricky indeed, but oh so worth it if I can pull it off. If.
I think the same difficulty holds true for blogging. I don’t want to be too technical, too exclusive, yet I find the more technical I am, the more people are interested. You all are amazingly intelligent people, and nothing I can write would be over your heads. In fact, I’m realizing it would be far below, and I should be grateful to have such readers. But sometimes I wonder, who am I leaving out? Should I worry about that when I have such quality commenting going on here?
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I think it’s a rare work that is all things to all people, but even with the authors I mentioned who demand much of the reader, they do it very engagingly.
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I can’t say how to write a good novel full of useful ideas. I can share how NOT to write one: Don’t surprise yourself with events. Plan what will happen to your main character from start to finish, and know exactly what experiences will help them learn their lesson before you begin. I had a Big Idea! I had Important Points to Make! I tried carrying my idea and message from one point to the next, and trudged uphill for 20,000 words. I gave up because I got bored – I knew what would happen next. It had to happen to make my point.
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Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!
There’s a bit of tension between plotting everything out in advance and leaving enough room to feel excited by the writing, not knowing exactly what will happen next. I think it’s up to each writer to find that middle ground. I sense that this novel that I’m working on might have been a bit easier if I’d thought about the storyline and structure in advance a bit more, instead of having to essentially rework the whole thing and add chapter upon chapter to tie up loose ends. Still, it’s moving along. Next time I think I’ll do a basic plot outline to ensure I have a foundation, but give myself room to explore.
At the writing workshop I recently went to, I got a lot of good advice about story structure. Specifically, how to use character arc to create plot, which I don’t usually hear about. (It seems people like to talk about them separately, but that doesn’t make much sense when you think about it.) I’m considering writing about what I learned in my next post, once I get some time away from working on my novel.
Speaking of the Big Idea, in another writing workshop I heard the same language used to describe a basic story structure. First, there’s the Big Idea. Your story moves along, but then you hit the awful sagging middle. This is the hardest part for me, and I never knew what to do about it really. Charles Johnson says that’s when you need a Second Big Idea, an event or situation that leaves your protagonist naked to his worst fear, forced to make a choice.
Are you thinking about returning to the novel at some point? Or starting a new one?
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Well, at least I probably have nothing to say about this! 😀
Not that that necessarily stops me… 😮
And thank you for only having three posts I have to catch up with! I’m still binging on streaming Netflix and Hulu to the 65″ OLED TV I bought myself for Winter Solstice. I’m new to the whole streaming video content thing, so it’s quite the addiction for the moment.
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Haha…I’ll be sure to post infrequently. Promise.
And please don’t feel obligated to read all of my posts…I would have to return the favor. 😉 No really, just read whatever you feel like reading.
Oh, new to streaming, huh? See you next year?
But please stop by from time to time to tell me about good shows. We’ve maxed out Netflix, or so it seems. It takes so long to find something to watch that we just don’t look. We’ve been playing Scrabble lately, but I’m afraid we might have maxed that out too. Well, my husband is maxed out. I’m still obsessed. (I want to bingo with Z and Q on a triple word score on a regular basis, and I won’t settle for less.)
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Oh, new to streaming, huh? See you next year?
Yeah, exactly. It’s really addictive. I’m just coming up for air now. I’ve posted about one series (Halt and Catch Fire) and will no doubt post about others. Not that my tastes necessarily coincide with yours, but I’ll probably end up mentioning a lot of what I’ve been watching.
Can’t help you with the Scrabble, though. 😀
And I do have some response to your post (never letting ignorance get in the way of a good opinion), although it does seem to mirror some of what’s already been said. But not by me, so here goes:
I’ve always felt that Plato’s ‘harmony of the soul’ would make for a great story, […] we’ll find a remarkably current philosophy of lived experience, a nuanced one that doesn’t ignore all-too-human truths, and, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t ignore the world we inhabit.
I wonder, especially considering where you live, if Tony Hillermann’s books about the Navajo Tribal Police might interest you. They’re primarily police procedural murder mysteries, but the context and setting is all about Navajo (and other tribe) customs and ways of life. Extremely fascinating; my second favorite mystery series!
For the Navajo, ‘harmony of the soul’ is a key pursuit, and harmony with the factual world (as well as the perceived mystical one) was central. Plato wasn’t the only one! 🙂
Any ideas on how to write a philosophical novel? Or a novel about ideas?
It strikes me that you’re caught between the same hard place and rock that SF writers who write hard SF find themselves. The tension between the non-story, non-dramatic ideas you want to put forth versus the storytelling flow.
And it seems to me that the more a story is about ideas, the smaller its appreciative audience. Neal Stephenson’s audience grows smaller all the time (remember Anathem?). I happen to love what he does because I’m a fan of mathematical theory, but it leaves many readers cold.
It may be that the best idea stories are the ones that completely subsume the ideas in the story so effectively that they all but vanish leaving only their effects on the narrative. Savvy readers familiar with the underlying ideas will see them, but those unfamiliar only see the story.
No doubt a major challenge for any writer.
I suspect that most readers (who aren’t themselves writers) only care about the story and the characters and don’t pay much attention to thematic ideas. They just want to get lost in the story. So perhaps there is a choice to be made for writers between shoe-horning ideas into the story versus just telling a ripping good yarn?
Depends on who you’re writing for, I guess.
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Thanks for that recommendation. I’m actually in need of a good entertaining book to read, and a Navajo mystery sounds perfect. I love exploring the reservations here. The Navajo Rez is especially fascinating—not pretty (wild dogs, dead horses and cows on the side of the road…) but fascinating. Have you watched the Longmire series on Netflix? It sounds similar to what you’re describing. I loved that series.
“And it seems to me that the more a story is about ideas, the smaller its appreciative audience.”
I agree. And this can be a good thing, a niche audience can turn out to be a loyal audience. But, as you say:
“It may be that the best idea stories are the ones that completely subsume the ideas in the story so effectively that they all but vanish leaving only their effects on the narrative.”
That’s what I want to do. But yeah, it’s not easy. I can’t say I’m succeeding, but it’s worth a try!
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No, much of what you’ll see, especially if you stay there long or live there, isn’t pretty. Quite the opposite, and something of a reminder of our past. The country is (to me) very beautiful; I love the desert.
I spend a lot of time with Google Maps and Google Earth when I read his stories. It’s always fun to try to find the locations from the stories. Many you can; others are made up or altered beyond recognition. He tends to use the older road designations, which can be confusing. For instance, he consistently refers to, what is now 491 (between Gallup and Ship Rock) as 666, which it once was.
FWIW, while each novel stands alone, the lives of the two main characters (Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee) do evolve over time, so reading them in the order written isn’t a bad idea. Not utterly necessary, I sure didn’t, but worth considering since the entire canon is available.
As a side note, as with many popular series, another author has taken up the task of continuing the canon. I have no regard, nor respect, for such and never buy or read them. (A lesson I learned when I did get into the John Gardner continuation of Ian Flemming’s James Bond.) My favorite mystery series, Spenser, is being continued after Robert Parker’s death, but no thank you. The series dies with the author!
Have not watched Longmire, although I’ve seen the listing. I’m not usually into the Western genre, especially period pieces, but it sounds like this one is modern day. On the other hand, I really enjoyed Deadwood (HBO series), so there are certainly exceptions. Mainly it takes something off the usual sort of Western White Hat/Black Hat fare. Sounds like Longmire might be worth checking out. You’re like the third one to mention it, so the recommends are stacking up. 🙂
And, heh, not only can I not offer advice on hiding info dumps, I actually like the damn things! 😮
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I’ve been to Shiprock, and maybe I’ve taken that road (I don’t really remember).
I think you’ll like Longmire. It’s not really a Western (I’m not particularly into Westerns either, but it depends…a good story is a good story). The first couple of episodes were a bit boring for me and I initially gave it up, but after a while I decided to watch it again and I thought the character development went more smoothly. When the Cheyenne plot line became more of a focus, I was hooked.
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Thanks for the recommendation! I will definitely keep Longmire in mind. I have gotten through most of the low-hanging fruit on Netflix, so it’s good to have other considerations.
Have you watched Grace and Frankie? I really enjoyed that. And some others I’ll post about today or tomorrow (or whenever 🙂 ).
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I couldn’t get into that one, but I think I only gave it couple of episodes before calling it quits.
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It’s possible it appeals more to someone my age given that all four co-stars are in their 70s. Or did the writing just not grab you? It definitely does sometimes fall into the usual very trite comedy tropes.
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I think it’s the “very trite comedy tropes” that you mention. I couldn’t get past that.
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Oh, and FWIW, Hillerman’s exposition about Navajo (or other tribal) customs comes in response (by the two main characters) to behaviors of others they encounter. For example, Navajo consider it rude to point, so they gesture towards an object or person by pointing their chin. This gets mentioned casually when it actually happens, and it’s worked into the narrative seamlessly. The text needs the (simple, brief) explanation at that point to make sense of the action.
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Hey, Mike! Been a while, eh? I kinda took a year off…
Your question is slightly challenging, because it may depend a bit on one’s tastes. Mine are certainly reflected in my reply here.
Very true that the first books of a series aren’t always the epitome of what comes later, and on that I think you could skip the first two, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic (both of which follow the same character). OTOH, both a slim volumes, quick reads, so there’s that. Most of the others are longer.
One key to understanding the series is that, while all the books stand alone, they jump around as to which of the various Discworld characters, or character groups, they follow. This wiki article offers a good overview of the character groups as well as a list of novels (each tagged by which group is involved). There is also http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Main_Page an entire wiki devoted to DW and Pratchett.
All that said, I’d recommend, depending on your tastes:
Guards! Guards! (#8 in the series), which will introduce you to the City Watch, the city of Ankh-Morpork, and Sam Vimes (who is a favorite character for many and one of Pratchett’s key voices). It also has dragons. The bad kind. Also some brilliant bits of self-aware narrative (very much Pratchett’s style).
Reaper Man (#11) isn’t the first novel about Death (the character), but I think it’s a bit more fun than Mort (which has Death taking on an apprentice; hilarity ensues). In Reaper Man Death takes a holiday and learns more about what being human means. Also corn and wheat. The ending might make you cry a bit.
Soul Music (#16) is also mainly a Death novel, but includes others, especially the Wizards. This one is about “music with rocks in it,” and the fun is spotting all the references to bands and music. There’s a very famous motorcycle in it, plus the main character “looks a little elvish” (a running joke). This is one of my personal favorites.
If you wanted to jump to much later in the series, Going Postal (#33) introduces a new character (so you’re not jumping deep into an existing character arc) who is given a choice between his unsuccessful hanging being continued successfully… or becoming Ankh-Morpork’s new Postmaster and reviving its postal system.
That same character, Moist von Lipwig, is later charged with reviving Ankh-Morporks banking system in Making Money (#36).
But, Mike, I think you might want to consider Going Postal (the book, not the action! 😀 ), because it also details the history of Discworld’s “clacks” system — i.e. Discworld’s internet (so to speak — kind of a visually transmitted email system; it’s way cool)!
The clacks system is introduced in The Fifth Elephant (#24), but is not required reading. That one does contain a neat exploration of the theme of what identity means.
Bottom line, unless you’re very into music, or the character Death (very cool character, a favorite of readers, and who appears, at least briefly, in nearly every novel), I think I would confidently recommend Going Postal for you.
For one thing, it’s deep in the canon, and Pratchett was still mostly in top form. Some of the later ones begin to lack, just a bit, the high degree of writing skill he had. The Alzheimer’s killed him in 2015. (He finally got to meet one of his most awesome characters!)
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Hey Wyrd. Good to see you back!
Thanks for the ‘Going Postal’ recommendation. Reading Pratchett at the top of his form is exactly what I was hoping to do. (My reading these days is a much to study technique as it is for enjoyment.) And I see ‘Going Postal’ was a Locus and Nebula nominee. Excellent! Just picked up the Kindle edition after reading the opening pages.
I had no idea there were so many Discworld books. (I thought there were a dozen or so, but 41!?) I doubt I’ll ever be able to read them all, but I’ll definitely take a look at the ones you lay out here!
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Yeah, 41 Discworld books in just over 30 years, plus a number of books related to Discworld, plus a number of other (very enjoyable) novels with no connection. A fair bit of what he did was YA science fiction, and I’m told it’s thoroughly enjoyable for adults. The man could write!
He is, bar none, my favorite fiction writer in any genre.
I’m confident you’ll enjoy the hell out of Going Postal. And afterwords you’ll understand the beauty and magic behind all those fan sites adding the following http header to their system:
XClacksOverhead: GNU Terry Pratchett
Sir PTerry lives on in the internet! 🙂
(As you’ll discover, ‘G’ means the message must be passed on, ‘N’ means “not logged,” and ‘U’ means the message should be turned around at the end of the line and, thus, kept alive forever. In our world, of course, GNU also has a particularly amusing meaning.)
You say you won’t read all 41, but you may find yourself unable to resist. They are that good, and Sir PTerry is that engaging. No one can read just one. 😀
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This post may be over three years old now but let me compare my opinion to your take away to help me flesh out what’s in my own head. Around the time you posted this I began writing a book based on Jacques Lacan’s philosophy of The Real Vs. Reality, and have really gone above and beyond to understand different methods of lacing philosophy into fiction. Let me give you these uninformed interpretations of your points in case as it may help keep you driven toward a destination in your writing.
Don’t reference without clearly explaining. – “Meh”, this is true to a degree. It’s more flexible than you’d think in philosophy thick fiction. I won’t get into the nuances of the books but YouTube a cool review of The Stranger by Albert Camus or Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor as examples of philosophical novels that never explain their philosophy, they just present a situation for the reader and let them work it out.
Don’t make the characters wooden in order to drive home a theme – Absolutely. In fact, if you present Plato’s Cave or Platonic Forms or Socrates’ hatred for poets with the depth it would take to explain why these ideas matter, the writer can’t use flat characters. To flesh out some of your thoughts on Plato let me point out two movies that area masterclass in writing philosophy rich characters: for The Allegory of the Cave “Chicken Run” (in which chickens realize they’re on a farm and must escape “the pen” but have clipped wings), and for Plato’s Divided Line “Office Space” (in which after hypnosis, a man begins to questions which objects in his world belong in which quadrant of The Divided Line).
Be Funny. – Nope. You’re not really wrong but it’s complicated. Trust me on this one, funny people in philosophical fiction tend to be funny out of an ironic sense that usally explains the philosophy or how the setting needs the philosophy. Case study: The Big Labowski (in which The Dude will find a way to get his rent paid, unless it interferes with his bowling tournament, even if he has to solve a kidnapping).
Don’t be tempted to put all your philosophical ideas inside heads. – Your not wrong here either, but in some cases what talking heads never say is all you need. Check out the Absurdism in Waiting for Godot. (in which two guys question life, while they wait around for a guy, day after day after day).
Don’t be too brief. – Maybe. I don’t think the trick is to be either lush in description or brief but rather Concise. I mean really it depends on which angle you approach the topic. In the writing program I attended we covered Southern Gothic literature, which had a lot of lush descriptions and brief dialogs to hide very deep philosophies. It isn’t for the faint of heart but if you want to give the genre a once over, I’d recommend Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God (oh wait, don’t do that, that book is mortifying). Instead go read/watch McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men (in which a sheriff questions his place in the world, then questions if he ever had a place here at all). Or his 1 Act play The Sunset Limited, but dear God don’t read Child of God. I guess The Road would be okay.
That said, brief nuggets of wisdom can work well. – They do don’t they? I especially like echoing a sentiment that’s been well defined in a punchy quip.
Use subtext. – I’m on the fence about this take away. I mean, yeah sure, but shouldn’t subtext be implicit in any conversation? Hear me out. The purpose of words is to convey a meaning (definition) to a symbol (words/letter patterns), so the definition is always solid in context, yet also always presents a form in subtext. So, I think this is a good take away from your experience with this book, but also making sure there’s always a subtext, even if you don’t say it to the reader, can keep well rounded characters in three dimensional scenes. (Example, the last time you and your significant other couldn’t decide on what to eat. IRL, it means nothing particular in subtext, but in fiction it tells the reader that these characters are in a form of stagnation, indecisive dialog drags the actions in a scene to a snails pace. All it takes is “What you in the mood for?” / “I don’t know.” / “Me either.” / Shrug. All in what the reader assumes the inarticulate subtext to be, which may be a good thing).
Give those ideas relevance by making them a stake in the game.- Sure, but it seems reductive to phrase it as a game. And if you meant using it solely as your plot, don’t. I’m sure you know better but I’ll say it in case you get lost and need a sense of direction: Break that idea down. Put it in as many different parts of the Story anyway it can fit. For the last example, let’s make a story. (The Allegory of the Cave as any confined setting *such as a student’s life of school and home*, the need to view the shadows on the wall as the conflict *rumors on social media*, the light casting the shadows can be Theme *societies’ oppressive nature, which forces students into competition with each other to prove their value/grade*, the journey out of the cave can be the plot * in the climax, the protagonist emerges from the stagnation of their home life only to find adulthood is so much worse and that the stagnation was a bubble afforded by society and that the competition with other students was only ever in the minds of the students. In the stories’ resolution they reenroll into school and try to explain all of this to the “social media antagonists” only to be ridiculed as no one believes the protagonist.*)
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Thanks for taking the time to comment. I just stopped by your blog and I see we’re on the same philosophy-fiction wavelength. Cool!
I don’t believe in hard and fast rules when it comes to writing, but maybe I should’ve made that clear in this post. I mainly use “the rules” as a way to stimulate my own thoughts and evaluate writing.
“Don’t reference without clearly explaining. –…YouTube a cool review of The Stranger by Albert Camus or Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor as examples of philosophical novels that never explain their philosophy, they just present a situation for the reader and let them work it out.”
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing here. Presenting a situation and letting the reader work it out—I’m definitely not against that, quite the contrary! I just meant it’s good idea to be careful about dropping names or making obscure references to philosophers/philosophies, unless it serves the story. (Whether it ‘serves the story’ is a rather subjective criterion, unfortunately, but I will say, I’ve noticed in several writing groups that there tends to be a surprising degree of agreement when it comes to evaluating a specific passage in a manuscript.)
I will have to check out Chicken Run and Office Space. Thanks for the tip! (Funny…when I first saw “Office Space” I was thinking of that TV show, The Office, which had me scratching my head until I figured it out.)
“… funny people in philosophical fiction tend to be funny out of an ironic sense that usually explains the philosophy or how the setting needs the philosophy…”
I’m not sure what you mean here. If you mean you can be funny and integrate that humor with the point of the story, so much the better I say!
” I don’t think the trick is to be either lush in description or brief but rather Concise.”
Agreed.
“…subtext be implicit in any conversation?”
Absolutely. In fact, I’d go further and say subtext exists on many, many levels in both life and fiction. Looking back on what I wrote, I think I picked a terrible example, because there, the subtext happens to be the same as what’s being made explicit. But writers often talk about “subtext” in a more specific way, as a kind of opposition—for example, characters saying the opposite of what they’re feeling—or they talk about subtext as what’s “off the page”, “between the lines,” “beneath the iceberg”—in other words, what the author or character has not explicitly revealed through exposition or dialogue. So depending on the specific case, sometimes using subtext can be more powerful than exposition, other times you just want to move things along with exposition.
“Break that idea down. Put it in as many different parts of the Story anyway it can fit.” I’d say I use a combination of tools to layer ideas in different ways and forms. I try to avoid writing a straightforwardly, homogeneously philosophical text. For instance, in a classroom scene in my novel, there’s a conversation about the examined life on the surface, and this would be enough if it were just a philosophical text, but there needs to be more, the philosophy needs to be relevant to the story…but not necessarily right away. Beneath the surface my protagonist (Phil. professor) is trying to figure out what students know about his sexual misconduct investigation, and some students are trying to figure out whether the rumors they’ve heard about the professor are true. So there’s that bit of tension beneath the philosophy discussion, and the philosophy feeds into an important character’s arc later on down the road as he processes what it means for him. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? 🙂
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