Night Letters (1996), Robert Dessaix

This novel is an intricate exploration of death as one man struggles to come to terms with his mortality when he is diagnosed with an “incurable disease”. The entire plot develops through beautifully narrated insights, written in letters to an undisclosed friend in Melbourne, as the protagonist journeys through Italy.

During the journey, expect to learn a few things.

The story borders on the realms of magical realism as fiction blurs with fact and blends with the stories of Italy’s opulent history. The author is evidently influenced by one of the literary greats, Salman Rushdie, who is openly paid homage to inside the pages of the book. However, the novel is an original masterpiece, inviting the reader to share in the shattered hopes of the dying man and accompany him on his tour through Italy.

Night Letters has the most subtle plot developments of any novel I have ever read. The story unfolds in slow, gentle waves that carry the reader along with the thoughts of the protagonist. The novel finishes without any absolutes, but a delicate change has occurred for both the narrator and the reader and how we view our impending mortality.

During the journey, expect to learn a few things. The author explores the inner workings of Dante, discovers the legends of Italy, discusses the history of the church in Europe and dabbles with Taoist philosophy while the protagonist searches for meaning in life through suffering and death.

I lent the book to Jeremy as soon as I finished it. He was inspired to suggest we take a trip by train one day, just by turning up to the station and following our instincts from there. We ended up journeying around the rim of Biwako, Japan’s largest lake. We got stuck in a tiny country town for 1½ hours, which was a delightful break from the thriving megatropolis that is OsakaKobeKyoto.

On our way home we experienced an Earthquake. I noticed the train was shuddering rhythmically and I asked Jeremy what was happening. He answered with certainty that it was an earthquake. I was excited because I have never felt anything like it. Australia is a very stable country and Japan is the exact opposite, but in my 10 months of living here I had almost forgotten the impending threat of natural disaster that hangs over us.

That same night, a second Earthquake hit while we were relaxing after our busy day by watching ‘Back to the Future’. The second one was noticeably larger and my excitement was quickly replaced by fear. I became a little neurotic with the urgency of turning off the gas and finding a solid doorway to stand under. The lights were swinging violently above us and the floor beneath our feet rolled in steady waves. All sense of stability vanished, replaced by a fleeting awareness of the transience of mortality.

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Sophie’s World (1994), Jostein Gaarder

Perhaps there was something lost in the English translation, or perhaps at the age of 27 I am too old to read a novel whose purpose seems to be to engage teenagers in philosophical thought. Either way, I found the plot of the story redundant. The author’s presence is felt strongly throughout the book as he inflicts his opinions and interpretations of philosophical ideas on the reader through the voice of his 14 year old protagonist.

Descartes claimed to have proven God’s existence with the following piece of dizzying logic. If man can perceive a perfect god, then the perfect god must exist, for a perfect god can only be perfect if he exists.

No doubt the author is well equipped, as a high school philosophy teacher in Norway for 11 years, to express accurately the basic foundations of history’s philosophical thinkers, but as a person who enjoys pondering my navel, there is little joy in being given the answers to the questions that philosophy raises without having time to think for myself. This was a shortcoming of the novel and the way in which the story unfolded. However, if the book is viewed as an introduction to the history of philosophy, it serves as an excellent source of information and is a thought provoking read.

Since reading the novel, Jeremy and I have engaged in a few philosophical debates ranging from the existence of God, or lack thereof, to the ethics of the pro-life / pro-choice debate. Some issues were raised in the book itself, while others have simply stemmed from our recently activated conscience.

Descartes claimed to have proven God’s existence with the following piece of dizzying logic. If man can perceive a perfect god, then the perfect god must exist, for a perfect god can only be perfect if he exists (p.239). It would be a pretty major character flaw to not exist if you were aiming for perfection. My feeling on the matter is that I can’t, personally, perceive such a being of perfection, so Descartes’ logic has no impact on me.

This issue came up in conversation on a very long train ride between Amanohashidate and Kyoto. Jeremy (the agnostic) asked me (the atheist) how I could be so certain that God doesn’t exist. I tried to explain to him that in my realm of experience God doesn’t make any sense. Jeremy agreed that a God, as portrayed in the bible and filled with contradictions, doesn’t hold a strong case for his own existence. Descartes’ concept of a perfect God is hardly the vengeful and spiteful creator portrayed in the Old Testament.

However, according to Jeremy, a god is not limited to the character portrayed in the bible. In fact, the biblical God does not have to factor in to the argument at all. As a matter of definition we limited our discussion to the concept of “a creator”. Simply something that started “it” all, since both of us have trouble with the idea of an endless universe but the theory of the big bang poses the problem of what came before.

I told him that it wasn’t possible for me to explain my belief. He was asking me to disprove the possibility of a creator. It’s an impossible task, in the same way that it’s impossible to disprove that logic is pink. My experience tells me that no such creator could exist, I can give good reasons for my belief, but I can never prove it.

Jeremy has a problem with the mathematical conundrum that you can never get from point A to point B, because you can halve your distance, and halve your distance again, and again and again, and you will keep halving your distance infinitely but never get to that very last point. I don’t have such a problem because that’s NOT how you travel from point A to point B, unless you try very carefully to only travel by halves. You’ll naturally pass the halfway mark without any trouble at all. If you’re walking you’d most likely step over it, the halfway point would occur while your foot was in mid air, so it wouldn’t pose any problem regarding your arrival at your final destination. It’s only in maths that we fail to reach 0 by thinking in 1/2s.

My point is that Maths can fail where reason presides. My reason tells me there is no creator, that is the conclusion I arrive at from my experience. I can walk from A to B and there is no creator.

Jeremy continues to harp on this topic. He tells me that I am not the definitive source of reason for the universe. I am trying to explain to him that I am not trying to define reason for anyone else, and that I don’t hope to convince anyone either way as to the existence or not of a creator. He wants me to admit that it is possible, true to his agnostic self, that a creator may exist beyond my understanding and perception of the world. I’ve already defined myself as atheist, so perhaps only other atheists could see it from my angle, in the same way that people of different religions perceive the same topic in a great variety of ways. It’s very difficult to find a point of agreement between any two people on the subject, so it’s not something that I strive for, but I think that Jeremy will continue on his quest to change my view. He says he doesn’t really care, it’s just the nature of philosophy to argue endlessly on such topics.

Sophie’s World, read as a brief history of philosophy, shows just that. Almost every Philosopher through history has pondered the existence of God and every one seems to have an opinion on the matter. Even those that arrive at the affirmative conclusion do so using a personalised logical path. It’s not until Nietzsche and Sartre that philosophy raises the issue not of God’s existence, par se, but of his death (p.456). Sartre (1905 – 1980) finally allowed the 20th Century individual the ability of self-creation. We’re born and then we build ourselves through the very experiences I alluded to earlier. We have no innate “nature” and we can no longer blame Adam and Eve for our mistakes. This is where Sophie’s World let’s us off the Philosophical Merry-Go-round, for the time being anyway. I wonder what the 21st century philosopher will have to say on the subject.

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