Mark Salzman, _Lying Awake_
Oct. 16th, 2001 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eubMark Salzman is apparently a well-known mainstream novelist, wrote a bestseller called Iron and Silk which I do remember hearing of. I just read The Laughing Sutra last week, and liked it, and picked this one up at Avenue Victor Hugo.
It's about a nun in a Carmelite cloister in contemporary Los Angeles, named Sister John, whose mystical experiences prove to be linked with temporal-lobe epilepsy caused by a meningioma; she must decide whether to have the disease treated. She went through a long spell of spiritual aridity, and can hardly bear the thought that its ending was an illusion.[1]
The book is wonderfully written, or it's written in a way that I like, which is that it has an effortless flow of telling details. "The real penance in cloistered life, most Sisters agreed, was not isolation; it was the impossibility of getting away from people one would not normally have chosen as friends."
Salzman almost executes a beautiful technical trick. How do you write a story that contains the ineffable? Sister John is a poet, and Salzman intercuts lines of her poetry (typeset in italics) with the body text; I thought at first that he was going to use this device strictly as a means of representing her experiences -- the text would be in these two streams, one narrative and the other timeless -- but it turned out he used it more broadly.
[1] This idea, that experiences of the Divine are of no value if they can be traced to physical causes [2], didn't seem to be fully worked through. This undercuts Sister John's past, in a way she is terribly aware of, no matter what she decides. By the end she has very little concern for this, and I do suppose I see how she has come by this lack of concern, but it still seems very quick, in a book that knows very well how many years a change of heart can take. One could argue that Salzman has allowed a miracle.
[2] which I profoundly disagree with. If the mystical experiences of `approved' Christian contemplants are ever understood at the neurobiological level, are they to be discarded too? I don't see why "explaining away" ever has to follow from explanation.
Though from the nuns' point of view, I'm one who has already explained away everything, everywhere. I don't see the necessity of any of the religious interpretations or beliefs they attach to these experiences.
It's about a nun in a Carmelite cloister in contemporary Los Angeles, named Sister John, whose mystical experiences prove to be linked with temporal-lobe epilepsy caused by a meningioma; she must decide whether to have the disease treated. She went through a long spell of spiritual aridity, and can hardly bear the thought that its ending was an illusion.[1]
The book is wonderfully written, or it's written in a way that I like, which is that it has an effortless flow of telling details. "The real penance in cloistered life, most Sisters agreed, was not isolation; it was the impossibility of getting away from people one would not normally have chosen as friends."
Salzman almost executes a beautiful technical trick. How do you write a story that contains the ineffable? Sister John is a poet, and Salzman intercuts lines of her poetry (typeset in italics) with the body text; I thought at first that he was going to use this device strictly as a means of representing her experiences -- the text would be in these two streams, one narrative and the other timeless -- but it turned out he used it more broadly.
[1] This idea, that experiences of the Divine are of no value if they can be traced to physical causes [2], didn't seem to be fully worked through. This undercuts Sister John's past, in a way she is terribly aware of, no matter what she decides. By the end she has very little concern for this, and I do suppose I see how she has come by this lack of concern, but it still seems very quick, in a book that knows very well how many years a change of heart can take. One could argue that Salzman has allowed a miracle.
[2] which I profoundly disagree with. If the mystical experiences of `approved' Christian contemplants are ever understood at the neurobiological level, are they to be discarded too? I don't see why "explaining away" ever has to follow from explanation.
Though from the nuns' point of view, I'm one who has already explained away everything, everywhere. I don't see the necessity of any of the religious interpretations or beliefs they attach to these experiences.
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no subject
Date: 2001-10-16 05:35 am (UTC)The christian view of miracles is often "God has chosen to reveal himself in this way." Many people don't like the idea of giving God phisical assistance, and on a more secular level, they don't want non-participants to blame their religious experiences on mental problems.
On the other side, there are people like Carlos Castaneda (hell, even Hunter Thompson) who have no problem with drug-assisted spiritual journeys.
The experience is what you make of it. If you're uncomfortable with yourself and see yourself as flawed and broken, then it's probably reasonable to fear that your visions are flawed and broken. If you see the experience as a mystical or noble thing, then you'll be in better shape, regardless of electrochemical underpinnings.
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Date: 2001-10-16 04:41 pm (UTC)And yeah, there are those practical questions of whether people will think you're just ill, of whether the end is as valuable as the way, etc.