Brian Burt's Blog: Work in Progress - Posts Tagged "richard-bach"

Like millions of others, I first read Richard Bach's classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull in my youth and found it profoundly wise in a simple, almost elemental way. Soon after, I came across Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah and found its core philosophy equally compelling. (Heck, it features an incognito messiah who hails from Fort Wayne, IN; as a Fort Wayne kid, how could I not be drawn in by that? ;-) In the novel, Donald Shimoda imparts his wisdom to Bach (who serves as both author / "chronicler" and disciple), revealing the illusory nature of what most of us accept as "reality" and training "Bach the character" to exert control over his life, to shape his own reality. It's an appealing world view, communicated in simple prose with oft-quoted, memorable passages.

Both of those novels left a strong impression on my younger self. So, when my wife brought home Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit from our local library book sale, I was excited to see what else Mr. Bach had to teach.

Time, and age (which this novel would scoldingly remind me are leaving their mark only because I foolishly accept the false narrative of mortality) have made me more jaded and less in touch with my youthful sense of wonder, evidently. This book did not move me in the way Bach's earlier works did. I suspect this may say more about me than about the author.

Now that I'm writing fiction myself, Bach's habit of overtly inserting himself into his novels as a (or the) central character strikes me as intrusive, jarring, and a bit narcissistic. In this book, he actually plays two main characters, in a way: himself as a "sixty-something" (if one surrenders to the shared illusion of spacetime) communing with the inner child he imprisoned deep within his own psyche decades ago. Dickie (the boy) just wants to understand the collected wisdom of Richard (the wizened older version) so he can "short-circuit" the traditional, painful learning process and perhaps take his life in a different direction.

As always, there are some gems in Bach's unique style of "philosophiction," but the weird blurring of the lines between fiction and autobiography becomes distracting and somewhat murky. And, in fairness to the author, that may be exactly the effect he wants to achieve in order to drive his point home. Reality, spacetime, are merely convenient shared constructs that allow us eternal souls to "play a game" together, to learn and compete and glean new wisdom from the struggle.

So - to mirror the novel in a way - the old, cynical me is struggling to embrace the message that the younger, more innocent me found enchanting in the earlier books. My inner child clings to the lessons of Seagull and Illusions, while the grumpy old man wonders if he should have run from Running from Safety.

Maybe they're both right. I don't want to spoil things for that kid back in Fort Wayne for whom Bach's philosophy resonated so clearly. So, to preserve his illusion, I'll forego future Bach books and will let him hold on to the magic of those fondly remembered words with wings.

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