Questions of Perspective is a book by Daniel Maunz that was released May 14, 2020. Daniel reached out to endev42 for a review back in February of 2020. Due to work, reading backlogs, and all the other unimportant necessities that make up life, time just didn't permit us to get to it. However, the book has been taking the internet by storm. Glowing reviews can be found on IndieReader, Goodreads, Amazon, and even independent blogs like Amanja Reads Too Much—a blogging site that went on to add the book to their 10 Great Books You’ve Never Heard Of list. To quote the IndieReader:
Being best friends with God has its benefits…and its drawbacks. Author Daniel Maunz examines both in QUESTIONS OF PERSPECTIVE, a quirky and endearing novel about friendship, love, and the meaning of life. (Hint: The meaning of life is friendship and love.)
On that note, we invited Daniel to endev42 as a guest blogger. Below is what he had to say on his book and how it relates to the meaning of life ... and honestly, after reading what he had to say, it makes us just that much more excited to read it.
Guest Post - Daniel Maunz
After graduating from law school in 2004, I spent the next ten-and-a-half years of my life as a litigator. It was, for many reasons, a lonely existence where anxiety was unavoidable. On those days where I did not have sufficient work to keep me busy, I was faced with the stress of not making the billable hour requirements set by my firm, which left little room for an “off” day. More often, the volume of work I had to deal with required me to work deep into the evenings (and many weekends), leaving me with little time or energy outside of work to pursue any creative pursuits in furtherance of my own mental well-being. On top of that, litigation is one of those rare fields (along with professional sports and espionage) where you are faced with the constant fact that other people with similar training are out there actively trying to make you fail, eager to exploit any mistake that may be made. It was a rough ten years. A funny thing about searching for the meaning of life is that, as difficult as it may be to find, it can be incredibly easy to find what it is not. And after that long stretch of employment, I was able to conclusively confirm that a life devoted to advancing (often petty) arguments in court and logging my billable hours was not my purpose in the universe. I often believe it is more important to move towards the meaning of life than it is to actually find it. In mid-2015, I made what felt like a step in the right direction by embarking on a career shift that, for the first time in my adult life, allowed me the time and energy to tackle some projects that were solely for myself. One such project was beginning to write a novel that came to be titled Questions of Perspective. I knew early on that I wanted to write about my “life” as a litigator, and how that work slowly drained me of my essence over the course of years. Indeed, the opening chapters of the book draw heavily from my own miserable experiences. I also knew that I wanted my narrator, Dave Randall, to find the inspiration to branch out and look for greater meaning with regards to his own existence and find his place in the universe. As Dave notes in the story, his life was a lot like Newton’s First Law of Motion: he was an object at rest, waiting for some external force to propel him into motion. But unlike my own journey, I wanted Dave’s external force to be something monumental. Something life changing. And this is a bit of a spoiler of the early chapters in Questions of Perspective, but that “something” for Dave occurs after his only friend at his law firm, John Manta, suddenly and inexplicably becomes God. An omniscient and omnipotent being existing out of time that controls the fabric of our reality—that was sufficiently “big” for the purposes of this story. Dave’s search for the meaning of life truly kicks off after John, who vanishes for a period of time, reenters Dave’s life to show him what he has become as a deity. While writing this story, I spent a great deal of time thinking about how that meeting should unfold. I didn’t want John to simply will Dave into understanding John’s role as God—that seemed contrary to John’s embrace of the concept of free will. I’ve also been frustrated with demonstrations of God’s powers in other fictional works; they often seem to be not much more than varying degrees of magic tricks (Jim Carrey applying telekinesis to a fire hydrant in Bruce Almighty comes to mind). I did not want anything that could be written off as an illusion, or a trick of the mind, so in order for Dave to get an understanding of what John has become … John gives Dave a brief taste of omniscience. That feeling of oneness with the universe—from being one with a black hole at the center of a galaxy, down to sharing the experiences of all forms of life scampering around our planet, down to being a lonely hydrogen atom drifting through the vacuum of space—was extremely difficult to write, and I will not try to paraphrase it here. All I will say is that this brush with omniscience leaves Dave with a completely different perspective of his small, fleeting life, and a renewed drive to make the most of it. It is one thing to know that we all have a finite time on this plane of existence, but to actually take a step outside of reality and see that this time is, for all mathematical purposes, tantamount to nothing … that is something that would probably light a fire under anyone to find a sense of purpose and meaning, and try to make some sense of why we are all here. And so it does for Dave. As Dave struggles to find his own purpose, John, as God, has a similar struggle, although their differing perspectives take them down two different paths. Aside from the obvious, one fundamental difference between mortals and “God” (whether viewed as a fictional creation or a being tethered to our actual existence) is that we humans cannot help but be tied to the moments we are living in. God, by contrast, who exists outside of time, probably does not share the same biases we have towards maximizing the potential of any given moment. So while our instincts may be to make the best of where (or, more specifically, when) we are right now … God is likely operating under a different set of goals. Much of this novel explores the questions that inevitably arise from these differing perspectives (hence, the title). Does Questions of Perspective definitively answer the question of ‘what is the meaning of life?’ Well … probably not. I’m not aware of any book that has conclusively answered that, with the possible exception of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But I hope, at the very least, that Questions of Perspective manages to recast some old questions about the meaning of life in a fresh light, through the use of metaphysical and speculative story elements. I’m always drawn to stories that cause me to rethink my own existence through a a narrative that isn’t adhering to the rules of reality, and I am always overjoyed when a reader reaches out to say that Questions of Perspective has changed, to some degree, the way they look at the world. Questions of Perspective is now available for purchase on Amazon.
If you do check out the book and would like to connect with me to discuss it (or for any reason, really), you can find me on Instagram at @danielmaunz or on Twitter at @maunzdaniel.
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