Caleb Fox

I’m often asked, “Do you write novels to teach or entertain?”

The short answer is neither. A good way to explain is through an ancient Buddhist story:

A samurai, reaching forty, decided to devote the rest of his life to spiritual matters. After a difficult journey of many miles through every kind of weather, he came to a famous monastery and asked to see the sensei.

“The sensei allows each seeker to ask one question,” he was told.

When his opportunity came, the samurai asked, “Tell me, sensei, what is heaven and what is hell?”

The sensei said, “A brutish oaf like you has no right to ask such a question.”

Furious at the insult, the samurai drew his sword, cocked it, and was about to lop off a head.

The sensei held up a finger and said, “THAT is hell.”
The samurai stilled his arm and noticed what was going on inside him, tumult and rage. Yes, that was hell. An extraordinary lesson.

Then he realized, This man risked his life to teach me something. A tear of gratitude rolled down the samurai’s cheek.

The samurai held up his finger again and said, “And THAT is heaven.’

This is a superb diagram of what fiction does. Instead of offering messages or diversions, it gives readers experiences. Experiences don’t address the intellect alone--the sensei didn’t offer a lecture about how heaven and hell are inner states of this world, not the next one. Instead they engage the imagination, the emotions, even the body and bring awareness not to the mind but to the whole man. Just as a good novel does. Goose bumps. Startled jumps. Tears.

That’s why the answer to the question is neither. Maybe one day people will stop asking. After all, neither writers or readers need an explanation of what’s happening in novels. They simply know, by experience, that it’s good.

Bravo.

David Seals, the author of POWWOW HIGHWAY and the new SWEET MEDICINE, is disseminating this e-mail widely:

El Capitan Medicine Wheel
New Mexico

We're up about 8 miles above the village of Arabela on el Capitan Peak
- 50 miles west of Roswell - where there's a Kiva inside a huge circle
of a Medicine Wheel. The Archaeologist from U. Arizona with us says
it's about 1,000 years old of the Anasazi period.

I stumbled on the tiny 'blow-hole' covered with brush and hidden in
trees, and felt the cold air blowing up from somewhere, in and out,
like the Earth breathing, very similar to a blowhole at Wuptaki ruins
near our home in Flagstaff.

We were able to crawl down in the open hole to the side, like a cave,
or an ancient kiva. And there It was, in the middle. "It's alive,"
local Mescalero Apache elder Tommy Veneno said. Thre was a black
cylinder about 3 feet high and oval, with strange old markings on it.
To the touch it felt like tissues to me, very hard but also soft -
like the 1947 witnesses described debris found near a UFO crash. He
called it a "Pod".

We have a Navajo film crew with us, so it's all being recorded, after
we got permission in ceremonies last night from the Spirits, and
they've measured the rough Wheel, which is huge, with the Kiva dead
center.

This is the exact spot 1947 witnesses saw Ships flying, and my father,
a AAF pilot at the time, also had a UFO
sighting.www.abductionatroswell.com

I informed the white folks in town, where the current UFO Festival is
going on, but they don't seem interested in coming out and seeing it!
Maybe because it's only Indians? They just want to have their cartoon
commerce in Roswell, and aren't really interested in what the Mystery
is all about, or at least not taking a hike up on the Sacred Mountain.

More Skins are coming in today, and we've marked it with red flags so
people can follow the rough deer trail. Bring plenty of food, but
there's a sweet Spring also here with water coming out of the ground.
There's also very interesting burn marks on the rocks of the Wheel,
like a landing or launching site.

I'm scheduled to go into town tomorrow and talk to the Festival, with
the Navajo footage, which should blow them away.


NOTE: The Festival fathers refused to allow the Navajo footage to be shown, so Seals canceled his speech.

A celebrated editor once reprimanded me, "A middle-aged man can't write a scene from the point of view of a ten-year-old Indian girl." Even though he was speaking conventional wisdom (and didn’t know I was below middle age and am of mixed blood), he was dead wrong. This is one convention I defy. Join me.

I write my novels from within the minds of several characters, including the "villain." (Tricky technically, but...) My immediate reason is the truth of the story: Each character is a universe within, each has a distinctive way of seeing the world, which explains why he acts the way he does. Showing a range of points of view conveys the truth of the story. This is what novelists do.

But there's a larger reason for delving into other people's minds, for me a beacon not only of writing but living. Human beings are of infinite variety, and not just the obvious ones. Whether you’re a woman, man, or child, Asian or Anglo, Hispanic or black, you have an amazing landscape behind your eyes. Through fiction, and almost only through fiction, the rest of us can step into such landscapes, look around and be fascinated, and then look out at the world through foreign eyes and be absolutely dazzled. SO THIS IS WHY SHE ACTS THE WAY SHE DOES.

What could be more important? What greater gift could stories give this fractionalized world? An older history prof, speaking of my story about Crazy Horse, paid me a great compliment: “From now on I will never see people of color in the same way.”

The object of writing, as of reading, is to sail into the new. If you're a white guy, make a point of writing from inside women's minds. If you're black, write from inside the head of an Irish back-room politican. If you're a Latina woman, step inside the mind of a Hindu convenience store owner. For here lies discovery. In this land there be wonders. Here opens your own growth, and here is the gift you can offer the world.