“The self-deconstructing novel may be good for a laugh or a sub-Zen reminder of the void, but its fastidious refusal of authorial authority at best illuminates and at worst exacerbates our mythic muddle. We seem to be forgetting (what our forebears clearly knew) that the winds of pneuma call upon us to
name the parts of desire as best we can. We cannot refuse this call because Mother Nature in her wisdom (or unwisdom) unlocked the instinctual primate codes by which when we were apes we used to navigate the seas of desire.

A good myth or poem stands in for these codes, addresses our appetitive anarchies, and offers safe
conduct to some life-enhancing energy by giving it a name; and a bad one does the opposite, ‘binding with briars my joys and desires.’ But in the absence of an authoritative myth or poem, the lights simply go out and the soul is closed down: no name, no game.

In other words, we have to play; and if we refuse, our robotic bodies are simply wired up by this week’s television commercials.”

(Dudley Young, Origins of the Sacred:The Ecstasies of Love and War)