[WITI No. 44] The dance between characters, where to get and whether to give advice, bucket list.
Writing about a lifelong habit of reading from a father's perspective
Thanks for reading my weekly newsletter called What is the information? Where I riff on what I’m reading, writing or thinking about particularly from the perspective of a parent. I hope you get something out of this as much I get out writing it.
I’ve been wondering my I enjoyed The Shadow of the Wind so much. I’ve concluded it is because the interplay of the characters: Daniel Sempere and Julian Carax. Without giving away too much, the weaving of this story reminds me of the double helix structure of a DNA strand. The side rails represent the boys (and men they become) and rungs represent the various connections between the two.
Their stories, each with their own irreversible choices, present a spectrum of possible futures for each of them. Daniel in Julian, and Julian in Daniel, each see a mirror of who they are now, who they were, who they can be in the future. We could all benefit from having a person like this our lives.
This almost like the discussion of multiple universes from The Tale of Time Being but without physics, Buddhist Zen mysticism and magic realism- all of which is OK sometimes too. I don’t mind the use of a writing device.
In Zafon’s work, Julian appears to 10 year old Daniel as the author of The Shadow of the Wind. Yes, it’s a little mind-bending to read a book about someone reading a book of the same title. Zafon keeps tight control of his threads when the story comes together, no magic is necessary, just epic closure, like the surgeon who performs a surgery a 1,000 times, almost by rote. This exists in the real world, Atul Gawande wrote about it in Complications.
This mirroring between Daniel & Julian is tricky stuff. Life circumstance similarity is often the basis for offering advice to those on an analogous life trajectory. But what works for one person won’t always work for another especially in the changing circumstances for Daniel under Franco’s regime in Spain. Is this wisdom, knowing whether advice is valid? Or is it something we can teach our children? I have no idea.
Find of the week
Do you have a bucket list? Have you received inappropriate advice? Have you given the same kind of advice? Comment above.
I hope you found something worthwhile from reading WITI this week. Consider sharing What is the Information? with someone who might find it similarly useful.
That’s all I got.
-George