SHARJAH: Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch
(pic) believes that the endless data in the digital world is making humans more confused than ever.
“We’re so convinced that facts and data and information is going to save us all. And yet look around. We are literally living with the greatest amount of information and data that has ever existed.
“And we know nothing. We know nothing about ourselves. We are more lost than we have ever been,” he said, at the ongoing Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF), here. Daily Express was among selected global media regularly invited to cover the 11-day event.
On his no-nonsense approach to explaining what authentic art form is and its positive impact on modern society, Lynch also cautioned that Art has become entertainment and that this has, in turn, become more of a “distraction”.
Citing his award-winning book, “Prophet Song”, he said the reason readers are responding well to his metaphysical form of fiction is due in part to the feeling of validation to the protagonist’s experiences.
The former film critic and sub-editor at a defunct Irish newspaper, Lynch currently teaches creative writing in Maynooth University.
Having done thousands of film reviews before becoming an author, he noticed how the art world had transformed into a form of entertainment, which led to it being used as distraction from reality.
“So much of what we do in modern society is about entertainment. It’s about just switching off after a day and putting on Netflix and not engaging with that aspect of self which gives meaning to who we are in the world. But the tragic is the human condition.
“Because we don’t know ourselves. We stumble and step blindly into trap doors all of the time. And it’s the job of art to represent that back to us.
“Death is the absolute. We’re all going to meet it. Suffering is the absolute. We’re all going to meet it. Impermanence, loss is the absolute,” Lynch said, not mincing words to prove his point.
“How are we going to think about these things if we are completely and utterly distracted and entertained?”
Nevertheless, he said an interesting consolation is there is always a place for serious art.
“We need to be entertained. We need to laugh. But art has to be there for a reason.
“But we’ve downgraded art to entertainment, largely, in our culture now. And in the last few years, we’ve seen the downgrading of entertainment to distraction. And so now, we’re not even present with ourselves.
“We’re being distracted. And that internal relationship we have with ourselves is being fragmented. So we’re becoming alienated from ourselves.”
He sees that as a very dangerous place to be for a civilization, for any people, when people no longer are fully present within themselves.
“If you think back to how we were before, you know, truly the advent of modern technology, we were beings in the world. We were beings,” he said, waxing philosophical.
“We were in the world. But now we’re not in the world. And now we’re so not in the world that we’re completely fragmented within ourselves.”
He sees a world where we’re fragmented within ourselves as a dangerous world.
“How do you give yourself meaning? How do you go on? What is the nature of hope? How do you read reality? Like the problem of reality is a huge part of this book.
“We talk about a post-truth world and there’s no doubt that we’re in that space right now for all of us. But Eilish Stack cannot read reality,” Lynch said, referring to the book’s protagonist.
The book revolves around Eilish who is trying to keep her family together. Her husband is arrested, her son has gone missing, and she is tasked to protect her family.
Lynch went on to describe Eilish’s naivety about what’s happening.
“She hopes that the world of law and order and human rights is going to prevail. She presumes in a certain way it’s going to prevail.
“These are deeply metaphysical problems about human knowledge and just how we know who we are and what we are in the world and how to read the world. These problems are fascinating to me because we can’t solve all their questions. Fiction like this can only ask questions.”
Coming from a journalistic background, Lynch found himself unable to stray from his values – making readers see the truth even while writing fiction.
“They sense truth. They sense that what is being told is not playing with them. It’s not toying with them,” is how he described readers perceiving his work.
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