Of mental health, Zen and the postmodern condition: Ruth Ozeki’s <i>The Book of Form and Emptiness</i> (2021)

The article examines the experiences of the main protagonist in Ruth Ozeki's 2021 novel <i>The Book of Form and Emptiness</i> from the perspective of the core gestalt of schizophrenia, and considers the results in terms of the novel's ontology. <i>The Book of Form and Emptiness</i> is a story of a boy who, after his father's death, starts hearing objects speak. He eventually realises that what he hears is his book and starts writing what he hears, thus producing the titular book. The self-referentiality of the plot facilitates the creation of the experiential platform governed by, as the novel's title suggests, the non-dualist ontology of Zen, at the core of which is the concept of emptiness as the fullness of all potential forms. Since emptiness conceptually aligns with the ontology of the emerging postmodern epoch, the experiential platform of the novel thus offers an insight into the phenomenology of Zen, as well as into the cultural milieus of postmodernity. Additionally, this experiential platform is also that of a boy who is diagnosed with prodromal schizophrenia. In order to identify instances of the potentially pathological experiences and sensations, I evaluated the boy's thoughts and behaviour using the phenomenological-psychopathological framework proposed by Škodlar and HenriksenŠkodlar and Henriksen (2019). I then examined whether the identified correspondents contribute to securing the post-Cartesian ontological status of the novel. The results reveal a high degree of correlation between the allegedly pathological experiences and the experiences conditioned by the emerging ontological order. The aim of my investigation was not to undermine the accuracy of the boy's diagnosis, but to stress the necessity of constant re-evaluations of what is pathological in respective sociohistorical conditions. The article also provides some clues about what literature can offer in that respect.