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Mohsin Hamid on his enduring love of the second-person narrative Mohsin Hamid on his enduring love of the second-person narrative
(6 months later)
I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was "your" boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get "you". Make-believe storytelling, which is to say fiction, wasn't exclusively about being an observer – not for me, at least. There was this other strand as well, of being a participant.I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was "your" boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get "you". Make-believe storytelling, which is to say fiction, wasn't exclusively about being an observer – not for me, at least. There was this other strand as well, of being a participant.
Just before my family moved back to Pakistan, I encountered Dungeons and Dragons as a nine-year-old in California. That fantasy game was spellbinding for me. To understand the rules, you had to read books. But then you were free to create. It was collective imagining with a shared narrative. The Dungeon Master – a figure somewhere between an author and a referee – set in motion a tale that players spun together. It was as a DM, I'm pretty sure, that my proto-novelistic skills were first honed.Just before my family moved back to Pakistan, I encountered Dungeons and Dragons as a nine-year-old in California. That fantasy game was spellbinding for me. To understand the rules, you had to read books. But then you were free to create. It was collective imagining with a shared narrative. The Dungeon Master – a figure somewhere between an author and a referee – set in motion a tale that players spun together. It was as a DM, I'm pretty sure, that my proto-novelistic skills were first honed.
Of course, I read a lot too. There seemed to be a constant stream of asides directly addressing the reader in children's books, a sort of conspiratorial "you" that cropped up again and again. Then there were those hybrids of role-playing game and children's book: game-books like the Choose Your Own Adventure series, which briefly, in that time before computers, were readily available, occupied a full shelf of my neighbourhood bookshop in Lahore.Of course, I read a lot too. There seemed to be a constant stream of asides directly addressing the reader in children's books, a sort of conspiratorial "you" that cropped up again and again. Then there were those hybrids of role-playing game and children's book: game-books like the Choose Your Own Adventure series, which briefly, in that time before computers, were readily available, occupied a full shelf of my neighbourhood bookshop in Lahore.
Slowly, from comic books and SF and swords and sorcery, my reading interests stretched out in my late teens to encompass Hemingway and Tolstoy and Márquez. When I moved back to America for college and signed up for a creative writing course, I had no idea I wanted to be a writer. When the semester ended, I didn't want to be anything else.Slowly, from comic books and SF and swords and sorcery, my reading interests stretched out in my late teens to encompass Hemingway and Tolstoy and Márquez. When I moved back to America for college and signed up for a creative writing course, I had no idea I wanted to be a writer. When the semester ended, I didn't want to be anything else.
In my final year, as I was starting my first novel, I read The Fall by Camus. It is written as a dramatic monologue, with the protagonist constantly addressing the reader as "you," and it changed how I thought books could work. I was amazed by the potential of the "you", of how much space it could open up in fiction.In my final year, as I was starting my first novel, I read The Fall by Camus. It is written as a dramatic monologue, with the protagonist constantly addressing the reader as "you," and it changed how I thought books could work. I was amazed by the potential of the "you", of how much space it could open up in fiction.
The book I was writing then, back in 1993, became Moth Smoke, the tale of a pot-smoking ex-banker who falls disastrously in love with his best friend's wife. You, the reader, are cast as his judge. The story has what might be called a realistic narrative – there is no magic, no aliens – but the frame of the trial that it uses isn't realism. It is something else: make-believe, play, with "you" given an active role.The book I was writing then, back in 1993, became Moth Smoke, the tale of a pot-smoking ex-banker who falls disastrously in love with his best friend's wife. You, the reader, are cast as his judge. The story has what might be called a realistic narrative – there is no magic, no aliens – but the frame of the trial that it uses isn't realism. It is something else: make-believe, play, with "you" given an active role.
In my second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I wanted to explore this further, push the boundaries of what I knew how to do with "you". Camus's novel was a guide, but my project was my own: to try to show, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, how feelings already present inside a reader – fear, anger, suspicion, loyalty – could colour a narrative so that the reader, as much as or even more than the writer, is deciding what is really going on. I wanted the novel to be a kind of mirror, to let readers see how they are reading, and, therefore, how they are living and how they are deciding their politics.In my second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I wanted to explore this further, push the boundaries of what I knew how to do with "you". Camus's novel was a guide, but my project was my own: to try to show, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, how feelings already present inside a reader – fear, anger, suspicion, loyalty – could colour a narrative so that the reader, as much as or even more than the writer, is deciding what is really going on. I wanted the novel to be a kind of mirror, to let readers see how they are reading, and, therefore, how they are living and how they are deciding their politics.
By the time I started work on my third book, I'd come to believe that novels weren't passive forms of entertainment. Novels were a way for readers to create, not just for writers to do so. Novels were different from, say, film and television, because readers got more of the source code – the abstract symbols we call letters and words – and assembled more of the story themselves. Novels didn't come with soundtracks or casting directors.By the time I started work on my third book, I'd come to believe that novels weren't passive forms of entertainment. Novels were a way for readers to create, not just for writers to do so. Novels were different from, say, film and television, because readers got more of the source code – the abstract symbols we call letters and words – and assembled more of the story themselves. Novels didn't come with soundtracks or casting directors.
I thought my next novel should try to be explicit about this, about the nature of the reader-writer relationship, the notion that "you" could simultaneously be audience and character and maker. My growing sense was that a kind of self-expression (and self-transcendence, and even self-help) is central to what fiction does, both for writers and for readers. And so How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia was born, a novel that is a self-help book that is a second-person life-story that is an invitation to create. Together.I thought my next novel should try to be explicit about this, about the nature of the reader-writer relationship, the notion that "you" could simultaneously be audience and character and maker. My growing sense was that a kind of self-expression (and self-transcendence, and even self-help) is central to what fiction does, both for writers and for readers. And so How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia was born, a novel that is a self-help book that is a second-person life-story that is an invitation to create. Together.
We're born with an in-built capacity for language. It is wired into our brains, just as an in-built capacity for breathing is wired into our lungs. We need language. We need language to tell stories. We need stories to create a self. We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.We're born with an in-built capacity for language. It is wired into our brains, just as an in-built capacity for breathing is wired into our lungs. We need language. We need language to tell stories. We need stories to create a self. We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.
The self we create is a fiction. On this point, religion and cognitive neuroscience converge. When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image. I think this protagonist, this self, often recognises that it is a fictional construct, but it also recognises that thinking of itself as such might cause it to disintegrate.The self we create is a fiction. On this point, religion and cognitive neuroscience converge. When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image. I think this protagonist, this self, often recognises that it is a fictional construct, but it also recognises that thinking of itself as such might cause it to disintegrate.
Maybe, therefore, it prefers to encounter itself obliquely. Maybe our selves are more comfortable exploring their fictional natures in stories that are themselves avowedly fictional – in novels, for example. Maybe novels are where our selves get to put up their feet, take off their clothes and makeup and dentures, cut loose with an echoing fart, and be a little truer to what they are for a bit, before they are once more pressed into service, sealed in their uniforms, and dispatched to face a reality in which they can't, for good reason, entirely believe.Maybe, therefore, it prefers to encounter itself obliquely. Maybe our selves are more comfortable exploring their fictional natures in stories that are themselves avowedly fictional – in novels, for example. Maybe novels are where our selves get to put up their feet, take off their clothes and makeup and dentures, cut loose with an echoing fart, and be a little truer to what they are for a bit, before they are once more pressed into service, sealed in their uniforms, and dispatched to face a reality in which they can't, for good reason, entirely believe.
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