Book Report: The Book of Form and Emptiness

3. Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness (2021) (2/6/22) (BB#2)

Ruth Ozeki was ordained a Zen priest in 2010, and the two books she has written since then, A Tale for the Time Being (2013) and this one, certainly embody that philosophical tradition, in a most pleasing way: you come away feeling a bit wiser, more empathetic, looser and yet more grounded. 

The story here does involve a book, and a fourteen-year-old boy, Benny, who hears objects (like books, but also like shoes and windows and scissors) talk—though in this case, there is a special Book that is his story, which spins out as his life proceeds apace, and he converses with it. 

And his life is complicated. He recently lost his father, a Japanese jazz clarinettist, in a dumb accident. His mother, Annabelle, comfort-eats and has piled all manner of garbage all over their small duplex (ostensibly for work—she follows breaking news stories and must archive the materials, but still: she has a problem getting rid of stuff). When he starts hearing voices—everywhere—he is committed for a time to a Pediatric Psychology ward, where he meets eighteen-year-old Alice, aka the Aleph (a nod to Jorge Luis Borges's famous story). At Pedipsy (pe-DIP-sy), he learns some coping mechanisms, and is sent back home. But normal life eludes him. Instead of going to school, he goes to the main library (modeled on Vancouver's) and reads about medieval armor and fairy tales—when he's reading, the voices die back somewhat. He also starts discovering little slips of paper with instructions on them (à la Oulipo)—courtesy, it turns out, of the Aleph, who soon appears at the library with her pet ferret and takes Benny under her wing. She introduces him to a one-legged, wheelchair-bound Slovenian poet, Slavoj aka the Bottleman.

And events ensue. The elements of magical realism combine with real-world troubles: threats of eviction, rioting following a disastrous election, homelessness, and Annabelle's efforts at cleanup, aided by a self-help book very reminiscent of Marie Kondo's, but more practically by a new friend she meets while worrying about Benny. (For a little more on the self-help book, or at least the person who "wrote it," see my next post.)

Throughout, the Book tries to teach Benny lessons about acceptance, and about agency. What is real? becomes a guiding question. The problem of material consumption is another theme: "What makes a person want so much? What gives things the power to enchant, and is there any limit to the desire for more?"

The book's title is alluded to in various ways. For example, here is Slavoj:

"Let me tell you something about poetry, young schoolboy. Poetry is a problem of form and emptiness. Ze moment I put one word onto an empty page, I hef created a problem for myself. Ze poem that emerges is form, trying to find a solution to my problem." He sighed. "In ze end, of course, there are no solutions. Only more problems, but that is a good thing. Without problems, there would be no poems."

Later, Benny tells Slavoj about the voices and the stories they tell, which "are more like memories or dreams."

I told the B-man all this, and he said poetry was like that, too, like breezes or winds in the mind. At first you might not feel much, not whole words or sentences, but more like currents of air moving across an open wound. You have to keep your mind open and try to feel the voice of the poem as it blows by, even if it hurts a little. He said the trick is not to grab at the wind because as soon as you do, it won't be there.

Or as the Book puts it, "What is a story before it becomes words? Bare experience, a Buddhist monk might answer. Pure presence. The sensation, fleeting and ungraspable, of being a boy, of losing a father."

I enjoyed this book (though the Book did pontificate a bit too much), and pretty much sacrificed the last few days to simply sitting and reading. Now, I need to get a few things done. Like, clearing out a bit of the material detritus around here.