Part 2, "Monsieur Ambivalence" interview
(Part 2 of our interview with Thomas Fuller, author of the soon-to-be-released, Monsieur Ambivalence, a post literate fable (IF SF PUBLISHING, Illustrated, 257 pp. $15)
Q: Blaise Pascal, the 17th century philosopher, plays a major role in the book.
A: Yes, quite, there'd be no book without him.
Q: The book is stuffed with Pascal references, quotes, such as this, my favorite, Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
A: Pascal is wonderful, chock-full like any great philosopher. The whole premise of book is the attempt of its major character to fulfill what Pascal thought was the cure to all of mankind's ills.
Q: And what is that?
A: To sit quietly by oneself in a room for at least one hour, the operative word being "quietly."
Q: It becomes an obsession for Monsieur Ambivalence, no?
A: O yes, and like any obsession, it's ultimately unfullfillable, though he comes tantalizingly close.
Q: What led you to Pascal?
A: I found a copy of Pensees, his great work, in an airport waiting room. I want to say it was a Penguin edition with a foreward by T.S. Eliot. I felt as if it was left there just for me, only later discovering that Pascal, a mathematician and physicist by training, who'd laid the groundwork of probability as a useful science, created the category of probability theory in fact, was born in Clermont-Ferrand very near the village where I'd gone to live. There seemed to be some sort of link-up. Do you know of "Pascal's Wager"--that given the possibility that God exists and assuming the gain or the loss possible through one's belief in God or disbelief, a sane person should live as though God exists, that there's infinitely more to be gained from gambling that God exists than there is in betting against God.
Q: Do you believe in God?
A: I'm ambivalent...certainly the possibility of God's existence has played a big part in my life, but then not believing in god plays a big part in a non-believer's life.
Q: In his attempt to sit quietly in a room for one hour, your main character withdraws in a way. And yet somehow stuff keeping happening, there's non-stop action.
A: Well yes, it's basically a quest book, a hero's journey. The more I read Pensees, the more it occured to me what a powerful, strong and mostly positive force plain old curiosity is. That to be curious is to take a real interest in the world, to be curious is our moral responsibility, to ask questions that can't be answered. I've always admired Maurice Blanchot's idea that "the answer is the misfortune of the question." Pascal was apparently insatiable--as a kid he conducted experiments with lighting on Puy de Dome, one of the old volacanos in the region. He invented the first adding machine--The Pasacline, a beautiful object--and near the end of his life he joined a religious order. There's a certain restlessness that plagues the truly curious, not to mention the interventions of social obligations, sexual considerations, making ends meet.
Q: It's pretty clear from the very beginning of the book that the main character is devoted to acheiving an ideal--that's he's left his homeland, America, and come to France not for a vacation but for a life purpose.
A: Our hero, Monsieur Ambivalence, realizes at some point that by attempting to do what Pascal said might cure all mankind's ills--sitting quietly in a room by oneself for one hour--is a worthwhile way to live one's life. But, like anything worthwhile, the quest is fraught with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and the great oddsmaker has stacked most of his chips against it, is at best ambivalent, at worst disinterested.
Part 3 tomorrow, the conclusion of our interview with Thomas Fuller.