My father, a scientist, was not a facile thinker.  And so he kept wordless understandings about things beyond our terms and yet somehow within the reach of experience and the heart's insight.  It was appropriate that he studied nature, plant biology.  It was appropriate that his mentor was a Theosophist, and that he kept around books about Zen  Buddhism and the like.

Writing a book is never a facile experience, and nor should the critique of one be.  Inner vision, vision beyond words, is the only guide.    A text emerges in accordance with the intent.  A critique might offer, as in the case of the Kirkus Indie review of A Hero For Our Time, the thought--to use an example--that the character of 'the Princess' is not well drawn, doesn't venture beyond an opaque portrait.  Well, people, being part of the Universe, aren't always that knowable.  Only through meditation, entering into nonverbal mind of non judgment, can one truly see them as they are, which is never to be facilely put into terms.  Thus opaque.  It is part of the same ultimate truth that if one even ventures to draw himself as a defined character in a social understanding attached to the verbal (rather than the depth of reality), or even ventures or fancies to be a particular sort of individual, then he has most likely lost the thread of truth and proper portrayal and real understanding, as such things are beyond the dualist nature of verbal thought.  The Kirkus critique also tripped over the deeper discussion between character and father about the purpose of education, suggesting that education is merely job training, but that's another topic.

If the writing of a book entails a deeper effort to understand the nature of a human character, or 'the human character,' I think certain conclusions are drawn.  Writing a real book as an effect upon those who enter into the duty.  And so are they changed, stripped away of facile self-image.  So they must remain untouched by the great bulk of societal understandings of them, by the terms.

Following the logic, properly, the writer must approach the great task of meditation, leaving behind dualistic understandings, and so there's a good chance the writer will eventually find peace, a peace he might find deep and interesting, moving, requiring no falseness, no cliché.

Perhaps this is why people, and writers, retreat into nature, and there find company with their friends, creatures, natural life, who stand in the same wordless understanding, as the manifestation of the same deeper reality.  The unknowable quality of persons is therefore to be respected in the writing of works that truly reflect experience.

And if not, then you're writing a book merely for entertainment purposes, hopefully careful not to damage humanity any more than it already is by thoughtless effort.


The matter lies in the vision, that which the writer brings out of the wordless, out of non verbal understanding, out of that steady background his deeper personality is attached to.

Is it related to the vision that a backsliding in one area, or in one act, leads to others, a chain of events that needs recovery from.