Less than three months to go before I hand the new book to my publisher, and I recognize the signs. This afternoon I drove through Christmas traffic to the market, filled up a shopping cart, got to the checkout counter, and discovered I’d left my wallet at home. (The next stage is finding that I’ve locked myself out of the house, which is why spare keys are judiciously distributed among my neighbors.) My head is not quite in this world. Close friends tell me this is how I always am near the end of a book. “It seems worse this time,” I say, only to have them remind me that this is what I say every time. I reluctantly acknowledge that they may be right.
The checkout guy knows me, so he let me put the cart to one side and hold onto the freshly-made warm frites I’d bought, or would have bought if I’d had any money on me, reminding me to save the price tag for when I got back with credit card in hand. The frites were perfect, thin-cut and salted just right, and I dealt with the traffic by devouring them as I drove home, where I gulped down a glass of water (the salt!), grabbed my wallet, and set off back to the market, only to realize that the car now stank mightily of frying oil, and so, therefore, did I. The glamor of the writing life continually amazes me.
Since I’ve been tussling with big, undefinable things like God, consciousness, and infinity, I guess it was a bit much to expect that I be a normally functioning member of society at this point. It should certainly have come as no surprise that even as words accumulated in presumably satisfactory numbers, they turned out to be slippery, slithery creatures.
I’d already done all the right writerly things. Per the admonition to “kill your darlings” (Hemingway? Woolf? — it’s one of those “variously attributed” sayings), passages waiting to be lauded as beautiful writing had been duly slain, a process that left virtual blood all over the keyboard since I find it far harder to delete than to add. But the surviving words still displayed an alarming tendency to slide around from page to page. Stubbornly refusing to stay in place, they were acting like a pack of unruly schoolkids. I could practically hear them shoving and poking each other: “Here’s where I want to be!” “No, here!” “That’s my place.” “Tis not.” “Tis too.”
By last week, I’d had enough of it. “Take charge of the words!” I wrote on an index card, in all caps, and pinned it over my desk. Forget “being a writer” — I’d become a sergeant-major, and order these green recruits into shape.
I printed out the most troublesome chapter, pushed the computer monitor aside, shoved the office chair out of the way, and stood over the desk, leaning in like a commander about to ream out a subordinate. I set to, marking up the pages with slashes and arrows, dictating what went where, giving insubordinate words what for. And though it took a few days, they caved. They fell into place. Lined up for inspection. Reader, it worked!
At least I think it did. I can’t be sure of it. How could I be? This is an agnostic manifesto I’m writing, and it hinges on imperfect knowledge, on the importance of doubt, the inhumanity of certainty. As William James put it (he of The Varieties of Religious Experience): “So far as man stands for anything, and is productive or originative at all, his entire vital function may be said to have to deal with maybes. Not a victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except upon a maybe.”
I love James despite his peculiarly Victorian assumption that only men “stand for anything,” and this quote from him survived the slashing. But there are still times when the writer in me needs that inner sergeant-major to let me know in no uncertain terms exactly what I can do with my maybes. I suspect James had one too.
I look forward to reading your new book when it comes out. I read the First Muslim and it really brought the story of the Prophet and early Islam to life.
I always envy the decision making abilities of Army personnel. Not that they don’t face ‘maybes’ in their inner selves, but they are trained to bear with the loss of choice much easily.
Loss of choice? Or the need to make a decision under pressure?
Just wonderful.
Does your new book have a title? Once it’s in the hands of the publisher, how long is the process getting it to publication? I’ve never written for publication, but one hears war stories about dealing with difficult editors, etc… Sounds like a painful process for the writer!
1. Best to finish the book before announcing the title.
2. I admire my editor, and respect her judgment. If she says back to the keyboard, then it’s back to the keyboard I’ll go.
3. Time from completion to publication probably 9 months to a year.
4. Painful? No. Difficult, sure. But then if thinking were easy, more people would do it…
Maybe the struck out words could be compiled as a prologue, to be read in the next blog. It would pacify people like us who wait eternally for every new book of yours……can’t wait to read this one too.
All the best, Lesley.
I’m sometimes tempted by something like that, Nuzhat. In fact the previous post was precisely such a darling. I posted it with the idea that once it had appeared here on the blog, I’d stop trying to put it back in the book, and that turned out to be true. But what usually happens is that deleted material enters the realm of “disjecta membra” (disjected parts — I love that dis-jected rather than re-jected), a kind of lingering half-life fading over time, like old photographic prints. That image actually does give me an idea for a new post. TK, as the journalistic shorthand has it: to come.
Let it come…and soon too. Gems are anyway to be preserved. Absolutely love the term dis-jected. It’s so much more respectable than re-jected. And I’d hate anyone to do that – (reject) good ideas and words.
Another plus on it would be to hear from you more regularly, than the long gap that writing books does, in keeping you away from us.
Nine months to a year….! the delivery period does seem a painful wait for us. But TK should make up for it…
LOVE it – maybe I can borrow yours sometime to train mine? xo
Dear Lesley,
I salute to you. As an amateur writer I hate editing what I wrote before sending to be published. I understand that your mind is in a deeper realm than majority of public because of the subject. And it is very difficult to describe level of consciences you are at to your readers even a top notch writer like yourself. You have a very unique quality to explain very hard to understand concepts with very simplified way. Thank you very much for all this agony and hardship that you are going through to convey your message to us.
Thank you, but really, agony? There’s a huge difference between bitch-whine-and-moaning on the one hand, and screaming in unbearable pain on the other. I assure you I would not choose to do what I do if there was agony involved. In fact most of the time, what I do with words is more like play.
I follow her posts but this time was surprised its about writing…making choices on editing out what we don’t need…the battle of cutting what is dear to us –good lesson here…if only to be reminded no writer stands alone. We all go through the same damn delemas! (delimnas?) oh fuck
delemas dilemmas tomahtoes tomatos — points for evading the totalitarianism of Spellcheck!
Hi Leslie,
I know that you don’t have much time left, but regarding the issue of agnosticism, may I make a few suggestions in the comments to this blog as a theist but not as a narrow fundamentalist?
and can I alternatively send you by email?
Of course you can, Omer. Thanks for asking, and feel free. Alternatively, the email address is on the ‘Who Is the AT’ page, though be aware that right now, as you might guess from the recent paucity of posts here, I’m a pretty lousy correspondent.
First of all Happy to come New Year Leslie to you.
I hope you can address one particular issue that I think rationally points towards theism as being true, atheism as being false, and agnosticism as not being appropriate.
I am thinking of the whole question of what is the cause of existence…not just on earth, or in our universe, or hypothetically in many universes but in all existence.
The ultimate cause can only be one of two types, it can either be perfect or imperfect…there is no other alternative than these two exhaustive choices.
But if the ultimate cause is imperfect which is the implication of atheism, then no matter what the ultimate cause hypothetically is, it begs the question as to why does that ultimate cause X have these set of imperfections.
The question is only resolved by a perfect cause because then the ultimate cause is inherently self sustaining, precisely because this cause is perfect.
As I am sure you have noticed atheists don’t like to bring up in the discussion on theism versus atheism, as to what they believe is the ultimate cause.
They like to pick holes (I think they are unsuccessful) in the cause for existence that is believed by the theists.
But they don’t like to bring up the cause that they believe is the cause of existence. Even if they cannot fully describe their cause, one thing is certain is that their cause is imperfect. And I think they intuitively realize that whatever the cause, if it is imperfect, it will beg the question and so on.
Philosopher at Notre Dame, Timothy O’Connor has a nice book on this issue….I did not read it but it is called something like the Theism, the Ultimate Explanation.
Finally, I think agnosticism is inappropriate in the discussion above in the sense that although we cannot describe the ultimate cause in a precisely rigorous way, what we do know as explained above is that it by sheer logic can only be either perfect or imperfect.
Therefore from this aspect, there is not a lack of knowledge. We do know as good as we would know in a zillion years from now and as good as we know 1 + 1 =2 that there are only two overall categories of a perfect cause or an imperfect cause.
Sorry for the repetition but as you know, abstract ideas can be misinterpreted and thus I am trying to reinforce what I mean.
I had a few more thoughts on other issues dealing with theism, atheism, agnosticism but I will inshallah share that next year, in 2015. 🙂
Happy to come New Year again.
Hi Leslie,
I hope I did not come across as fundamentalist.
I hope no one misunderstood me that I meant that being a theist is as clear as 1 + 1 =2. I do think it is clear but not in that automatic sense.
What I meant as being clear to all is that a cause can be put in two categories as being either perfect or imperfect.
And that the fact of those two categories as being exhaustive with no other alternative is accepted by all whether theist or atheist.
On another note, I wanted to mention something critically important about infinity.
The eminent and anti-fundamentalist English gentleman, Anglican priest, and Cambridge physicist John Polkinghorne points out that just like there are infinity of odd numbers, not one of them which is even….in the same way even in the speculative idea of an ensemble of literally infinite universes, the idea of a type of multiverse having an infinity of universes, still he thinks that cannot explain the massive fine tuning of our universe.
I will elaborate a little on that in the next comment within next few days.
Happy New Year. 🙂
No problem, Omer (though do note a 250-word limit on comments here). In fact I love being called inappropriate! Seriously I do.
I don’t think you’re a fundamentalist — I’m late replying because I’m working super-full-time trying to get this new book in shape. But I am a major advocate of the intellectual, creative, and existential value of doubt, and am thus wary of all certainties, and insistent on the difference between fact and belief. I have no problem with your believing as you do; I do have a problem with your assertion that it is fact. And I find the whole idea of “the universe” being fine-tuned for human life to be incredibly anthropocentric — an argument that I make in the new book, and won’t address again here until the book is published.
By the way, you might be interested in this little snippet from Salon, which argues — I can’t judge the science and doubt if the reporter can either — that the development of animate life from inanimate matter is mathematically not only possible, but probable. (Ignore the snark of the piece’s headline and the tone.) http://www.salon.com/2015/01/03/god_is_on_the_ropes_the_brilliant_new_science_that_has_creationists_and_the_christian_right_terrified/:
Hi Leslie,
You must be very busy writing on such a deep issue. Thanks much for you response.
Sorry for the long post before.
Thanks for appreciating the word inappropriate…
It is very gracious of you Leslie.
I regretted using that word, I just mean that I differ with the approach of agnosticism in that context.
I was using the word fact only in the specific notion that perfection and imperfection is all encompassing…an entity can be Perfect or imperfect (limited, restricted) but nothing in between.
I assume you don’t disagree with that.
I appreciate what you mean by the value of doubt. I greatly enjoyed your Ted talk about lack of complete certainty among religious leaders…to that I would like to add Abraham…(but I think the word doubt for Abraham in below context is too strong).
In the Qur’an, it says “And [mention] when Abraham said, “My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead.” [ God ] said, “Have you not believed?” He said, “Yes, but [I ask] only that my heart may be satisfied.”
Please look into fine tuning more closely because it actually works even without humans. No structure would exist without exquisite fine tuning.
Steven Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time that if the expansion rate 1 sec after the big bang been smaller than one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed quickly into a tiny singularity.
Thanks for the Salon article, I was traveling for past few days but I will check it out by tomorrow.
Omer
(p.s…the computer i have does not have Word and the tool word count…i think i am a few below 250 when I did a rough count of the above excluding this p.s., but if it is a few more, sorry about that).
No need to apologize, Omer. I was half-teasing anyway.
Another way of thinking about what some call fine-tuning, however, is contingency. I love contingency. But more on that in the book. — L.
Leslie,
It is refreshing to interact with you for many reasons. You are open minded, intelligent, and compassionate.
Earlier, I had mentioned the issue of infinity and why I believe it cannot account for the fine-tuning in our universe. Even if it could, there are other reasons, theists would point to for existence of a perfect ultimate cause who willed it all.
But I would like to unpack a little more this issue through an example.
We can think of one universe as nothing but one snowflake. Another universe could be two snowflakes. A third can be three snowflakes. And so on. The above would constitute an infinite series of universes.
But there can be another series with H2O in the liquid form. Thus one universe could be nothing but one water molecule. Another universe could be two water molecules…another as three water molecules. And so on. The above would constitute a second infinite series of universes.
And there can be a third infinite series dealing with H20 in the gaseous form.
We can think of other molecules and then ever complex combinations of molecules and then changing the constants and even the laws themselves.
Using our powers of imagination we can think of an infinite universes raised to the infinite exponent (because one can think how each of the universes in the first order infinity can differ in an infinite different ways) and then that exponential form can itself be fully raised to another infinite exponent…and so on seemingly ad infinitum.
Anyhow, thanks again much for letting me share some of my thoughts.
Omer, isn’t infinity a great subject?! I had a ball writing about it in the new book, due out in early 2016. For now, I’d point out only that the universe seems fine-tuned for human existence to humans. To mice, it might seem fine-tuned for mice. To rocks, for rocks. Etc. That is, we are confined within our own human consciousness, and thus must deal with the paradox of trying to see objectively from within our subjectivity. What seems to me admirable — and quintessentially human — is that we keep trying nonetheless.
Hi Leslie,
Yes, infinity is fascinating.
I look forward to reading your new book in early 2016.
Thanks for your insightful comment.
I agree with our limitation and biases from being confined within our human consciousness.
Having said though, don’t you think that we humans have a quality that transcends us not just quantitatively but qualitatively above non-humans?
What I am specifically referring to is our ability to think abstractly.
Mice and other animals think in concrete terms. But we can think abstractly.
So I think we can think beyond our category of humans and think of life or even non-life.
And I think the data shows clearly that if we define life as a complex organism having complex chemistry (in other words, bio-chemistry) that cellular life or even complex chemicals would just not be possible if we did not have the staggering fine-tuning that we can calculate.
Even beyond that category into the category of non-life such as stars or even microscopically into entities such as atoms, then the data shows that without the staggering fine-tuning, even these entities would not simply not exist.
So, I see this as compelling pointers that the universe has been designed.
There are many other arguments for the existence of God as you know well, but I think the design argument is one of the most simple arguments.
Thanks much for the discussion and for being open. Hope we can continue the discussion and to consider our perspectives.