Last week, bestselling novelist M. J. Rose (The Memorist) began a series of blog posts for Powells.com in which she will explore issues of memory and fiction with a variety of her favorite writers.

October 28, 2008:
On Memory and Fiction: Part One

My favorite novels pick me up, carry me off, and put me down smack in another time and place, and after I turn that last page and return to the present, I feel enriched. The here and now is more interesting to contemplate when contrasted with the past. Who we were explains so much of who we are.

In his autobiography, Goethe wrote:

One feeling which prevailed greatly with me, and could never find an expression odd enough for itself, was a sense of the past and present together in one — a phenomenon which brought something spectral into the present...It must not be forgotten that the closest unions are those of opposites.

It's a quote I've always found fascinating, and it resonates with me now even more since I've been writing a series of novels that play with the concept of reincarnation (The Reincarnationist [2007]; The Memorist [2008]).

These books have required me to do research going back as far as the ancient Indus Valley, covering subjects as diverse as binaural beats, the history of Central Park, meditation, the catacombs of Vienna, Vestal Virgins, the Napoleonic Wars, Kabala, and Beethoven's eating habits.... (read more)

"Bear!" Lisa shouts, holding the door open as he saunters into the bookstore.

Ryan greets Zooey, who follows right behind. The big yellow Lab headbutts Ryan on the thigh.

Lisa wants to know where they've been.

From behind the register, Collier spots Chester in the park, circling at top speed around the elephant statue while Oreo and Bagheera stand aside, amused. "The boys are back in town," Collier announces, satisfied.

Distracted by the scene outside, they don't see Bear nearly walk into a display table, installed since his last visit. Or Zooey studying the colorful new chairs up front, all swoopy and modern.

Zooey glances again at Lisa, Collier, and Ryan. Have Fup's friends always been so... so not young? As if he should talk, his hips racked, his snout going gray, nourished by his daily allotment of low-calorie kibble and glucosamine supplements.

In the aisles, they find Fup everywhere. Among the programming manuals where, once, overnight in the store, she invented the earthquake dance, dodging books as if they leapt off shelves. By the nook near topographic maps where she liked to sleep. In front of the big windows, strutting for tourists.

"Zooey," Ryan calls, "fetch!" A tennis ball comes rolling across the floor.