Being and Tenderness

Milan Kundera once said that the novelist is neither historian nor prophet but, rather, is an explorer of existence. In his collected essays, The Art of the Novel, he talks a lot about how he creates his characters. He believes in giving readers the maximum amount of information about each character and to include in that a good deal of information about the characters past. Without pasts characters cannot come alive, they do not vibrate off the page and, worse, they do not evoke our empathy and understanding.

In Kundera’s world the exploration of existence, and of a character’s existential struggle, is at the core of the novel. I think he may well be right about that. No matter how intriguing the setting, or lovely the prose, or ingenious the plot, or clever the dialogue, without depth and backstory characters are just ghosts moving through a landscape. We want to know who these people are and why on earth they are doing what they are doing.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about goodness and evil. In part because it is that time of year when the walls grow thin and one realm seems awfully --- dangerously --- close to the next. And partly because I am trying to understand the tendency in people and, thus, in characters to do very, very stupid things that only serve to make their lives more miserable and for what reason? That’s the question: for what reason? There have been several examples that are too close these days. Harsh words exchanged between mother and daughter, husband and wife, two friends. In every case there seems no good reason for the entire situation and yet, there it is. The words are said and cannot be unsaid, the feelings are there in all their raw disappointment. The situation might be smoothed over but it cannot be undone and this is the greatest sadness of all.

What happens inside someone that they feel that urge to lash out? Sometimes we are feeling hurt or diminished or unappreciated. Sometimes we are chafing under a different disappointment and misdirect the feelings. These are all the things that people feel and characters are created to explore. I have been thinking about a story in which two people have built mutual trust and appreciation and respect. And then there is conflict and one party lashes out saying the one thing --- the only thing --- that could cut to the quick, penetrate to the heart, and wound beyond healing. When we love someone and trust them we give them that power. If they exercise that power everything changes. What is that all about?

Kundera also speaks about tenderness in The Art of the Novel. About the tenderness that is needed between two people let trust happen. Tenderness, he writes, comes into being at the moment when life propels a man to the threshold of adulthood. He anxiously realizes all the advantages of childhood which he had not appreciated as a child. There is profound revelation in this. For many of us, that tender child is a little too close to the surface for our own comfort and much of our harshness is nothing more than protective armor for that tender child. Tenderness, Kundera writes, is the fear instilled by adulthood.

So, as I work on new characters, using them to explore bruised feelings and destructive words that alter forever what once was, I have to remember that hidden child unaware of how harsh words can change the its world forever.

I often speak about how fiction can explore what non-fiction cannot. Fiction is truth unencumbered by facts. The novelist who bears this in mind has both a considerable burden and a sacred mission. We write to explore our characters’ existences and, in doing so, we help others, and ourselves, explore our own.

Thanks for reading.