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Instead of howling I write books.


We often contemplate upon various possibilities in literature and more so when we come across any metafictional narrative, and every such encounter leave us in awe of what we have achieved till now and what more could be done with literature, for we could only answer that question when our future traverses the realm of time to get buried under the depths of past. Such questions keep knocking at our consciousness, time and again, to examine the limits of literature and also to expand them.


The question one needs to really ask is that is it possible to write a genuine story at all, if one wants to; does any author of requisite skill and caliber capable of producing such a story which stands on its own? For the process of writing demands a particular rhythm, precision which one needs to overcome the creative inertia, moreover, the characters chosen by the author, at times, may behave on their own so it may so happen that those may choose the author to behave as per them.


The quintessential characteristics of metafiction involve the self-reflectiveness, the story reflects upon itself as if it is self-sufficient, the device of self-reflection is abundantly used in postmodernism and metafiction. Alejandro Zambra weaves in a unique narrative style wherein multiples stories are nested inside a larger story or perhaps the larger story reflects unto the smaller one. The narrator of book is an author himself who writes about the narrator of a book he is writing; the narrator of that book is also an author who writes about the narrator of a book he himself is writing; or perhaps it is other way around- from interior to exterior. Moreover, the narrator of book which the narrator of Zambra is writing about has a being of its own and expresses himself through creation of other story and the other narrator, and the process goes on to ad infinitum. It reminds me of Maurice Bhanchot whose all novels are self- reflective.


The book raises the basic questions about the process of writing itself in a way that the narrator of the book poses the question about the very premise of writing that is it really possible to attempt a genuine story about someone, something or even oneself, something which is sacred in itself and doesn’t need anything to refer to. An author works like a spy who peeps into others�� lives to look for various possibilities but doesn’t know what exactly he wants. The author takes this metafictional examination to deep into core of the very process of writing i.e. is an author capable of being unaffected by his past, could an author write with a Zen like attitude so that his pasts or memories won’t come to haunt him through his words?


The fundamental question is that could we write by keeping our past aside? Moreover, the stories which we tell through our writing, do they have existence of their own, in sense that they do not resemble the stories of people we come across in life. Or do we tell stories of other people who we encounter in our lives? Is it right to use stories of other people in our stories? And most importantly, are we capable of telling other people’s stories? Isn’t it so that however we try to reveal others�� stories, but we always end up sharing our own stories?


And we need to further deep delve into the core that what are our stories comprised of? Do words protects us or expose us? The narrator of the story perhaps writes to come back to his childhood; to relive the moments he lost there in the graveyard of time. Whatever way he tries, he always ends up with looking for childhood memories, to relive them, or perhaps to make peace with them and to get away from the ghost those memories. We long for time when we are lost, and everything is new so that we may start afresh with no baggage of the haunting past. The narrator or the author says that when we write something, we wash our hands of everything as if by that we may advance towards something and perhaps that’s why we lie so much that it becomes very difficult to write an honest and genuine story. It reminds me of autofiction genre, which has become quite popular in the recent times, so as to see it in the light of honesty to tell a story.


The author contemplates upon the problem of our past reincarnating itself through our stories and proposes that perhaps what we need are those odd little fragments of memory that have no beginning and no end, when we think about our past, we remember the sounds of the images, and we should simply describe these sounds, which the author calls “stains on memory�� and nothing more. However, we fall to the curse and habit of creating a ‘passable�� prose and end up producing ingenuine and obscure story. Though it is said that words are better than silence as proposed by the narrator that though his parents maintain silence to authoritarianism, he and his friends use words as to show their resistance; but we can’t save ourself from the cruel and stingy wounds of the words as they expose us in the process of writing our own stories, ‘echoes and hollows of the language�� define our life through their pattern, and that’s the risk an author has to take while writing stories.


Ways of Going Home alludes to the various possible (and perhaps impossible too) ways to writing a story, it is like a laboratory of an author wherein he not only actually shows by writing the story in multiple ways, putting into practice the very process of creation but it may also refer to multiple ways of remembering, understanding and accepting by making peace with our past. Writing may be a tricky vocation in which there may be melodrama for initially having wasted many nights on this useless passion, but gradually we start feeling comfortable with it, without looking for or feeling the need of any grandeur purpose or goal in it. However, it is a vocation which requires a perseverance of plenitude as it is also an expression of our solitude wherein, we seek validation from others, and it may not come easy at times.


Though the novel may be slim in size, a small story or series of attempt to write one based in the times of Pinochet, the structure of the novel consists of unique vastness like sea wherein the dynamic narrative is created using the alternating chapters of the narrator’s life and the book he is writing, wherein we find that the life of the narrator is repeated through endless revisions through the story of the book he is writing, the process goes on and on until it eventually dawn on you that perhaps it is not just about the narrative of the story in general but it also showcases the way a story is being written under political repression. At this juncture, it reminds me of Ismail Kadare, who we lost this year, who used parables, fables, allegories and folk stories to write under the rule of totalitarianism.


So, what could be said about the book which is so unique in structure and nature, is it a memoir or a love story? Well, it could be mentioned with authority that Ways of Going Home is about the survivors of the lost world, those who did not give in to the tortures of the dictatorship as they are main characters of the book, and it is also about those who grew up in the fallout of dictatorship and try to recreate the history of a generation which has no class, no rituals and no roots. The narrator of the book and the narrator of the book he is writing take writing as their divine tool to make peace with their haunting pasts, while the narrator longs for validation of his manuscript through the eyes of Eme, the narrator of the book he writes, helps his lover, Claudia to reclaim her past through their journey into the place of their childhood or as a character to reclaim her own existence which in a way depends on their past or our own past for that matter. It may be said that it isn’t love that unites the narrator and Claudia, rather it’s the love of memory.

We discover coincidences that inevitably bring us back to real life, to our youth, to childhood. Because we can’t, we don’t know how to talk about a movie or a book anymore; the moment has come when movies and novels don’t matter, only the time when we saw them, read them: where we were, what we were doing, who we were then.