Making Space For Readers & The Alchemy Of Possibility: Haruki Murakami Meets AS Byatt
I love those moments when two great writing quotes—from different authors—interact, sometimes with a little extra energy thrown in via a reader’s commentary.
As some of you may know, one of my very favourite quotes is drawn from AS Byatt’s Booker Award-winning novel, Possession:
‘Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.’
Recently, I featured a fabulous Guardian interview with Haruki Murakami, in which he said (amongst many other wonderful observations) that:
‘Novels in general, he thinks, benefit from a certain mystery. “If the very important secret is not solved, then readers will be frustrated. That is not what I want. But if a certain kind of secret stays secret, it’s a very sound curiosity. I think readers need it.” ‘
My thanks to Ashley Capes for highlighting this particular quote in the comments and noting that it fitted Murakami’s writing so well, to which I replied:
“…And is also, I feel, true of all great art, [which] always retains an element of possibility rather than everything being cut and dried.”
Ashley responded:
“Yeah – room for the reader, huh? That’s part of what makes a work so memorable, when you can walk away still thinking about it, about what was not resolved perhaps.”
Room for the reader indeed—which I feel is exactly what the AS Byatt quote is driving at: that the best storytelling leaves room for the reader to being her or himself to the creative process—and that the intersection of storytelling with reading is essentially a private conversation between the author and the reader. That’s right, not just “readers” as an amorphous group, but every reader individually.
In that process, the potential for what I call the alchemy of possibility is enhanced if the author leaves Murakami’s “certain mystery” in the story, enabling the reader to satisfy his or her “sound curiosity” through further speculation: Ashley’s “you can walk away still thinking about it“—and not just that, but postulate one’s own “what if’s” and “maybe’s” in response. (The engine room of fan fiction, perhaps?)
I personally feel that is why reading and writing is one of the secret magical bastions of living is this world—secret to all those who are not already readers, that is. 😉
H
‘Alchemy of possibility ‘ .. I love that phrase.
Thanks, enjoyed the post.
R
And that one’s my own, too. 😉