In my last post, A good bedtime book is like, I wrote about cradlesong nature of the storybooks people love. I also said, it's their indulgence that keeps their sleepy eyes glued to the page, and without it, there is no life. Today I want to expand this indulgence idea.
Indulgence, to some who has experienced it, transpires well, but what they in their heads connect with it maybe different from what I meant by it when I connected it to bedtime books. To others, it simply means nothing; perhaps they don't know what the word means, or they had never experienced that kind of indulgence - the one which is aroused by something like a novel or a storybook.
First of all- indulgence is no thrill. Rather, it's a complimentary to that. The kind of feeling you get as you read a page-turner airport thriller is not indulgence; it's curiosity, and pure adrenaline. Indulgence feels like a slow, steady stream of life - quietly and gentally taking you along.
Characters chatter over coffee-cups for some three chapters, and that thing keeps you actually glued, though you are hell bent to make fun of it once you have read it fully. That's indulgence. Now let's dive into some examples.
Harry Potter, my personal favourite bedtime, is a perfectly normal teenager (except he is a wizard, yes, but his emotions are completely human and matured in timely fashion). In the beginning, except for the searing scar on his forehead, he is not exposed to any larger-than-life problems. The rejection from his aunt's family is nowhere unseen in the real world. He is a brave boy, craving for his lost parents like any other would be, before finding out he is a wizard and he has enemies. But that doesn't end his normal life. He still goes to Hogwarts, studies for seven maddening years - yes, there wasn't any spell that could compress the course content, and for good! If there was one, millions of readers would have lost the sense of normal, slower pace of life that beat within Hogwarts. They would not have known about Harry's friends and foes, their unworldly abilities yet worldly emotions. There were spells that could do Harry's homework, but he still had to attend classes, take notes, and bear punishments! That gave a sense of routine to Harry's life filled with unworldly challenges. That gave the story a meaning for millions of its readers.
Another example that pops to my mind is Rudy Baylor's life in Rainmaker - a bestseller by John Grisham. (Lawsuite thrillers are no favourites of mine, but I read John Grisham simply because his extra-ordinary creation of routine life on pages. Abundant coffee cups and sandwiches!) Rudy Baylor is a law passout who stands amid an uncertain future due to his sudden job loss from a top notch law firm. He is a graduate with not-so-great aspirations and not-so-great credentials. In a rags-to-reaches tale of Black family who lost its son in cancer due to negligence by a big insurance firm, Rudy brings them a staggering 40 million verdict that he himself did not anticipate. But more striking feature of the plotline is how his own life flow: how he struggles for a job like any low-grade student, how he struggles for clients after having secured one, how he starts out his own firm with a seemingly dumb paralegal, how he deals with his equally perplexed love-affair in the middle of all this, and how he also makes justice with his casework - all this not so excellently, but quite diligently. If you read it, it seems like its not leading to any end - all Rudy does is to tumble between things he can't control. And yet the end arrives, a meaningful one, just like good and bad things emerge at any given moment of everyday life.
Take life of Michael Corleon before he assume's his father's position in Godfather. I truly revered Don Vito Corleon's character, I must say. But if somebody asks me what kept me turning the pages, it was Michael - Don's youngest son - without doubt. All he does is follow the course of the events like many of us do. Don is a hero, Michael is a person, though later he transform himself into someone of Don's stature - one of the real motives in Godfather's plot.
There are countless other examples. Frodo's quest in Lord of the Rings - pursuit of a common man. Or take Ken Follet's less celebrated novel Whiteout, where the female protagonist is a system security operator in a biotech lab - a profession with whom hundreds of thousands of security guards can connect to. And it's a tale woven around snowy Christmas nights, a time no one could have missed in their lives. Readers hinged upon these connections.
If you observe, indulgence has normalcy at its root, and normalcy does not necessarily come from Heros. It comes from seemingly normal people who, when faced with abnormal circumstances, follow their minds and hearts, and turn out to be heros. Normalcy also does not stem from extremely challenged people's life. Challenged people arouse sympathy, normal people arouse a sense of belonging. There are more normal people in the world than the challenged ones, and that explains why these "routine" novels became favourite bedtimes and bestsellers.
You feel nothing is happening since some hundred pages, yet for some reason you cannot betray it, because it feels like your life, your routine a precondition under which you live most of your days and do your tasks.
This normalcy falsifies the reader within you, who sometimes expects thrilling twists and dazzling turns. But it justifies a person within you whose struggles are not grand. It connects with inner you.
Perhaps this is something that you want when you say your prayers before you sleep.
Indulgence, to some who has experienced it, transpires well, but what they in their heads connect with it maybe different from what I meant by it when I connected it to bedtime books. To others, it simply means nothing; perhaps they don't know what the word means, or they had never experienced that kind of indulgence - the one which is aroused by something like a novel or a storybook.
First of all- indulgence is no thrill. Rather, it's a complimentary to that. The kind of feeling you get as you read a page-turner airport thriller is not indulgence; it's curiosity, and pure adrenaline. Indulgence feels like a slow, steady stream of life - quietly and gentally taking you along.
Characters chatter over coffee-cups for some three chapters, and that thing keeps you actually glued, though you are hell bent to make fun of it once you have read it fully. That's indulgence. Now let's dive into some examples.
Harry Potter, my personal favourite bedtime, is a perfectly normal teenager (except he is a wizard, yes, but his emotions are completely human and matured in timely fashion). In the beginning, except for the searing scar on his forehead, he is not exposed to any larger-than-life problems. The rejection from his aunt's family is nowhere unseen in the real world. He is a brave boy, craving for his lost parents like any other would be, before finding out he is a wizard and he has enemies. But that doesn't end his normal life. He still goes to Hogwarts, studies for seven maddening years - yes, there wasn't any spell that could compress the course content, and for good! If there was one, millions of readers would have lost the sense of normal, slower pace of life that beat within Hogwarts. They would not have known about Harry's friends and foes, their unworldly abilities yet worldly emotions. There were spells that could do Harry's homework, but he still had to attend classes, take notes, and bear punishments! That gave a sense of routine to Harry's life filled with unworldly challenges. That gave the story a meaning for millions of its readers.
Another example that pops to my mind is Rudy Baylor's life in Rainmaker - a bestseller by John Grisham. (Lawsuite thrillers are no favourites of mine, but I read John Grisham simply because his extra-ordinary creation of routine life on pages. Abundant coffee cups and sandwiches!) Rudy Baylor is a law passout who stands amid an uncertain future due to his sudden job loss from a top notch law firm. He is a graduate with not-so-great aspirations and not-so-great credentials. In a rags-to-reaches tale of Black family who lost its son in cancer due to negligence by a big insurance firm, Rudy brings them a staggering 40 million verdict that he himself did not anticipate. But more striking feature of the plotline is how his own life flow: how he struggles for a job like any low-grade student, how he struggles for clients after having secured one, how he starts out his own firm with a seemingly dumb paralegal, how he deals with his equally perplexed love-affair in the middle of all this, and how he also makes justice with his casework - all this not so excellently, but quite diligently. If you read it, it seems like its not leading to any end - all Rudy does is to tumble between things he can't control. And yet the end arrives, a meaningful one, just like good and bad things emerge at any given moment of everyday life.
Take life of Michael Corleon before he assume's his father's position in Godfather. I truly revered Don Vito Corleon's character, I must say. But if somebody asks me what kept me turning the pages, it was Michael - Don's youngest son - without doubt. All he does is follow the course of the events like many of us do. Don is a hero, Michael is a person, though later he transform himself into someone of Don's stature - one of the real motives in Godfather's plot.
There are countless other examples. Frodo's quest in Lord of the Rings - pursuit of a common man. Or take Ken Follet's less celebrated novel Whiteout, where the female protagonist is a system security operator in a biotech lab - a profession with whom hundreds of thousands of security guards can connect to. And it's a tale woven around snowy Christmas nights, a time no one could have missed in their lives. Readers hinged upon these connections.
If you observe, indulgence has normalcy at its root, and normalcy does not necessarily come from Heros. It comes from seemingly normal people who, when faced with abnormal circumstances, follow their minds and hearts, and turn out to be heros. Normalcy also does not stem from extremely challenged people's life. Challenged people arouse sympathy, normal people arouse a sense of belonging. There are more normal people in the world than the challenged ones, and that explains why these "routine" novels became favourite bedtimes and bestsellers.
You feel nothing is happening since some hundred pages, yet for some reason you cannot betray it, because it feels like your life, your routine a precondition under which you live most of your days and do your tasks.
This normalcy falsifies the reader within you, who sometimes expects thrilling twists and dazzling turns. But it justifies a person within you whose struggles are not grand. It connects with inner you.
Perhaps this is something that you want when you say your prayers before you sleep.
