Popular Fiction in The Light of Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" and "Eleven Minutes"

                                     

                 

             Popular Fiction in The Light of Paulo Coelho’s

                  “ The Alchemist” and “Eleven Minutes”

                                  

                                  Megha Trivedi

                            

                             ( Second Year B.A.)

            

              Nandkunvarba Mahila College, Bhavnagar

“The Alchemist” and “Eleven Minutes” have now become an important contribution to the field of popular fiction. But one should ask a question that what makes these two fictions ‘Popular fiction’, the straight answer would be they encompass in them certain traits of popular fiction like, wide spread appeal, large readership, use of simple and lucid language, use of popular and interesting topics, less ambiguity of plot and many more. It is often argued the popular fiction are not concerned with the serious aspects of life and they aimed at entertainment rather than message or moral but when we read novels of Paulo Coelho we learn that they offer us a message, teach us something vital about life and at the same time they entertain us.

But the novels talks about journey: from inexperience to experience, from the world without to the world within, from one place to another in search of dreams. Paulo Coelho himself says that he tries to share with his readers his inner experiences and basically his spiritual quest. He doesn’t have to explain about the universe but he wants to share. Through these novels Paulo Coelho suggests that even if everything that we want is near us, we should move forward patiently to find the ultimate truth. The reasons for popular fictions or literature being considered as inferior would be the bias which people hold for about popular fictions in general. The critics have not tried to find anything from the works belonging to the field. Now the time has come when we need to change our attitude towards popular fictions as they are widely read.

This paper therefore attempts to look into the impact of both these novels by focusing on the genre popular fiction as they have occupied an important place in the wide perspective of world literature. 

Popular literature is the literature which is available to the masses and has widespread appeal. The purpose of popular literature is to inform and entertain the general public. It also caters to the taste of the people of a particular time and covers the variety of public interest and deals with simple, compelling and popular topics. Such literature encompasses fundamentally simple emotional and intellectual content in a basic mythological structure.Unlike serious and intellectual literature, popular literature appeals to the people of a particular period. It transmutes archetypes into the literary coin of a particular time and place and provides a good index to views widely shared within a society during the period of popularity.

Generally, the term popular literature signifies literature immediately popular, widely read and quickly forgotten. It does not appeal the whole society but the appeal is often to segments within society that shares and has common interest. In nineteenth and twentieth centuries such segments have become large enough to provide the incentive of lucrative markets. We can see the rise of adventure story, detective story, fantasy, campus novel, popular romance, science fiction that stretches the simple emotional content and their framework is suitable to the interest of the intended audience. This sort of literature targets an immediate audience. The works that fall under this genre are often unsophisticated in the way they handle essential material. When they are well written and challenge the conventions of genre, they sometimes rise to a more general and longer lasting popularity.

Why are some popular fiction also rated as ' great literature'? Because piece of fiction is produced not just once, but time and again for each succeeding generation and that it is ' read ' differently by different generations and that each making it's own sense of the text for its purposes. Second these text are constantly re-produced in other ways for examples book Alchemist is translated in Gujarati language , and sometime turned into films, TV plays , radio dramas etc.

Some Novel, movie became popular because they believe or known or know to be popular, who have such a heightened sense of market demand and 'taste' that they must know what they are ' creating' is in fact, a product. So one characteristics of ' popular' fiction must be that it's relationship to the market, it's place in the socio- economic relation of production is place in the socio-economic relation of production, is different from that of ' Non- popular fiction'.

To write about popular fictions is to write about history. Popular fiction then need to be read and analyzed not as some kind of sugar coated sociology, but as narratives which negotiate no less than the classic texts, the connection between ' writs, history and ideology'.

The Alchemist

Paulo coelho's The Alchemist is a book of philosophic interest. As said in subtitle, it is novel that encapsulates the ways to follow one's dream without giving up. The mystery plays an important role in the novel but does not lead one to believe that the criteria and philosophies which are presented are to become successful because the exactness of mystery is under question and presents no ideal way to success. The mystery is possible only when one has strong faith in his dream and works hard to realize his dreams.

If we have the courage to disinter our dreams, we are then confronted by the second obstacle: love. We realise and know that what we want to do but we are afraid of hurting and abandoning those who are around us to peruse our dream. We fail to realise that love is just a further impetus which will not prevent us going forwards. We are not even able to realise that our dear ones' love inspires us to fulfil our dream.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against third obstacle: the fear of defeats we will have to face on the path. Any one, who fights and works harad for the realisation of their drem, suffers far more when their dream to materialise their dream does not work. So we have the fear of defeats and failure. But we have to keep patience in difficult times and should realise that when we want something the whole universe conspires in our favour, even though we don't know how.

This reminds us of Walt Whitman who says in Song of Myself:

“ Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me at first place, search another. I stop somewhere, waiting for you.”

Success always awaits us, what we need to do is that we should keep patience and should trust ourselves.

The novel The Alchemist tells the tale of Santiago, a shepherd boy who has a dream and courage to follow it. He , on his way to materialise his dream, confronts all the obstacles. Santiago, in spite of the obstacles, does not leave his dream and works hard to realise his dream. On his way to realise his dream Santiago overcomes all the impediments which come in the form of family, love and his own self. First he confronts his family and love and when he succeeds to deal with these two hurdles, he finds his own self standing between him and his destination. Many times in the novel we find that he decides to give up the journey which he has undertaken in search of treasure because he becomes afraid of the defeats and the pains, he is likely to face on the path. But he conquers all the difficulties and after listening to ' the sings ' ventures in his personal Ulysses like journey of exploration and self-discovery, symbolically searching for a hidden treasure located near the Pyramids in Egypt.

Dreams, symbols, sings, and adventure follow readers like echoes of ancient wise voice in the ' The Alchemist ' . In the novel we find that an atmosphere of medievel mysticism and the songs of desert are combined. With this symbolic masterpiece Coelho states that we should not avoid our destines, and urges us to follow our dreams because to find our ' Personal Myth ' and our mission on Earth is the way to find ' God ' , meaning happiness, fulfilment, and ultimate purpose of creation.

Eleven Minutes

Sex has been one of the main preoccupation of the writers around the world. Not only the modern but the writers of ancient age also have written on the Subject. Writers from all parts of the world, from Greece to Japan, from Japan to Egypt have written about sex. The thousands of books have published on the subject and yet we have very little understanding about it. Sex is indispensable part of human life which neither men nor women can deny but when it comes to sexuality, we do not have courage to tell the truth about what we feel. Men lack the courage to say to women: teach me about your body. And women, likewise, never say to men: learn about me and my body. We are still with the primitive survival instinct of the species, with the fake freedom of being able to speak openly about the subject at any restaurant table, only to discover within the four walls of a room that we are frightened, fragile, insecure animal. What should be the reason why we fall short of the other person's expectations? Not only that, we are not even able express our expectations so far as sex is concerned. We forger that sex is the manifestation of a spiritual energy called love. It is very difficult to this realisation practic, but we must try.

The first thing to remember is during the sexual act there two opposing states working alonside each other: relaxation and tension. The problem arises

is that how can we reconcile these two states? Very simple, stop being afraid of making mistakes. If we embark on the search for pleasure wholeheartedly, we gradually feel the body becoming tense as the string of an archer's bow, while the mind relaxes like the arrow preparing itself to be released. The brain is no longer in control of the process, which is guided instead by the heart. And the heart uses all the five senses to reveal itself to the other person: touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste are all involved, just are in experiences of religious ecstasy. It is strange that, in most sexual encounters, people uses only touch and sight, and by doing so diminish that sense of plenitude.

If we give ourselves entirely, we will break through any mental block our partner may have, however impenetrable, because the act of giving ourselves means: ' we trust our partner '.At that moment the real sexual energy comes into play and that energy exists not only in those areas we term the erogenous zones, but also it spreads throughout the whole body into every hair and every pore. Every millimetre is now emanating a different light, one that is recognise and absorbed by the other body.

But the fact is that none these can be learned from a book, which can only share with the reader the author's own experience or views. Sex means, above all having courage to experience our own paradoxes, own individuality, our willingness to surrender ourselves. This might be the reason, which inspired Paulo Coelho to write Eleven Minutes, in order to find out if, at this stage in his life, at 55 years of age, does he has the courage to learn everything that life has tried to teach him on the subject: sex.

Eleven Minutes does not set out to be a manual or a treatise about a man and a women confronted by the unknown world of sexual relationship. It is an analysis of writers own trajectory, without passing judgement on his own experience. Paulo Coelho himself is of the opinion that it took him a long time to learn that the coming together of two bodies is more than just a response to certain physical stimuli or to the survival instinct of the species. The truth is that it carries with it all the cultural baggage of mankind and humanity.

Paulo Coelho in Eleven Minutes writes about the sacred side of sex. He was inspired by the life of Brazilian Prostitute living in Switzerland. During his visit to Geneva in 2000, Coelho met a women who had worked in various clubs under the alias Maria. It was after hearing is story and the story of several other young women that coelho decided it would be an excellent way to approach a subject in which he had a long – standing interest. He explains: “ To write about the sacred side of sex, it was necessary to understand why it had been so profaned”

All these question underpin Eleven Minutes which tells the tale of Maria, a navie young woman from Brazil who becomes a high-class prostitute in Switzerland. ( The title of the book refers to the hypothetical average duration for an act of coitus.) And while Coelho comes down firmly in the end for the reality of a holy carnality,the path he takes to that affirmation acknowlwdges completely the snares and labyrinths awaiting any explorer of the fusion of body and soul. Paulo Coelho in Eleven Minutes sensitively explores the sacred nature of sex and love and invites to confront our own prejudices and demons. He also invites us to embarace our own ' inner light '. In this novel Coelho has nicely differentiated sex from sex in the context of love.

The novel opens with a striking: “ Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria”. But as the novel progresses Coelho feels the immediate need to break the fourth wall and address the reader about the propriety of propriety of yoking and connecting fairy- tale beginnings with the subject matter of profane love. In this novel Paulo Coelho emerges as a writer with an extra literary reputation, as a guru and New age spokesperson, in the grand manner of Khalil Gibran.

None of the characters other than Maria and, to some extent, Ralf ( who, in light of his parallel worldly successes and troubles with wives, may be an avatar of Coelho himself ) , is any deeper than his functionality demands. For instance, Maria's best friend in Geneva is a female librarian known as “ the librarian ''. Her main role is to deliver a lecture on clitoral orgasms. Likewise, Coelho sketches in the settings just enough to serve as backdropes to Maria's quest.

“ Although my aim is to understand love, and although I suffer to think of the people to whom I gave my heart, I see that those who touched my heart, failed to arouse my body, and those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart”. ( Maria, Eleven Minutes , Page no – 16 )

“ When you want something, whole universe conspires in helping you to achieve it ''. ( The Alchemist , Page no – 38 )

The above lines from the present two novels shows that how he can think two different ways. The previous one is about sex; about sex in the context of love. Here he talks about realistic aspects of life and dissatisfaction of human to what they have and quest for what they don't have. The later one shows the effect of Magic Realism. The lines show his absolute faith in dreams which for many people are just something we should not trust ( the dreams are unrealistic ) but in the work The Alchemist he has shown his faith in dream and not only that he has made the reader dream and follow dreams. He justifies his contradiction in the following lines,

“ Some books make us dream, other us back to reality, but there is no getting away from what is most important to an author: being honest in what one writes ''.

The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes are in different manner. They differ in style as well as in content but the protagonists struggle to realize their dreams and themselves in both the novels are identical.

The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes are now has become an important contributation to the field of popular fiction. But one should ask a question that what makes these two fictions ' Popular fiction ' , the strait answer would be they encompass in them certain trites of popular fiction like, wide spread appeal , large readership, use of simple and lucid language, use of popular and interesting topics, less ambiguity of plot and many more. It is often argued the popular fiction are not concerned with the serious aspects of life and they aimed at entertainment rather than message or moral but when we read the novels of

Paulo Coelho we learn that they offer us a message, teach us something vital about life and at same time they entertain us.

Both the novels talks about journey: from inexperience to experience, from the world without to the world within, from one place to another in search of dreams. Paulo Coelho himself says that he tries to share with readers his inner experience and basically spiritual quest. He doesn't have to explain about the universe but he wants to share. Through these novels Paulo Coelho suggests that even if everything that we want is near us but we should go forward to find that because there are no shortcuts.

The thing which made Coelho and books popular world is that he always tries to be straightforward without being superficial. He writes about the topics which interest him, not just things that others might want to tead about. He says that the readers are intelligent people. If the readers feel that there is something which is repeated in his books, they will stop reading them. He himself is always surprised by what he writes, and that he says gives life to his books and makes his books popular worldwide.

References

1. Coelho, Paulo. The Alchemist. Trans R. Clarke. New Delhi: HarperCollins publisher India. 1998.

2. Coelho, Paulo. Eleven Minutes. Margaret Jull Costa. New Delhi: HarperCollins publisher India. 2003.

3. Coelho, Paulo. Hell Archives. trans. Margaret Jull Costa. London: 1982.

4. Humm, Peter, paul stigant and peter Widdowson. ed. Popular fictions, Essays in Literature and History, London and New York: Methun. 1986.

5. Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass and Other Writings. ed. Michael Moon. New York: Yew York University press. 1965.