Ozeki is very much in tune with other theorists, including Teresa Brennan, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and the novelist Gish Jen, who have all argued in different ways for a theory of the interdependent self as a critique of possessive individualism-not to mention works such as Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large or Wai-chee Dimock’s Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time that identify complex global cultural flows shaping “local” identity and history. It also asks these fascinating questions: in what ways do both Buddhist ethics and quantum physics model such an “entangled” sense of readerly and textual identity? What would it be like for a reader to experience a truly quantum/Taoist narrative? In Time Being Ozeki offers both Buddhism and quantum physics as counter-models to global capitalism’s pitch that freedom is best realized via market exchanges where self-interest dominates and “access” to others is guaranteed. What if we imagine a text as written for an ideal reader who will involve herself so intensely in the text’s story-world (its diegesis) that she may be driven to cross barriers of space and time in dream to influence its events? Ozeki’s novel presents us with just such a radical ethics of reading. Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being takes an invigoratingly different approach to modeling reading, empathy, and ethical action in a globe dominated by capital flows and information exchange.
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