The Ghost, The Ghost Writer and Tony Blair's Journey

Rarely is a writer's own autobiography "scooped," but such a thing happened to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When his book, "A Journey," landed in stores last year, readers had already had three years to chew on Robert Harris' "The Ghost." A thriller involving a figure much like Blair, Harris' novel was also the basis for Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer."

Harris' novel is told by an unnamed writer who has specialized in quickie celebrity autobiographies, brought in to ghostwrite the memoirs of former British prime minister Adam Lang. The "ghost" gets his job because of the untimely death of the previous ghost, a staff member of Lang's named Mike McAra.

Lang's memoirs are in need of pruning and shaping into a coherent narrative, and the Ghost gets to know, among others, Lang's brittle and ambitious wife, Ruth. But in the course of the assignment, Lang learns he is being pursued for war crimes due to his assistance in the capture of four suspected Pakistani terrorists. The four were later taken to Guantanamo for rendition, with one dying, presumably of heart failure.

The ghost has more than a few problems keeping his subject's mind on telling his own story. He also develops a relationship with Ruth, but his biggest problems come from his own ghost - the notes left behind by McAra, which point to Lang's shadowy association with the CIA. The truth that McAra uncovered - that probably killed him - is hidden in the horrendous first draft of Lang's book. It is only at the book's end that the Ghost discovers the actual truth.

But "The Ghost" is about more than war crimes. It's true subject is the leader away from power. Lang, as Harris draws him, was an aspiring actor when he was plucked from the stage and drawn into the life of Ruth. It was Ruth's drive which eventually resulted in his political career - a sequence of events which makes Ruth bear more of a resemblance to Hillary Clinton than Cherie Blair.

But like Blair with his "third way" politics, Lang is a cipher to those around him, leaving a mystery in his shadow, his intimates wondering just who he is and what he aspires to do. When the unnamed ghost writer says he does not know Adam Lang, the former defense minister Rycart responds with a laugh:

“Who does? If you met him on Monday you probably know him as well as anyone. I worked with him for fifteen years, and I certainly don’t have a clue where he’s coming from.”

Blair’s memoir, “A Journey,” is a remarkably candid, well-written book that nevertheless renders the self-portrait of a cipher. We learn several times of Blair’s passion, surpassing politics, he says, for what he vaguely refers to as religion. We read this several times, but with no elaboration at all. We assume Christianity, of course, but we wonder why there isn’t even a hint of what he means. Is he talking about a specific faith, or the study of religion in general?

What the book does reveal about him, though, is a soul who isn’t afraid to question himself, his motives, the way he saw the events of his time in office and the efficacy of his decisions. Blair - the real Blair - chose to end his book on this note:

"My conclusion, strangely, is not that the power of politics is needed to liberate people; but that the power of people is needed to liberate the politics. An odd thing for a politician to say; but then, as you will gather from this memoir, it has never been entirely clear whether the journey I’ve taken is one of triumph of the person over the politics, or of the politics over the person.”
There are many human moments, rich in humor and irony, which present a much better portrait of Blair than any contemporary journalism. The Blair in these pages is not necessarily a man who can win over those who opposed him, but one rendered a little more easily understood. That makes him different from Lang, who resembles a caged animal, impotent against the forces conspiring against him, embittered that he is being pilloried for making difficult decisions in difficult times.

But Harris doesn't make him a villain any more than he makes Rycart, the minister now trying to get him prosecuted, into a hero. The ghost sees Rycart as an intellectually vain man who is “as hell-bent on revenge as any discarded lover.” Rycart eventually double-crosses the Ghost into working for him, to get something tangible that can be used against Lang in court.

“Look,” said Lang, “I don’t condone torture, but let me just say this to you. First, it does produce results - I’ve seen the intelligence. Second, having power, in the end, is all about balancing evils, and when you think about it, what are a couple of minutes of suffering for a few individuals compared to the deaths of - the deaths, mark you - of thousands. Third, don’t try telling me this is something unique in the war on terror. Torture’s always been part of warfare. The only difference is that in the past there were no ****ing media around to report it.”

These responses do sound much like Blair’s, right down to his exasperation with the media reaction to every decision, every hint of scandal. Blair relates a similar set of fears following the July 2006 London Underground bombings, which occurred directly after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics and the UK hosted a G8 summit. Blair returned home to his family, his thoughts a blur:

“I reflected on the awesome nature of the weight on my shoulders; the pain and the excitement. Politics: noble causes, ignoble means; the plans you make and the events that turn them upside down; the untold misery and the imperfect attempts to alleviate it…”

Blair is overwhelmed by the responsibility of his decisions, and where the fault lies for the mothers and fathers mourning their children, dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, the horror of snuffed out lives. He also tackles the question: Was the war, and Blair, responsible for homegrown deaths at the hands of terrorists? Blair fights the notion because, he says, “if you give even a sliver of credence to the argument, then suddenly it’s our fault, not theirs, which is, naturally, the very thing they want.”

But what distinguishes Blair from Lang is that Lang accepts the opposition's definition of torture, as if to say that though a moral wall has been breached, it was worth it so that his people could be protected. Blair has denied the torture allegations, and reserves some of his harshest criticisms for the terrorists and for his own critics, such as those who opposed the UK's entry into the Iraq War:

“(The Iraqi terrorists) conducted this attempt at destroying a nation with a wickedness and vicious indifference to human life and human suffering that almost defies belief. Suicide bombers sent into markets. Worshippers targeted at their place of prayer. Soldiers and police, there to help put the country on its feet, assassinated. UN officials, NGOs, civilian workers trying to assist the Iraqi people to a better life, gunned down, blown up, kidnapped and killed. Yet after saying all this, my conclusion does not concern the bombers’ attitude to this carnage…but ours. When was there a single protest in any Western nation about such evil? Where was the moral indignation? ..Where was the focus of criticism?”

Lang defends his actions by reminding Rycart that he is, in fact, just a man. After all, Lang says, Jesus was unable to solve all the problems of the world, despite being the Son of God, so wasn’t it unreasonable to think he could in ten years time?

At the book's close, Lang is killed by a suicide bomber - in the film, he is shot while exiting a private jet. His nemesis dead, Rycart joins those paying tribute to him, his opposition a conveniently forgotten memory.

The ghost remains alive to tell the story, at least, for the moment. In this way, the ghost functions as the stand-in for the reader and the conscience of the book. If Lang did what he did because he believed it was right, Harris seems to be saying through his characters that those beliefs were much more complicated than the citizens who voted for him were led to believe. The ghost is the only innocent in a political world spinning out of control, a man entrusted to tell a story that seems simple on the surface but challenges the beliefs of both left and right about what is good and evil.

Make no mistake - Harris' Lang is guilty of something, no matter how much he rages. The wrongness of his involvement eventually undoes the ghost himself, as evidenced in the film. The nameless writer disappears off-screen carrying the manuscript full of secrets, with a car pursuing unseen. The viewer hears a thud, and pages billow in the wind, an indictment that is no longer valid but will remain unanswered forever.

But the questions of "The Ghost" and of Tony Blair remain. How far can a free society go in defending itself without compromising its essential nature? What is too far? How far can a leader go in making difficult decisions before his people no longer see him as a visionary and instead see him as dangerous? Where is prudence and where is compromise?

The Ghost reminds us, in the last line of his story, “I’m afraid in life you can’t have everything.”

Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here 

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.

The Pale King and the Apostle Paul

The sixth chapter of David Foster Wallace’s posthumous, unfinished novel “The Pale King” features a character wrestling with the consequences of his actions at the same time his mind keeps summoning up quotations from Paul’s epistles.

Lane A. Dean Jr. sits with his girlfriend Sheri by a lake in a park. They appear to be clean, well-scrubbed kids in a wholesome setting, but something unspoken hangs in the air. By indirect language over the course of the chapter, the reader is left to assume that Lane has gotten Sheri pregnant. The couple met in “campus ministries,” and Lane has been praying, chewing on the moment. The idea of a child in their future forces Lane to realize that, while he likes Sheri, he doesn’t love her enough to want to marry her, or even perhaps to see the child born. Over seven pages, no dialogue is ever directly quoted. The two sit side-by-side, with the narrator wholly in Lane’s mind. Even when we hear Sheri, we must be conscious that this is Lane’s projection of what she might say, what he hopes she will say, what he fears might happen. He is contemplating an abortion for her.

But his larger fear - even more than an abortion, or the fact that he doesn’t love her - is that he might be, in fact, a hypocrite:

“He was desperate to be good people, to still be able to feel he was good. He rarely before had thought of damnation and hell, that part of it didn’t speak to his spirit, and in worship services he more just tuned himself out and tolerated hell when it came up, the same way you tolerate a job you have got to have to save up for what it is you want.”

Lane reveals himself as a little more self-centered than he wants to admit, not as careful as he would like to believe. And while he doesn’t necessarily believe in hell, he suddenly understands why what some might feel are archaic Biblical rules of sexual conduct suddenly make sense. Yet he still wonders if he is a hypocrite “who repented only after, who promised submission but really only wanted a reprieve.” He keeps thinking, the narrator tells us, of I Timothy 6 and “the hypocrite therein who disputeth over words.”

What he is referring to is an extended discourse in Paul’s letter to Timothy which deals with how “the Man of God” must conduct himself in a sinful world. Paul is warning, specifically, about false teachers within churches who stir up controversies out of their own conceits. False teachers, he is saying, create strife and constant friction because of their corrupted minds, displaying an obsession over terminology instead of truth. Paul’s contention is that this is godlessness, a self-centered delusion that makes the other person feel their false gospel is more true than the real kind. He goes on to warn of those who use the Gospel for financial gain, leading to the summation that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” Considering that “The Pale King” deals in part with the Internal Revenue Service, there is a flash of irony.

So what is Lane saying? Considering that his lack of belief in hell is, in fact, heresy, is Lane a false Man of God? Of course the dispute in this chapter of the novel isn’t doctrinal on the face of it, but having more to do with his behavior. However, the Apostle Paul would state categorically that one goes with the other - that you can’t have a watered down Gospel without making other compromises in your life which eventually catch up to you. Lane may believe in a “living God of compassion and love” and not of a burning lake of fire, but even he sees the hellish vision of “two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent.” The reality of hell is only a whisper, but enough to make him realize what he carries within.

Still later, though, he imagines that Sheri will tell him that she cannot go through with an abortion, that she will carry the child to term, and that he need not worry because she will make no demands on him. In a vision, Lane has seen them both, and himself not as a hypocrite but as just another foolish fallen man. Don’t worry, he imagines her telling him, but he also imagines that even this is a lie, a desperate lie she might tell him to force him into caring for her, that within herself she knows she cannot care for a baby or put her family through the shame. She is gambling, in this imagined scene, that he really is the good man she believes. But his imagination, which has brought all of this out, quotes half of Galatians 4:16: “Have I now become your enemy?”

In this letter, Paul is appealing to the Galatian church against what he sees as the corrupting influence of what has come to be called the Judaizers - a sect believing that one must first become Jewish and observe a Jewish diet and cultural customs as part of, and as a prelude to, becoming a Christian. Paul, who previously had been an observant Jew and a well-educated one, had particular invective for the Judaizers, appealing instead to a Gospel of grace and faith instead of one of supposedly earned salvation through works.

But the full quotation is telling - “Have I now become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” Paul is reminding this church, which he helped create, that God’s salvation cannot be earned through works. We were once together and one, Paul says, so why are we now at odds? You trusted me once with the Gospel, so why have you changed into believing I am dishonest?

This is an interesting juxtaposition when we fold it back on Lane and Sheri. Lane wants grace - in that he wants to not have to face the consequences of his choices with Sheri. Sheri has faith - faith that Lane is not the kind of man who would get a woman pregnant and then abandon her, all the while talking of Jesus. Neither of them have earned any kind of salvation through their works, unless by salvation one means love. And yet it’s obvious that the love they share isn’t really love at all, but the fading colors of a passing and passionate lust. And lastly, they are both struggling against the truth - that they have many troubling decisions to make, not just about their circumstances, but about who they are, or who they might think they are. Will they become enemies if they are simply honest with each other?

The truth, Wallace’s narrator leaves us believe as the chapter closes, is that Lane only lacks courage to be able to confront the issue at hand and trust that his heart will make the right choice. One can see that God working in catastrophe forces upon us our truest and most terrible reflections. And as the Apostle Paul knew, that is when we not only are ready for forgiveness, but we long for it, with all our hearts.

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Seventeen by Kenzaburo Oe

Earlier, I wrote about Yukio Mishima's "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" and the way the novel documents "the angry loner" who often seems the source of political terrorism and myriad acts of motiveless violence. Mishima's novel grew from a real event in Japanese history, much as did "Seventeen," by Kenzaburo Oe. The winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, Oe creates a character that seems at times a caricature and an accurate depiction, which says something about the nature of his art and his subject.

Oe stands, uneasily, at the other end of the spectrum of Japanese politics from Mishima, who died in what is often termed an attempted rightist coup. "Seventeen" was based on the case of Otoya Yamaguchi, a teenaged rightist who assassinated the Socialist leader Inojiro Asanuma on live television during a speech in 1960. Yamaguchi went on to commit suicide in prison.

Oe wrote two works based on the story, the first being the novella "Seventeen." Its sequel, "A Political Youth Dies," has never been translated outside Japan and deals with the actual assassination its storyteller carries out. In reading "Seventeen," one feels like the narrative is interrupted at the precise moment in which the character has arrived at what he perceives to be his destiny. It is like someone has excised about a third from Don DeLillo's "Libra" and left a novel about Lee Harvey Oswald which ends with his misadventures in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.

Oe does not name his storyteller, whose story begins on his seventeenth birthday. From the first page, the youth's self-loathing is understood and reinforced with every sentence. He is obsessed with his inconsequentiality. He feels unobserved, and fears his life has already seen its happiest moments. To illustrate this, Oe has the boy describe over and over in detail his habit of masturbating. For half of the novella, in fact, which grows tedious early on. It is tempting to think that Oe is merely offering commentary on the political thoughts that will later seize the boy - that they are a sad, lonely exercising of the same ideas, over and over, with the same result each time, only growing smaller and less satisfying. Such an explanation redeems the book for a point that more probably is meant to insult the rightist politics the boy later embraces.

At the same time we learn about his lack of sex life, we witness multiple embarrassments and humiliations. The boy makes a mild embrace of leftist politics in his home and is dressed down by his older sister. He loses a foot race at school. He is left with a blood lust he indulges in the privacy of his room, with his hidden sword. We realize with the hand-me-down leftist phrases he parrots back to his sister, the boy isn't interested in politics so much as feeling the satisfaction of being right about something. He wants to make someone pay for the way he believes his life has turned out.

The turning point comes when he is recruited to go stand and applaud during a rightist rally. The boy embraces the idea and the occasion, and even as he sees through the speaker, he identifies with his anger and impotence, a word and attitude that figures heavily in "Seventeen" and in "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion." Impotence can be seen as the natural outgrowth of a man robbed of his own importance, or of Japan following its defeat at the end of the Second World War. And as in Mishima's earlier work, Oe's "hero" makes various mentions of hell - the hell of surrender, not on a national but a personal level.

"Unconditionally, I forgive myself," the boy thinks at the rally, and the underpinning for all his future work has arrived. His loathing is now held in check, and a sense of destiny and superiority rises within him. His family now is glad to see him involved in something to give him self-worth, and his friends see some of his inexplicable behavior in the past as having had a covert, political edge. His identity is now set as well, and the shame he felt and perceived among others - or The Others, as he referred to them - is gone. His political arguments are only weapons he trots out for power. He is transformed. "To my golden vision I promise a bloodbath," he vows, at the story's end. As with Mizaguchi in Mishima's work, the angry loner doesn't care what philosophy he clings to as long as it gives him a feeling of being someone of world historical importance, a feeling that cannot be taken away and is only reinforced by the insults and retaliations of others.

The wholeheartedness with which he embraces this destiny is explained in a short, earlier section, wherein he confesses his fear that death, will not, in fact, be the end:

"The death I fear is like this: After this short life, I'll have to endure billions of years in unconsciousness, as a zero. This world, this universe, and all the other universes, will go on being for billions of years, and all that time I'll be a zero. For all eternity!"

In receiving his own forgiveness, he extends to himself grace to do whatever his will imagines, with disastrous consequences. Our hero feels singled out at both ends of his metamorphosis, by a higher power that seems both to designate him for punishment and then for distinction, with the reader to assume that the later end will also lead to the former, and just whom that higher power may be.

Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky

Among the many factors that can determine the longevity of an artist's career beyond his lifetime is a compelling life story - one that adds the barest seasoning to an already intriguing catalog of work. Because of this, David Foster Wallace is well on his way to becoming the transcendent American author of our times, judging by David Lipsky's recent book, "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace." The book is equal parts mythmaking and mythbusting, allowing the reader to engage in whichever feels right.

With the release of David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel "The Pale King" only weeks away, I thought it was time to tackle this work, which frankly cries out to be made into a movie. It's an obvious road picture, as Lipsky transcribes the running dialogue he recorded between himself and Wallace during the book tour for "Infinite Jest." Lipsky taped their conversations as part of a profile he was preparing for "Rolling Stone." Wallace was flush with success, his likeness gracing news magazine covers, the words of his cult sensation essays gratefully quoted, his abundant ambition evident in his newly published 1,000 page novel. He arrived in the popular consciousness like a thunderclap, and twelve years later was dead by his own hand following his surrender to clinical depression.

Because of Wallace's tragic end, it is impossible to read these conversations without feeling various emotional tugs - poignant appreciation of how talented he was, a mournful anger when considering what was ahead of him, a knowing laughter at some of his opinions, seasoned with humor. What grabbed me in reading it was the spiritual dimension to many of his observations.

When reading, it's necessary to remember that Wallace is not offering his opinion out of a need to express himself. He's selling a book, and its a book that he knows is good and will forge his reputation as a serious American writer. Moreover, he's responding to questions designed to ferret out his opinions on life, his background and what he's hiding about his nervous breakdown and drug use, and his answers (and off the record comments) are calibrated to satisfy a reporter's curiosity.

The book is overflowing with his particular persona, right down to the awkwardly structured, overly long title, which comes from one of Wallace's statements. It's amazing how vague the dialogue is. Wallace is hesitant to make a definitive statement, so he qualifies his statements, and sprinkles them with mitigating phrases, and kinda, sortas and maybes, like, abound. This is a painfully self-conscious dialogue, as the interview is self-conscious when the interviewee is overly conscious of what he perceives are his own inadequacies to the moment itself. But he is also refreshingly honest about some aspects of his career, such as how unsatisfying he thinks the ending to "The Broom of the System" was. He both praises and savages John Updike, and points out the flaws of Stephen King while at the same time lauding him. He believes that the death of serious reading will mean that identity has also ceased to exist. He sees the flaws in experimental writing. He has endless riffs on movies. All of these observations are laid out in caffeinated, postcollegiate patois, complete with all the you knows, uhs, and likes that we all struggle against in our own daily speech. Some of this is superficial pedestrian woolgathering masquerading as philosophy, and some of it is brilliant observation. The distance between the two isn't all that great.

Wallace also lays out some of his theories on what it will take for the writer to grab the attention of his over-stimulated, undereducated, 24-hour-news cycle audience. As Wallace is talking, we are pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook, with the Internet only just beginning to grab the attention and time of the public. What strikes Wallace, again and again, is the "loneliness" of modern life - how little connectivity has actually connected anyone. And upon reading, the horrifying reality is that this condition has only worsened since these interviews took place.

But Wallace also believes that human beings are "absolutely dying to give ourselves away to something." He believes this, but he also believes it is virtually impossible to write in a contemporary voice about God:

"I mean the culture, it's all wrong for it now. You know? No, no. Plausibly realistic characters don't sit around talking about this stuff. You know? So...I don't know. But the minute I start talking about it, it just, it sounds number one: very vague. Two: really reductive. And the whole thing to me was so complicated, that you know it took sixteen hundred pages of sort of weird oblique stuff to even start to talk about it. And so feel stupid, talking about it."

Of course, the real characters of this book are talking about it, and neither sounds like Dostoevsky. So why does he feel uncomfortable talking about it? "Because I don't have a diagnosis. I don't have a system of prescriptions," he says. Yet later, he and Pinsky understand that modern America and their generation is growing up in "the rubble of the old system" - that is, the "ridiculous and hypocritical...old authoritarian...don't-question-authority stuff." But, like Jonathan Franzen, Wallace has nothing to replace it with, no direction to point to, no diagnosis, no prescription. He knows enough to know that the same generation is "dying...on the toxicity" of the idea that pleasure and comfort provide the ultimate meanings for life.

"I'm talking about the number of privileged, highly intelligent, motivated career-track people that I know, from my high school and college, who are, if you look into their eyes, empty and miserable. You know? And who don't believe in politics, and don't believe in religion...And who just..who don't believe in anything. Who know fantastic reasons not to believe in stuff, and are terrific ironists and pokers of holes. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just, it doesn't seem to me that there's just a whole lot else."

But reading this, it's evident there is indeed something wrong with that, and Wallace knows it. One wonders whether he did have some idea of what was wrong, but didn't feel comfortable providing an answer. I'm not suggesting a Christian answer, though it is interesting that Wallace leaves Pinsky to go to a church where "everyone more or less wants to leave each other alone." Much of Wallace's work deals with the loneliness, the lack of meaning, the aimlessness of existence, and the search for meaning, or just, how to kill time. But a writer with the ambition to write an epic novel, with the courage to look at the hole in modern existence, is also mature enough to recognize that he doesn't have all the answers. The question of existence remains. Being able not to believe in something isn't necessarily a strength, when one ultimately doesn't believe in anything at all.

In the book's forward, Franzen provides an observation: "Does it look now like David had all the answers?" In retrospect, we can see that he at least was on to the right questions. But Lipsky's epitaph resounds: "His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination."
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The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

Among the plays slated for later this year at the Lincoln Center Festival will be the American premiere of "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" by Japan's Kanagawa Arts Theatre, a dramatization of Yukio Mishima's most well-known novel. Anyone who saw Paul Schrader's "Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters" will remember that one of those chapters was taken up with this spell-binding story, replete with Mishima's customary violence and obsession with obsessions.

“The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” tells the story of the stuttering, antisocial Buddhist acolyte Mizoguchi, who will eventually set the fire that destroys Kinkaku-ji, the 550-year-old temple in Kyoto. Based on an event that occurred in 1950, Mishima supposedly went so far as to interview the real arsonist, a schizophrenic, in prison in preparation. Inside this novel is a carefully drawn portrait of a mind’s slow descent into madness, but also the struggle of an individual frustrated by his surroundings, searching for freedom.

“He who chases fantasies lacks judgment,” or such is the judgment of Proverbs 12:11. Mizoguchi, from an early age and inspired by his father, sees the Golden Temple as the very essence of beauty. Not the Temple itself, which initially disappoints him, but the image he has created in his mind. Because of this, he easily contrasts it against himself, the personification of ugliness. Interestingly, Mishima - or his translator, Ivan Morris - decides not to let us hear Mizoguchi’s stutter for ourselves. His thoughts, of course, which tell the story, flow freely. But they are a contradictory lot, with conflicting observations about the nature of beauty, ugliness, being and nothingness, good and evil. From an early age, Mizoguchi is alone and proud of being misunderstood, which is the beginning of his fall. It gives him a sense of mission, which is key to his development as the story unfolds.

Halfway through the book, Mizoguchi reminds himself that “the essence of Zen is the absence of all particularities, and that the real power to see consists in the knowledge that one’s own heart possesses neither form nor feature.” In a way, he longs for the nothingness, the lack of attachment, of his calling, but his pride in his otherness keeps drawing him out of this. “It is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other,” he says. But he stands in opposition to the beauty of the Temple, the ever-present, suffocating, undeniability of the Temple. Mizoguchi does not “have any feeling of solidarity with nothingness.” Indeed, he cannot, not because of his defect, not because of the Temple. It is little wonder that his encounters with women repeatedly find him impotent.

One can spot several different messages arising within the story. Beauty acts as an ideal, but also as a curse. It reminds Mizoguchi - and us - that the trials of the world are not so easily escaped even by the devoted and devout. The obsessions we wrap ourselves in can dominate us, and easily turn what is just a historical building of great beauty into a reminder of the unworthiness we perceive in ourselves. One is left to wonder if the individual within Mizoguchi might have been encouraged, in a different setting, or if the process of encouragement itself would have any effect. After all, what would he be encouraged to do? But we also have an all-too familiar picture of the angry loner, a figure who comes to believe that only through destruction does he define himself, that destiny has fingered him for an awful end, but it is his own end, and he will embrace it willingly because it is his. The Christian idea of sin, of malignant desire for that which is beyond redemption or even beyond understanding, is recognizable. But there is something else - a rebellion against the eastern concept of the ideal, which is an existence beyond attachment, identity and struggle.

With the death of Mizoguchi’s father, he begins his career at the Temple, and he befriends Tsurukawa, an upright man. But Mizoguchi’s malevolence is growing, “a wordless force” that seeks to possess him. He nurtures it as he recognizes it, and it blooms when he makes a new friend, Kashiwagi. An arrogant, malicious, self-absorbed man with a club foot, he projects all of these twisted qualities onto Mizoguchi and shows him how to use his disability to his disadvantages.

The appearance of Kashiwagi midway through the novel is Mizoguchi’s catalyst, and the beginning of his emotional apprenticeship. Mizoguchi also learns about the nature of hypocrisy from the Superior, Father Dosen, who has both frustrated and advanced Mizoguchi’s career. At its beginning, Mizoguchi held the ambition to one day succeed him, but only later does this contort itself into the desire to destroy the Temple. After all, the Temple is more alive than Mizoguchi.

Near the end, before Mizoguchi carries out his plot, he begs a visiting father to see past his face and look into his heart. We realize that he too recognizes what is going on inside him, that he does care, that he perceives the outer “ugliness” has taken root inside him, but the father cannot see inside him, and instead unknowingly inspires him to go ahead. Given the author, one might expect Mizoguchi to kill himself in sight of the flames of the Temple. But instead, he smokes a cigarette and embraces the freedom he has found for himself, the individuality, the singularity of his existence. It is not our thoughts which define us to others - but our actions. But our thoughts define us to ourselves, and make the action inevitable.

Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here 

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.