IT IS beneficial, occasionally, to take a fresh look at the genres in which we pigeonhole literature. In Frank Westerman's case, this would be 'creative non-fiction'. This is to take an autobiographical experience and re-enact it with the stylistic
freedom of a novel. The author will apply the grounding comfort of a story to make sense of what is otherwise a random collection of empirical facts.
Ararat is a catalogue of frictions in the physical world where science and religion have been forced to meet. The book takes its name from the mountain on which Noah's Ark is supposed to have run aground. Westerman feels innately driven to climb Ararat, prompting an analysis of characters and epiphanies, with his expressive licence, and leading towards his reasons for doing so.
The drama of the decision to climb begins a faith-testing deliverance through political bureaucracy and physical endurance. Spirituality is conspicuously missing from this list: there is no opportunity for reflection on his ascension. As dramatically as if he had been struck down by a bolt of lightning, the climax of the book is interrupted before he arrives at any spiritual or, indeed, narrative conclusion.
Besides surmounting Ararat, the feat achieved by Westerman is aligning his style with the nature of religion: a collection of empirical facts made coherent by the Great Narrator. The world of the religious fanatic is a warped one, where a man will swear a salamander is human, that oil and coal are rotting victims of The Flood, and where black holes lead to the gates of St Peter. In the final moments of the book, the importance becomes not the weighty themes, but why the author chooses to conclude with a genre-crossing moment of textus interruptus: the reader is immediately confronted with their own responsibility to interpret the challenges of life.
Ararat is written in a style so prosaic that the fusion of the worlds of fact and fiction are an impressive analogy for the sins committed not only by religion, but also science. He achieves this through the journey to Ararat, where life becomes filled with religious symbolism: broken dams, rising tides and falling ash and snow. All the world could be a fertile ground for metaphor – it just depends on how we want to see that world.
Edinburgh International Book Festival, Saturday, 12noon-1pm
The full article contains 403 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
