The Book of Strangers

Ian Dallas, in the novel The Book of Strangers, explores three events which focus on the development and enlightenment of the main librarian at State University Library. The three events are the librarian's evolution from a focus on words and the mind to a realm where words and rationality are transcended; his mysterious "decision" to give up the "white hash" which he had previously believed to be the means to enlightenment; and his discovery of a God and spirituality rooted not in duty but in delight. Together, these three events are crucial in the narrator's spiritual awakening, and lead him to discover that what he has been seeking all along is the knowledge and experience of his own self.

The future world in which the protagonist lives at the beginning of the novel is rooted in technology, rationality, social and mental control, and is without spirituality or independent thinking. His own work focuses on "sound impulses in cortical communication" (12).

However, before long he is troubled by an unnamed force working on him, an irrational feeling. He is drawn by a picture left by the previous head librarian, whose disappearance was a complete mystery. He reads a paradoxical inscription on the back of the picture: "This knowledge cannot be attained by seeking it, but only those who seek it find it. Bayazid of Bistam" (14). A "yearning" emerges in his head where only blind conformity had previously existed.

The narrator does not know what it is he desires at first, but

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and who claims to be a man of God, a devout Muslim. However, it is clear that Nasir is playing an unexpected part in the narrator's spiritual advancement, a step which has not to do with the use or abuse of drugs but with transcending drugs and the belief that they are any sort of means to approach spirituality. Indeed, after smoking the drug for a number of days, the narrator come to an awakening with respect to this powerful "white hash." He has previously believed that using the drug would mean that he "could not fail to tune into the movements" (72) of the man he was searching for, the previous head librarian. However, On the fourth day, I awoke and went to prepare my morning pipe. I unwrapped the pale golden "white" hashish and stared at it. I held the pipe in my hands, but did not fill it. I put it down. I covered the hashish, wrapped it in a large envelope, and set out for Nasir's, strangely elated and eager to see him (72). What is interesting about this awakening is that for the first time the narrator has come to his own conclusion---through his experience, intuition and non-rational perception---with respect to the right path to take on his spiritual quest. He feels strangely elated because this is precisely what

Category: Literature - T