Personality Week Day Six: The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Writing About

Last week we covered the character traits required to write well. I’m not even close to covering everything crawling around in my brain, so I’m extending the theme for another week. We’re starting with an excerpt from J.M. Coetzee’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, Disgrace.

“He notices one of his students on the path ahead of him. Her name is Melanie Isaacs, from his Romantics course. […] She is dawdling; he soon catches up with her. 'Hello,' he says. […] He is mildly smitten with her. It is no great matter: barely a term passes when he does not fall for one or other of his charges. Cape Town: a city prodigal of beauty, of beauties. Does she know he has an eye on her? Probably. Women are sensitive to it, to the weight of the desiring gaze.”

This is how we get to know Coetzee’s protagonist—an unlikable sexual predator who bears a stark resemblance to Coetzee himself. The author once headed up our local literature department, so his book has an extra layer of discomfort in store for the reader. Maybe Coetzee chose his protagonist’s job to serve the story, but maybe he chose it because it was a job he knew inside out and back to front.

Either way, the titular David Lurie undergoes a slow and uncomfortable transformation over the course of the book. His character is so convincing I’ve always imagined Coetzee was exaggerating elements of his own personality. As a writer myself, I imagine I’m right. Coetzee is not alone. Salinger, Wilde, and even Hemingway were exceptionally good at building fascinating, yet terrible, narrators. How did they do it?

I enjoy writing about unlikable protagonists, too. I create them by drawing from my own personality. I’m not a killer like the character in one of my novels, but I have enough darkness in me to understand her. I almost always use my inner life to create my fiction because I have no better sources. I have only one inner life, and that’s my own.

Self-reflection is a fiction writer’s best tool. There is much fruit to pluck from your internal existence, but only if you develop the capacity to feel comfortable with your darkness. You needn’t accept it, of course, but you should have the courage to look at it honestly. This concept is easily applied to fiction and memoirs but is even more imperative for poets. The better you understand yourself, your drives, and flaws, the better you’ll flesh out your characters.

As the Greek maxim goes, “know thyself.” Socrates also said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Similarly, an unexamined life is not worth writing about.