hundreds of brothers karamazov

I do believe that everyone has a novel in them, and a potentially great one at that. I should clarify - people don't carry the novel in them, but they write it effortlessly by simply living through each day. The power of the novel comes, at least in part, from its diametric opposition to the natural forces of our world. Narratives, just like their creators, are meaning making machines. They make sense of chaos, ascribe causality where it is invisible, and bestow the power of agency upon their characters. In a way, I see narrative as a form of idiosyncratic religion; the meanings and connections a person imbues events and relationships with are how we make sense of our world on every level, from the mundane to the metaphysical. The manner in which these connections (beliefs and philosophies) play out when in contact with the outside world, especially other agents, is the basis for a complete and whole story. I like to think that treating my life as a manuscript helps me to consider my actions more thoroughly, with the final aspiration of writing a great novel (living a good life).
A fascinating article published by the Atlantic, What Makes Us Happy?, explored its eponymous question by following 268 men for an astonishing 72 years, from their college years to their deaths, taking data in the form of surveys, letters, and interview transcripts. The documents, covering data as personal as masturbation reports, paint such a detailed portrait of the subjects that the study’s primary investigator described the files as “hundreds of Brother Karamazovs.” While I’m not sure I would make that strong a statement, his comments have remained in my head ever since I read the article. The ridiculous treasure trove of knowledge and experience each of us carry (imagine how long a novel consisting of daily writings over the course of a lifetime would be) reminds me that if we are willing to dig deep enough, to open and explore our worst fears and deepest insecurities, we are capable of telling some of the best stories ever told. They’ve already happened.
Of course, most people (myself included) aren’t quite at that point. Much of the stories we tell are heavily edited, often unbeknownst to us. Like the trauma narrative, on a much smaller scale. Much of the fun of reading is figuring out that puzzle, though: what the character removes, what the narrator is trying to tell us about that character. But in the end, I think the appeal of an individual’s narrative depends on the reader’s own narrative. To touch briefly on Panorama City, much of the novel’s appeal was in the contrast between the pace of my life, maybe the lives of all Stanford students (but I probably shouldn’t generalize), and Oppen Porter’s. His limited expectations of himself leads him to focus on the external world, taking each thing as it comes and considering it carefully. He is able to extract so much meaning from the banal because he never learned to write it off and keep moving forward. It makes me want to be a fry cook for a little while, crossing invisible lines in a place far from my little Madera.