Will Buckingham

Fiction & Philosophy

Research

My first novel, Cargo Fever drew upon research undertaken at Pattimura University, Ambon, and for my second novel, The Descent of the Lyre, I was awarded an Arts Council research grant to travel to Bulgaria. It is not that I see research as important in the writing of fiction, but rather that I see the writing of fiction as a kind of research – as a way of exploring the world. For my next novel, I am plunging into Chinese history, and I have been spending the last couple of years intensively studying Chinese. This is a long-term project, but one that I’m currently finding enormously enriching.

In the summer of 2010, I was awarded a British Academy small research grant to travel to China, where I visited a number of universities (Shandong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou), as well as historical sites, temples and out-of-the-way towns, scouting out stories for the next novel, parts of which have already been published in a number of journals and small press publications such as The Packingtown Review, Interpreter’s House Magazine, Hearing Voices and elsewhere.

Beyond the realms of fiction, I have research interests in philosophy. My first philosophy book, Finding Our Sea Legs explores how stories may provide a form of phenomenology – giving us a sense of the “what is it like?” of experience – that may be helpful in thinking through ethics. This book draws on my PhD research into the work of Emmanuel Levinas and into traditions of storytelling.

I am currently following up several leads to do with philosophy as a form of practice – philosophy, in the words of Pierre Hadot, “as a way of life”. This brings together both my interests in the Western philosophical tradition and my engagement with Buddhist practice. I am not, I should add, “a Buddhist”, although I tend to consider myself as more or less Buddhish.

You can find a kind of scratch-pad for some of my unfolding thinking relating more or less to philosophy between 2005 and the end of 2010 by visiting thinkBuddha.org.

Current research interests

Phenomenological approaches to ethics Emmanuel Levinas is my own personal philosophical gadfly.

Philosophy as a kind of writing I write, I sometimes write philosophy, and I think that philosophy is a kind of literary art.

Non-Western approaches to creative writing (in particular the 文心雕龍) and to creativity in general.

Philosophical approaches to creativity Calvino and Lucretius are right up my street. I like literature machines, atoms that flow and swerve, combinatory poetics, that kind of thing.

Cheerful materialism I’ve always loved the sciences; but I’m sceptical of all that “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me” stuff. Why so glum?

Great auks I’m very fond, at the moment, of great auks. What can I say? There’s a novel in it, probably.

Website designed by Will Buckingham 2004-2011 | This site uses textpattern

XHTML | CSS | Contact