SOURCE: “Oxherding Tale and Siddhartha: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Emergence of a Hidden Tradition,” in I Call Myself an Artist: Writings by and about Charles Johnson, Indiana University Press, 1999, pp. 305–17.

In the following essay, Byrd explores how Charles Johnson—American author and scholar who won the National Book Award in 1990 for Middle Passage—was influenced by Siddhartha in writing his novel Oxherding Tale.

Charles Johnson has written a searching introduction to the Plume edition of Oxherding Tale, originally published in 1982, in which he carefully sets forth the genesis and publishing history of his second novel. This edition of Oxherding Tale is the first instance in which Johnson, within the framework of introductory or prefatory remarks, has chosen to reflect upon the processes, both hostile and nurturing, undergirding the writing of a particular work of fiction. Given the novels that bracket Oxherding Tale, Faith and the Good Thing (1974) and...