Everyday Canvas

The Power of Early Memories and Julian Barnes

Prompt: Julian Barnes writes in his book England, England, “Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.”
Do you believe strong early memories offer clues to what people can become later in their lives? And how do you think this idea will play out in your characters’ actions?

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Since our brains are endless depositories and filters for anything important, any information that goes into them is there for safekeeping. For that reason, strong early memories impact people’s actions later in life.

Sometimes we are afraid to do something or we shy away from certain people without specifically knowing why. More often than not, this may have something to do with an earlier experience. For the same reason, to treat phobias, therapists urge people to face their fears and put themselves in the situation that they have a phobia for. The idea is to place a more positive memory on top of the negative one to limit or eradicate its force.

Taking off from this idea, imagine how much an earlier childhood experience will have a bearing on the characters we create. It is a good idea to think about a character’s powerful early memories chronologically or topically and review them. A hero or heroine will be afraid of commitment, for example, if couples fighting is all they have seen earlier in life. Neither would a 007 character become a 007 character if he were told constantly in his childhood that he shouldn’t jump into things for he'd get badly hurt. Yet, I can imagine a truly wimpy character, after finding the right circumstance and motivation, becoming a 007 character and this psychological transformation passing through my pen or achieved on my keyboard. Surely, I’d have to explain that character’s backstory to show his or her character arc.

Talking of the quote in the prompt, Julian Barnes is a well-read teacher and one of my favorite authors, especially after I’ve read his book Through the Window, a compilation of essays, in which he writes mostly about books and their import to culture. He is mostly noted and has won awards for his novels, however. Reading Julian Barnes makes me think more deeply than I usually do.

Here is a link to a Julian-Barnes interview in the Paris Review’s Art of Fiction page, inside the Winter 2000 edition. It offers a portion of his ideas on literature and writing.

{link: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/562/the-art-of-fiction-no-165-julian-ba...}