If only Jay Leno would do an interview about my book....Readers of the world, welcome to my little corner of cyberspace! As author of One Hand Clapping, I'd just like to pose a hypothetical situation: Suppose Jay Leno were to grant me an interview. Here's how this imaginary interview might go:
Leno: So, tell me, 'cause I'm clueless here, what's with the title, One Hand Clapping?
Wythe: You've heard of the Zen koan, right, that asks: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Leno: Zen koan? Is that like a riddle no one can answer? Give me a clue.
Wythe: If you try to find a logical answer to the question, then you've missed the point. The purpose of a koan is to frustrate your habitual thinking process, to force you into seeing the way words trap us in a mind-set that rules out other ways of knowing.
Leno: Gee, and I thought a good vocabulary meant you were smart. Maybe it just means you've got a one-track mind. But if words get in the way, why write a book using them?
Wythe: For purposes of communication, they're still our best tool. With One Hand Clapping, I wanted the title to suggest what I'm getting at, namely that you've missed the point of this story if you take it at face value. It's an allegory with different levels of meaning.
Leno: Okay, but isn't the story the most important thing? What's your book about?
Wythe: On the surface, it's the story of an escaped mental patient with a split personality problem. He hears these inner voices that try to control his life. One voice touts the perfect orgasm; the other cautions against it. This leads to some rather embarrassing moments.
Leno: That I can see. This guy must have a real identity crisis. Talk about mixed signals! His poor girlfriend must've had it bad. He's listening to these voices and she doesn't know whether to turn down the volume or turn out the lights! But, seriously, One Hand Clapping is based loosely on your own case study, isn't it? I mean, Doctor Wythe, I hate to put you on the spot, but you've got a kid, so I guess you finally resolved this thing with the voices, no?
Wythe: Well...actually, my book is a fictionalized account of what happened twenty-seven years ago. The voices represent different aspects of everyone's personality. We all have the ability to see both sides of every issue, or to be torn between two conflicting desires. The voices my protagonist hears symbolize the dilemma at the heart of existence: What role we wish to play in the movie of life.
Leno: Movie of life? Now there's a rich metaphor! Are you sure the voices weren't inspired by an old Jimmy Stewart film? It's a whacky life, or something like that. No disrespect intended, of course, but you'll have to run that movie of life thing by me again.
Wythe: In the movie of life, everyone has a script. Whether we know it or not, we each write our own parts. The trouble is, we get trapped in these roles because we forget who created them. The scripts we're following then become confused with who we are.
Leno: That's what happened to my Aunt Edna. She identified so strongly with Mae West that she started to talk like her. When she asked the mailman to come up and see her sometime, my uncle started hearing voices, too. They sounded like Betty Davis in that Baby Jane movie about the evil sister from hell.
Wythe: That's exactly what I'm talking about.
Leno: Your voices sounded like that, too?
Wythe: No, but role-playing can get you into a lot of trouble. Life becomes an illusion when you lose sight of the fact that everyone is playing a part. You can mistake a make-believe world of your own creation for the real thing.
Leno: That's what my uncle told me.
Wythe: But he probably didn't realize that he was doing it as well. Since nobody knows what lies behind that curtain we call reality, freedom resides in the realization that our life scripts are merely stories we tell ourselves.
Leno: I'm just telling myself the Jay Leno story?
Wythe: You got it.
Leno: That feels so fake, like I should've come up with a better plot.
Wythe: Not at all. Most people would love to play your role. But the point is, if we know it's a story, then we have the power to change our script, to be anyone we want. In the movie of life, we're all born losers...until that climactic scene when we see beyond the boundaries of the set and realize for the first time that it's just a play!
