This was written for Mail Today, the India Today group's new New Delhi newspaper. Sadly, an errant sub-editor hacked off the last two paragraphs. Here it is, in full.
To begin with, three memorable books that were published in 2006, but that I read only in 2007. The first, Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, a luminous and moving novel which showed us characters caught in the crossfire of the Biafran conflict without being polemical about it. The second, former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow, a non-fiction account of American intervention in overseas regimes in the last century, from Hawaii to Iraq, a timely reminder of how the world’s superpower has meddled, often with calamitous results, in the affairs of those that pursue goals not to its liking. Finally, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road rose above the rest for its spare yet Biblical use of language to convey a bleak, austere vision.
The discovery of the year was, of course, Chilean author Roberto Bolano. Natasha Wimmer’s translation of his polyphonic, audacious The Savage Detectives and Chris Andrews’ rendition of some of his earlier short stories, Last Evenings on Earth, were felicitous. (One awaits his to-be-released masterpiece, 2066, in 2008.)
From the sub-continental diaspora, the voices that stood out were Nalini Jones’ sensitive short story debut, What You Call Winter, Mohsin Hamid’s brave and well-structured The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Boston-based surgeon Atul Gawande’s further musings on his profession, Better.
From India, Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi was readable, magisterial and even-handed, and William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal was a poignant retelling of the days of 1857. One hopes that these are harbingers of more such books on Indian history.
To turn to racier subjects, John Banville writing as Benjamin Black produced a fine thriller in Christine Falls, a novel steeped in the atmosphere of 1950s Dublin and swirling with moral ambiguity. Another thriller that made a political point without sacrificing an iota of entertainment was Robert Harris’ The Ghost, clearly born out of the author’s disagreement with Tony Blair over Britain’s support for the Iraq War.
Considering that so many of us spend so much time at work, it’s a wonder there aren’t more novels about office life. Joshua Ferris’ debut novel, Then We Came To The End, filled the gap admirably. Dealing with the goings-on at a beleaguered Chicago-based advertising agency, it was witty and incisive. Ferris makes pitch-perfect use of the first-person plural throughout – the last time I came across this technique was in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides.
And in the last month of the year, I spent much time poring over a work devoted to the avant garde movement in the arts, Peter Gay’s Modernism: The Lure of Heresy. Though not distinguished by bold new pronouncements or radical reassessments, it’s an engaging, broad overview of the artists and works that defined the period, from Baudelaire to Warhol. Very stimulating: a reminder that though we may find many good works of art nowadays, we don’t come across any great ones.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Ford Fiesta
This appeared in the lastest issue of TimeOut Mumbai.
THE NEW GRANTA BOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY Edited by Richard Ford
Funny things, anthologies. Their titles tend towards the definitive: The Oxford Book of This, The Penguin Book of That, The Vintage Book of Whatever. Yet, inevitably, every anthology exhibits individual tastes; it’s the nature of the beast. So it is with The New Granta Book of the American Short Story edited by Richard Ford, a follow-up to his 1992 The Granta Book of the American Short Story. This volume contains new tales by 14 authors from the former book, as well as those by a later generation. Evidently, then, it isn’t intended to replace, but be a foil for, the earlier compilation.
Some of Ford’s choices are clearly unusual. John Cheever’s ‘Reunion’ and Raymond Carver’s ‘Errand’ – fine-tuned narratives though they may be -- are hardly representative of those authors’ works. The so-called experimental writing of the Seventies is represented by just one story, Donald Barthelme’s ‘Me and Miss Mandible’, with Robert Coover getting the axe. And while it’s gratifying to see Richard Yates included once more, it’s disheartening to note that Bernard Malamud isn’t.
For the rest, Ford’s selection is generous, not favouring modes or movements. There are the formal verities of Eudora Welty; the colloquial corrosiveness of Grace Paley; the loopy poignancy of George Saunders; and the gritty revelations of Z.Z. Packer, among more than 40 others. Interestingly, many of the authors featured here have only one collection of short stories published so far – including Jhumpa Lahiri, Nell Freudenberger, Nathan Englander and Adam Haslett.
Ford’s introduction, which is nothing less than a full-blown exaltation of the short story writer’s art – mentioning Chekhov as a prime exemplar, naturellement -- states that one of the fundamental traits of the short story is that of audacity, a bold exercise of the writer’s authority. Well, the narratives in this hefty volume certainly live up to that description. Modesty be damned: the anthologist should have included one of his own stories as well.
THE NEW GRANTA BOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY Edited by Richard Ford
Funny things, anthologies. Their titles tend towards the definitive: The Oxford Book of This, The Penguin Book of That, The Vintage Book of Whatever. Yet, inevitably, every anthology exhibits individual tastes; it’s the nature of the beast. So it is with The New Granta Book of the American Short Story edited by Richard Ford, a follow-up to his 1992 The Granta Book of the American Short Story. This volume contains new tales by 14 authors from the former book, as well as those by a later generation. Evidently, then, it isn’t intended to replace, but be a foil for, the earlier compilation.
Some of Ford’s choices are clearly unusual. John Cheever’s ‘Reunion’ and Raymond Carver’s ‘Errand’ – fine-tuned narratives though they may be -- are hardly representative of those authors’ works. The so-called experimental writing of the Seventies is represented by just one story, Donald Barthelme’s ‘Me and Miss Mandible’, with Robert Coover getting the axe. And while it’s gratifying to see Richard Yates included once more, it’s disheartening to note that Bernard Malamud isn’t.
For the rest, Ford’s selection is generous, not favouring modes or movements. There are the formal verities of Eudora Welty; the colloquial corrosiveness of Grace Paley; the loopy poignancy of George Saunders; and the gritty revelations of Z.Z. Packer, among more than 40 others. Interestingly, many of the authors featured here have only one collection of short stories published so far – including Jhumpa Lahiri, Nell Freudenberger, Nathan Englander and Adam Haslett.
Ford’s introduction, which is nothing less than a full-blown exaltation of the short story writer’s art – mentioning Chekhov as a prime exemplar, naturellement -- states that one of the fundamental traits of the short story is that of audacity, a bold exercise of the writer’s authority. Well, the narratives in this hefty volume certainly live up to that description. Modesty be damned: the anthologist should have included one of his own stories as well.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Zuckerman Unmanned
Looks like my New Year's resolution has to be to post more regularly. Meanwhile, here's a review that appeared in the December 29th issue of Tehelka.
EXIT GHOST Philip Roth
One of the pleasures of reading Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost is that of elegiac resonance. Roth has stated that this is to be the last book featuring Nathan Zuckerman, his alter ego – or “alter brain”, as he once put it – and from its pages arises the whiff of Zuckerman’s past exploits, as well as reverberations of the author’s other work.
Ever since – and perhaps because of -- the conservative Jewish community’s outrage at his short story ‘Defender of the Faith’, which continued with Goodbye Columbus and erupted with Portnoy’s Complaint, one of Roth’s concerns has been to explore the connections between a writer’s work and his life in unshackled prose, leaving behind the Jamesian methods of Letting Go or When She Was Good. And one of the best illustrations of this teasing interplay between fiction and reality is in the character of Nathan Zuckerman.
Though Zuckerman first featured in the early sections of My Life as a Man in 1974, he only appeared as a full-blown character with 1979’s The Ghost Writer. Here, as an apprentice novelist, he sets off to meet his idol, the reclusive E.I. Lonoff (thought to be inspired by Bernard Malamud). In Lonoff’s house, Zuckerman loses himself in fantasies of marrying Amy Bellette, another guest, believing her to be Anne Frank, who has escaped the Nazis to live incognito in the United States. On such audacious conceits has Roth built his career.
Over the years, Zuckerman appeared in seven other novels, sometimes as a protagonist (Zuckerman Unbound, The Counterlife) and sometimes as a receptacle of the tales of others (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist). We last encountered him in 2000’s The Human Stain, when he had become a Lonoff-like recluse himself, an author in his 60s living in New England and recovering from prostate cancer.
In Exit Ghost the 71-year-old Zuckerman leaves his retreat in the Berkshires and travels to New York after 11 years for the treatment of incontinence brought about by prostate surgery. From the beginning, he makes his disruption with the modern world clear: “I don’t go to dinner parties, I don’t go to movies, I don’t watch television, I don’t own a cell phone or a VCR or a DVD player or a computer. I continue to live in the Age of the Typewriter and have no idea what the World Wide Web is”.
In New York, Roth’s Rip Van Winkle encounters a ghost from his past, none other than Amy Bellette, now 75 and recovering from a brain tumor (an echo of The Anatomy Lesson, in which Zuckerman’s mother suffers from a similar ailment). After spotting a classified advertisement issued by a couple on the Upper West Side wanting to exchange residences for a year, he decides to take up their offer: they are Jamie Logan and Billy Davidoff, fledgling writers themselves, who want to leave the city in the aftermath of 9/11. He’s also plagued by freelance journalist Richard Kliman, writing a biography of E.I. Lonoff after supposedly unearthing a dark secret from his past.
In one final attempt to grasp life’s possibilities, Zuckerman finds himself hopelessly drawn to the 30-year-old Jamie; wanting to re-establish contact with Amy; and needing to put a stop to Richard’s investigations. This bleakly comic and painfully tragic tale of Zuckerman unmanned is leavened by extracts from his writing, comprising flirtatious conversations with Jamie. Unfortunately, this merely resembles a watered-down version of Roth’s earlier Deception.
The theme of mortality and waning powers is strong here, as in the spare Everyman; in addition, there are observations on the work of Eliot, Conrad and Hemingway, among others, buttressing the ideas Roth raises about the truth of art versus the intrusiveness of life.
Understandably, Roth’s sentences have lost some of that trademark Celine-like edge, and some sections of the novel are digressive – such as Billy’s account of Jamie’s upbringing or the details of George Plimpton’s career and funeral. But though Exit Ghost doesn’t quite compare with the earlier Zuckerman novels, there’s still enough vigour in this swan song to render it compelling.
Good night, Nathan. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
EXIT GHOST Philip Roth
One of the pleasures of reading Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost is that of elegiac resonance. Roth has stated that this is to be the last book featuring Nathan Zuckerman, his alter ego – or “alter brain”, as he once put it – and from its pages arises the whiff of Zuckerman’s past exploits, as well as reverberations of the author’s other work.
Ever since – and perhaps because of -- the conservative Jewish community’s outrage at his short story ‘Defender of the Faith’, which continued with Goodbye Columbus and erupted with Portnoy’s Complaint, one of Roth’s concerns has been to explore the connections between a writer’s work and his life in unshackled prose, leaving behind the Jamesian methods of Letting Go or When She Was Good. And one of the best illustrations of this teasing interplay between fiction and reality is in the character of Nathan Zuckerman.
Though Zuckerman first featured in the early sections of My Life as a Man in 1974, he only appeared as a full-blown character with 1979’s The Ghost Writer. Here, as an apprentice novelist, he sets off to meet his idol, the reclusive E.I. Lonoff (thought to be inspired by Bernard Malamud). In Lonoff’s house, Zuckerman loses himself in fantasies of marrying Amy Bellette, another guest, believing her to be Anne Frank, who has escaped the Nazis to live incognito in the United States. On such audacious conceits has Roth built his career.
Over the years, Zuckerman appeared in seven other novels, sometimes as a protagonist (Zuckerman Unbound, The Counterlife) and sometimes as a receptacle of the tales of others (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist). We last encountered him in 2000’s The Human Stain, when he had become a Lonoff-like recluse himself, an author in his 60s living in New England and recovering from prostate cancer.
In Exit Ghost the 71-year-old Zuckerman leaves his retreat in the Berkshires and travels to New York after 11 years for the treatment of incontinence brought about by prostate surgery. From the beginning, he makes his disruption with the modern world clear: “I don’t go to dinner parties, I don’t go to movies, I don’t watch television, I don’t own a cell phone or a VCR or a DVD player or a computer. I continue to live in the Age of the Typewriter and have no idea what the World Wide Web is”.
In New York, Roth’s Rip Van Winkle encounters a ghost from his past, none other than Amy Bellette, now 75 and recovering from a brain tumor (an echo of The Anatomy Lesson, in which Zuckerman’s mother suffers from a similar ailment). After spotting a classified advertisement issued by a couple on the Upper West Side wanting to exchange residences for a year, he decides to take up their offer: they are Jamie Logan and Billy Davidoff, fledgling writers themselves, who want to leave the city in the aftermath of 9/11. He’s also plagued by freelance journalist Richard Kliman, writing a biography of E.I. Lonoff after supposedly unearthing a dark secret from his past.
In one final attempt to grasp life’s possibilities, Zuckerman finds himself hopelessly drawn to the 30-year-old Jamie; wanting to re-establish contact with Amy; and needing to put a stop to Richard’s investigations. This bleakly comic and painfully tragic tale of Zuckerman unmanned is leavened by extracts from his writing, comprising flirtatious conversations with Jamie. Unfortunately, this merely resembles a watered-down version of Roth’s earlier Deception.
The theme of mortality and waning powers is strong here, as in the spare Everyman; in addition, there are observations on the work of Eliot, Conrad and Hemingway, among others, buttressing the ideas Roth raises about the truth of art versus the intrusiveness of life.
Understandably, Roth’s sentences have lost some of that trademark Celine-like edge, and some sections of the novel are digressive – such as Billy’s account of Jamie’s upbringing or the details of George Plimpton’s career and funeral. But though Exit Ghost doesn’t quite compare with the earlier Zuckerman novels, there’s still enough vigour in this swan song to render it compelling.
Good night, Nathan. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Chain Letter Wickedness
This appeared in the latest issue of TimeOut Mumbai.
RING Koji Suzuki
Most stories of the supernatural are, in essence, simple morality tales: grievous wrong has been committed and, over time, people pay the price for this until restitution of some sort has been made. Koji Suzuki’s Ring is no exception. It was first published in Japan in 1991, translated into English more than a decade later and now re-issued because of the success of the Japanese and Hollywood films that it inspired.
For those who haven’t seen the celluloid versions, Ring deals with the travails of Asakawa, a journalist with Tokyo’s Daily News, who starts to probe the mysterious deaths of four teenagers at the same time on the same day. His investigations lead him to a resort cabin where he watches a video cassette of impressionistic scenes which ends with the dire pronouncement: “Those who view these images are fated to die at this exact moment one week from now”. Asakawa’s rising panic now competes with the need to solve the conundrum. In this, he’s joined by his cynical, amoral friend Ryuji, who may just have a skeleton or two in his own cupboard.
The writing is cool and fast-paced – though sometimes clunky and with a few annoying Americanisms thrown in – thus acting as a fitting foil to the occasional gruesomeness of the subject matter. The series of revelations that lead to the denouement reveal a plot of fiendish ingenuity, involving the basic premise of a chain letter taken to a wicked extreme. In case that wasn’t enough, paranormal phenomena, rapes and a mutating virus play leading roles, too, making it all a tad more portentous than necessary.
As for whether it all ends in tears or smiles, this reviewer is, alas, in no position to offer enlightenment. You see, the book ends with the terse announcement that the saga continues in Suzuki’s next book, Spiral. Which, no doubt, leads on to the last in the trilogy, Loop. They ought to have printed some sort of warning on the cover itself.
RING Koji Suzuki
Most stories of the supernatural are, in essence, simple morality tales: grievous wrong has been committed and, over time, people pay the price for this until restitution of some sort has been made. Koji Suzuki’s Ring is no exception. It was first published in Japan in 1991, translated into English more than a decade later and now re-issued because of the success of the Japanese and Hollywood films that it inspired.
For those who haven’t seen the celluloid versions, Ring deals with the travails of Asakawa, a journalist with Tokyo’s Daily News, who starts to probe the mysterious deaths of four teenagers at the same time on the same day. His investigations lead him to a resort cabin where he watches a video cassette of impressionistic scenes which ends with the dire pronouncement: “Those who view these images are fated to die at this exact moment one week from now”. Asakawa’s rising panic now competes with the need to solve the conundrum. In this, he’s joined by his cynical, amoral friend Ryuji, who may just have a skeleton or two in his own cupboard.
The writing is cool and fast-paced – though sometimes clunky and with a few annoying Americanisms thrown in – thus acting as a fitting foil to the occasional gruesomeness of the subject matter. The series of revelations that lead to the denouement reveal a plot of fiendish ingenuity, involving the basic premise of a chain letter taken to a wicked extreme. In case that wasn’t enough, paranormal phenomena, rapes and a mutating virus play leading roles, too, making it all a tad more portentous than necessary.
As for whether it all ends in tears or smiles, this reviewer is, alas, in no position to offer enlightenment. You see, the book ends with the terse announcement that the saga continues in Suzuki’s next book, Spiral. Which, no doubt, leads on to the last in the trilogy, Loop. They ought to have printed some sort of warning on the cover itself.
A Spirited Thriller
THE GHOST Robert Harris
Alternative history scenarios have been at the heart of many of Robert Harris’ intelligent thrillers, from Fatherland to Enigma. Taking a break from his proposed trilogy of books on ancient Rome – of which I thoroughly enjoyed Imperium – he now delivers The Ghost, a book clearly inspired by the author’s falling out with Tony Blair over Britain’s support for the Iraq war.
This isn’t a conventional ghost story, as the title may lead you to believe: it concerns itself with the predicament of an unnamed ghostwriter called upon to collaborate on the memoirs of Adam Lang, former British Prime Minister. The earlier ghostwriter, the former Press Secretary, was found drowned in mysterious circumstances. The writer travels from London to Martha’s Vineyard to meet the former PM and some other members of his entourage, including his wife and personal assistant.
As it happens, Lang is accused of aiding and abetting the capture and torture of suspected terrorists in Pakistan, an imbroglio that the narrator gets sucked into; further, in attempting to unearth ghosts from Lang’s past, he stumbles upon puzzling inconsistencies that may just be the clichéd tip of a political iceberg.
The voice is just right: acerbic and world-weary, but not above being shaken by the occasional revelation. Though the first part of the book is clearly more robust, it’s well-paced, with deft twists and foreshadowing, including a sting in the tail that one really ought to have seen coming, but didn’t. Ah, there’s nothing like a good thriller.
Worth your while? Yes: make sure you don’t have to awaken early, for it may well keep you up till the wee hours.
Alternative history scenarios have been at the heart of many of Robert Harris’ intelligent thrillers, from Fatherland to Enigma. Taking a break from his proposed trilogy of books on ancient Rome – of which I thoroughly enjoyed Imperium – he now delivers The Ghost, a book clearly inspired by the author’s falling out with Tony Blair over Britain’s support for the Iraq war.
This isn’t a conventional ghost story, as the title may lead you to believe: it concerns itself with the predicament of an unnamed ghostwriter called upon to collaborate on the memoirs of Adam Lang, former British Prime Minister. The earlier ghostwriter, the former Press Secretary, was found drowned in mysterious circumstances. The writer travels from London to Martha’s Vineyard to meet the former PM and some other members of his entourage, including his wife and personal assistant.
As it happens, Lang is accused of aiding and abetting the capture and torture of suspected terrorists in Pakistan, an imbroglio that the narrator gets sucked into; further, in attempting to unearth ghosts from Lang’s past, he stumbles upon puzzling inconsistencies that may just be the clichéd tip of a political iceberg.
The voice is just right: acerbic and world-weary, but not above being shaken by the occasional revelation. Though the first part of the book is clearly more robust, it’s well-paced, with deft twists and foreshadowing, including a sting in the tail that one really ought to have seen coming, but didn’t. Ah, there’s nothing like a good thriller.
Worth your while? Yes: make sure you don’t have to awaken early, for it may well keep you up till the wee hours.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Away
Am away for two weeks, with only intermittent e-mail access. Sadly -- and unusually -- I won't be able to carry too many books with me, but reviews will resume in the last week of November -- including Ann Patchett's Run, Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases, Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine and Robert Harris' The Ghost.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Love And Longing In Mumbai
WHAT YOU CALL WINTER Nalini Jones
Another one of those debut collections of sensitively-written short stories by a half-Indian-half-American writer. So far, so ho-hum. But what makes Nalini Jones’ book unusual is her material: not the psyche of confused second-generation immigrants, but the human condition of the Catholic community in a suburb of Mumbai (called Santa Clara in the book, but obviously Bandra). It’s a subject rich with possibilities, and Jones does it full justice in these intertwined tales.
Subject apart, what’s also noteworthy is the author’s prose: in sentences that are affecting, patterned and skilled, she adroitly intermingles past and present as well as shuffles points of view. In many cases, the facts on which the story’s impact rests are embedded in matter-of-fact statements, but resonate throughout.
In these quiet, restrained tales of vulnerability and adaptation, housewives travel on secret assignments to find information on children to adopt; a young girl comes of age; a middle-aged bachelor ruminates on roads not taken; a mother obsesses over her son’s progress in a seminary; a professor handling changes in the world around him glimpses his deceased father on a bicycle. Many of the stories talk of migrants returning home, and of the impact this has on them and the ones they have left behind. And every now and again we glimpse old villas and habitations being torn down by avaricious builders to make way for high-rises, an abiding metaphor.
Worth your while? Definitely. This is an impressive achievement.
Another one of those debut collections of sensitively-written short stories by a half-Indian-half-American writer. So far, so ho-hum. But what makes Nalini Jones’ book unusual is her material: not the psyche of confused second-generation immigrants, but the human condition of the Catholic community in a suburb of Mumbai (called Santa Clara in the book, but obviously Bandra). It’s a subject rich with possibilities, and Jones does it full justice in these intertwined tales.
Subject apart, what’s also noteworthy is the author’s prose: in sentences that are affecting, patterned and skilled, she adroitly intermingles past and present as well as shuffles points of view. In many cases, the facts on which the story’s impact rests are embedded in matter-of-fact statements, but resonate throughout.
In these quiet, restrained tales of vulnerability and adaptation, housewives travel on secret assignments to find information on children to adopt; a young girl comes of age; a middle-aged bachelor ruminates on roads not taken; a mother obsesses over her son’s progress in a seminary; a professor handling changes in the world around him glimpses his deceased father on a bicycle. Many of the stories talk of migrants returning home, and of the impact this has on them and the ones they have left behind. And every now and again we glimpse old villas and habitations being torn down by avaricious builders to make way for high-rises, an abiding metaphor.
Worth your while? Definitely. This is an impressive achievement.
My Name Is Red, Blue, Green And White
You'll find this in the latest issue of TimeOut Mumbai.
OTHER COLOURS Orhan Pamuk
It was Salman Rushdie who pointed out that the Bosphorus, which Orhan Pamuk’s writing room overlooks, can be said to both separate and unite Europe and Asia. It is on this fault line that Pamuk’s work is born, something made abundantly clear by Other Colours, a collection of “ideas, images and fragments of life”.
This, however, is not a cohesive rainbow but a Pollock-like splatter. There’s been an attempt to shape it into an autobiographical sequence by the author, with selections from short essays, newspaper columns, speeches and interviews over the years -- one of the first pieces, for example, is on his father’s death, and the last one is of his relationship with his father and his writing.
Unfortunately, the first section is the least impressive, drawn primarily from short sketches originally written for Okuz, a Turkish magazine. Here, there are ephemeral meditations on spring afternoons, on giving up smoking, on wristwatches, on staring outside one’s window at seagulls and wholly unselfconscious accounts of his time with Ruya, his daughter. These, however, are leavened by evocative observations on the city of his birth: its earthquakes, fires and ruins, barbershops, street food and ferries on the Bosphorus – some of which now read like trial runs for his later book on Istanbul.
The more notable pieces in the next segment deal with the pleasures of immersing oneself in books. In reviews and literary analyses, Pamuk speaks of an affinity towards Dostoevsky for “his familiarity with European thought and his anger against it, his equal and opposite desires to belong to Europe and to shun it”. In another essay, speaking of Mario Vargas Llosa, Pamuk comments on his “lively innocence”; it is a trait that the latter, too, can be described as possessing.
In later sections, Pamuk displays his constant fascination with “otherness” in the context of European identity. In the allegorical essay ‘No Entry’, a sign on a door leads to a meditation on xenophobia, and elsewhere, he states: “For people like me, who live uncertainly on the edge of Europe with only our books to keep us company, Europe has figured always as a dream, a vision of what is to come; an apparition at times desired and at times feared; a goal to achieve or a danger”. (Interestingly, he asserts in a later essay that an understanding of the “other”, the “stranger” and “the enemy” is a central concern of the art of the novel.
His take on a post-9/11 world is nuanced: rather than the tenets of Islam or financial deprivation, what makes people of developing countries sympathise with terrorists is the “crushing humiliation” they have felt for years. In another well-measured piece written just before Pamuk went on trial for the crime of “denigrating Turkishness”, he points to this as the prime cause.
The section on the writing of his books is rich fodder for Pamuk enthusiasts, comprising reassessments, selections from interviews as well as, memorably, an essay on the trips he took to the city of Kars to get the background of Snow just right. However, the new short story included here, ‘To Look Out The Window’, reads suspiciously like straightforward autobiographical material, dealing as it does with errant fathers, fractious older brothers, and memories of Istanbul in the Fifties.
The crown jewel of this collection, though, is Pamuk’s Nobel lecture, ‘My Father’s Suitcase’, which in many ways sums up recurrent themes: his turning from art to literature, his love of Istanbul, the hours he spends writing, the competing lures of East and West and his warm though troubled relationship with his father. It’s a speech that is both moving and revealing, with a tone of unforced -- and because of that, appealing – sentimentality.
Throughout, Pamuk makes clear his undiluted love for reading and writing, his fascination for painting the world with words: “For thirty years, I’ve spent an average of ten hours a day alone in a room, sitting at my desk”. Which brings to mind Kafka’s aphorism: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked…” By remaining at his table, Pamuk has become the foremost among those who unmask today’s world.
OTHER COLOURS Orhan Pamuk
It was Salman Rushdie who pointed out that the Bosphorus, which Orhan Pamuk’s writing room overlooks, can be said to both separate and unite Europe and Asia. It is on this fault line that Pamuk’s work is born, something made abundantly clear by Other Colours, a collection of “ideas, images and fragments of life”.
This, however, is not a cohesive rainbow but a Pollock-like splatter. There’s been an attempt to shape it into an autobiographical sequence by the author, with selections from short essays, newspaper columns, speeches and interviews over the years -- one of the first pieces, for example, is on his father’s death, and the last one is of his relationship with his father and his writing.
Unfortunately, the first section is the least impressive, drawn primarily from short sketches originally written for Okuz, a Turkish magazine. Here, there are ephemeral meditations on spring afternoons, on giving up smoking, on wristwatches, on staring outside one’s window at seagulls and wholly unselfconscious accounts of his time with Ruya, his daughter. These, however, are leavened by evocative observations on the city of his birth: its earthquakes, fires and ruins, barbershops, street food and ferries on the Bosphorus – some of which now read like trial runs for his later book on Istanbul.
The more notable pieces in the next segment deal with the pleasures of immersing oneself in books. In reviews and literary analyses, Pamuk speaks of an affinity towards Dostoevsky for “his familiarity with European thought and his anger against it, his equal and opposite desires to belong to Europe and to shun it”. In another essay, speaking of Mario Vargas Llosa, Pamuk comments on his “lively innocence”; it is a trait that the latter, too, can be described as possessing.
In later sections, Pamuk displays his constant fascination with “otherness” in the context of European identity. In the allegorical essay ‘No Entry’, a sign on a door leads to a meditation on xenophobia, and elsewhere, he states: “For people like me, who live uncertainly on the edge of Europe with only our books to keep us company, Europe has figured always as a dream, a vision of what is to come; an apparition at times desired and at times feared; a goal to achieve or a danger”. (Interestingly, he asserts in a later essay that an understanding of the “other”, the “stranger” and “the enemy” is a central concern of the art of the novel.
His take on a post-9/11 world is nuanced: rather than the tenets of Islam or financial deprivation, what makes people of developing countries sympathise with terrorists is the “crushing humiliation” they have felt for years. In another well-measured piece written just before Pamuk went on trial for the crime of “denigrating Turkishness”, he points to this as the prime cause.
The section on the writing of his books is rich fodder for Pamuk enthusiasts, comprising reassessments, selections from interviews as well as, memorably, an essay on the trips he took to the city of Kars to get the background of Snow just right. However, the new short story included here, ‘To Look Out The Window’, reads suspiciously like straightforward autobiographical material, dealing as it does with errant fathers, fractious older brothers, and memories of Istanbul in the Fifties.
The crown jewel of this collection, though, is Pamuk’s Nobel lecture, ‘My Father’s Suitcase’, which in many ways sums up recurrent themes: his turning from art to literature, his love of Istanbul, the hours he spends writing, the competing lures of East and West and his warm though troubled relationship with his father. It’s a speech that is both moving and revealing, with a tone of unforced -- and because of that, appealing – sentimentality.
Throughout, Pamuk makes clear his undiluted love for reading and writing, his fascination for painting the world with words: “For thirty years, I’ve spent an average of ten hours a day alone in a room, sitting at my desk”. Which brings to mind Kafka’s aphorism: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked…” By remaining at his table, Pamuk has become the foremost among those who unmask today’s world.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Life Stories
A lightly edited version of a review that appeared in today's Hindustan Times.
LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH Roberto Bolano
One of the characters in this collection of stories asserts that art comes from life stories: “That’s what art is, he said, the story of life in all its particularity”. This, it seems clear, was the aesthetic credo of Chilean novelist and poet Roberto Bolano, the most ebullient among the so-called post-boom crop of Latin American writers. His polyphonic novels – such as The Savage Detectives or 2066 -- feature peripatetic protagonists encountering a dizzying variety of characters, mainly failed litterateurs in exile filling their melancholy lives with literary debate, philosophical speculation and unhappy relationships.
Last Evenings on Earth comprises stories drawn from two of his earlier books and now felicitously translated by Chris Andrews. Many of the tales here turn on the ambiguous relationship between a younger and an older writer. In ‘Sensini’, a 60-year-old Argentine novelist in exile in Mexico corresponds with a 28-year-old fledgling author, offering sly tips on how to enter and win provincial literary competitions. In ‘Enrique Martin’, the narrator, named Arturo Belano (a stand-in for Bolano, as in his novels) tries to make sense of the eccentric behaviour of a senior magazine editor and science fiction fan. And in ‘A Literary Adventure’ and its later echo, ‘Days of 1978’, younger narrators both simply named “B” share uneasy love-hate relationships over the years with more experienced and successful writers. Such Oedipal fancies are carried to their extreme in ‘Dance Card’, the most playfully inventive story here, in which Bolano presents 69 reasons for poets to dance with Pablo Neruda – or not.
Other tales simply capture the messy ups and downs of life. In ‘Anne Moore’s Life’, set in the United States and Mexico, a young American woman goes through a string of failed relationships across cities over the years. The narrative contains a multitude of detail and incident – but is consciously without an overt defining moment to give it shape.
Some of the tales radiate eccentricity, with the best example being the one that gives the collection its name. It deals with a vacation that the narrator takes with his father to Acapulco, a trip that slowly takes on the quality of a dream that turns threatening without ever clearly spelling out the reason why.
No, these aren't your garden-variety, conventionally-fashioned short stories that sit primly in the corner hoping to attract attention; these, instead, are sprawling, rambunctious narratives spilling over with the raw material of life and demanding, in all their organic and apparent artlessness, to be paid attention to.
Worth your while? Yes: this volume is the perfect introduction to Bolano's art.
LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH Roberto Bolano
One of the characters in this collection of stories asserts that art comes from life stories: “That’s what art is, he said, the story of life in all its particularity”. This, it seems clear, was the aesthetic credo of Chilean novelist and poet Roberto Bolano, the most ebullient among the so-called post-boom crop of Latin American writers. His polyphonic novels – such as The Savage Detectives or 2066 -- feature peripatetic protagonists encountering a dizzying variety of characters, mainly failed litterateurs in exile filling their melancholy lives with literary debate, philosophical speculation and unhappy relationships.
Last Evenings on Earth comprises stories drawn from two of his earlier books and now felicitously translated by Chris Andrews. Many of the tales here turn on the ambiguous relationship between a younger and an older writer. In ‘Sensini’, a 60-year-old Argentine novelist in exile in Mexico corresponds with a 28-year-old fledgling author, offering sly tips on how to enter and win provincial literary competitions. In ‘Enrique Martin’, the narrator, named Arturo Belano (a stand-in for Bolano, as in his novels) tries to make sense of the eccentric behaviour of a senior magazine editor and science fiction fan. And in ‘A Literary Adventure’ and its later echo, ‘Days of 1978’, younger narrators both simply named “B” share uneasy love-hate relationships over the years with more experienced and successful writers. Such Oedipal fancies are carried to their extreme in ‘Dance Card’, the most playfully inventive story here, in which Bolano presents 69 reasons for poets to dance with Pablo Neruda – or not.
Other tales simply capture the messy ups and downs of life. In ‘Anne Moore’s Life’, set in the United States and Mexico, a young American woman goes through a string of failed relationships across cities over the years. The narrative contains a multitude of detail and incident – but is consciously without an overt defining moment to give it shape.
Some of the tales radiate eccentricity, with the best example being the one that gives the collection its name. It deals with a vacation that the narrator takes with his father to Acapulco, a trip that slowly takes on the quality of a dream that turns threatening without ever clearly spelling out the reason why.
No, these aren't your garden-variety, conventionally-fashioned short stories that sit primly in the corner hoping to attract attention; these, instead, are sprawling, rambunctious narratives spilling over with the raw material of life and demanding, in all their organic and apparent artlessness, to be paid attention to.
Worth your while? Yes: this volume is the perfect introduction to Bolano's art.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Song Sung Blue
This appeared in the September-October issue of Biblio.
THE ASSASSIN'S SONG M.G. Vassanji
In his much-debated 1961 essay 'Writing American Fiction', Philip Roth argued that “the American writer in the middle of the 20th century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe and then make credible much of American reality…The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist”.
Consider now the spate of so-called 9/11 novels, from Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to DeLillo’s Falling Man. None of these can be said to particularly successful as novels: it’s as if the effort to be topical has enervated the imagination.
When it comes to writing from the subcontinent, the dark cloud of communal violence is fast becoming our version of 9/11. In recent times, there was Raj Kamal Jha’s Fireproof, David Davidar’s The Solitude of Emperors and now, M.G. Vassanji’s The Assassin's Song. Though Vassanji was born in Kenya, grew up in Tanzania and has been a resident of Canada since 1978, this, his sixth novel, is set primarily set in India. How successful is he in delineating the impact of communal tensions on everyday life?
The Assassin’s Song features another one of those introverted, out-of-place narrators whose alienation from his surroundings spurs on the narrative. It is the story of Karsan, first son of the guardian of Pirbaag in Gujarat, the interdenominational shrine of Sufi Nur Fazal, known as the Wanderer. Now ensconced in a room at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Shimla, Karsan narrates the tale of how his life has come full circle. He recalls his childhood days, his early friends and relationship with his brother and parents; having to bear the load of knowing that he is to be the next keeper of the shrine; and his escape to Harvard and attempt to establish a family life overseas, away from the weight of history.
Though all else falls away, the sufi’s songs stay with him. What also remains is the question he is compelled to ask himself: “Do we always end up where we really belong?”
Interwoven into this narrative is the tale of Nur Fazl himself, of how he came to Gujarat from Central Asia in medieval times, his reception in the royal court, his wanderings and dalliances, leading to the establishment of his shrine. The contrast between the Sufi’s all-inclusive message and contemporary, polarized times is clear.
Vassanji’s is a quiet, unshowy voice with the ability to rise, on occasion, to a muted lyricism: “The past was told to me always accompanied by song; and now, when memory falters and the pictures in the mind fade and tear and all seems lost, it is the song that prevails”. This is embellished by the infrequent, judicious use of metaphor: the sufi’s songs are “as precious as pearls”; Karsan stands “silent as a shadow”; and a library’s oversized volumes lie flat on their sides “like basking reptiles”. Moreover, the sections that deal with the sufi’s ascendance are texturally dissimilar to those that involve Karsan’s experiences. Which is apt, as the former partakes of myth and legend, while the latter is essentially a personal exploration.
Of course, in the background to all of this, like a refrain waiting to announce itself, is the spectre of communal violence, something that’s touched upon in the Sufi’s interactions with the Indian people, in the character of Pradhan Shastri, in historical conflicts with Pakistan and in the other religious shrines that Karsan and his family visit in his boyhood. All of this comes to a head with the 2002 riots in Gujarat, which will have a pulverizing effect on Karsan’s ancestral home, causing him to reflect even more cogently on his inheritance of loss.
The futility of such hatred apart, another theme in The Assassin’s Song is that of the burden of being the first-born and the weight of expectations this throws up. This is seen in Karsan’s relationship with his intransigent father, as well as in his dealings with his brother, who adopts the name Mansoor and is suspected of dallying with militants from across the border. A passage late in the book perhaps could be said to sum up its aim: “…I have resolved to remember, construct a shrine of my own…a bookish shrine of songs and stories. This is my prayer, if you will, this is my fist in the air, my anger so unlike [my brother’s]; it is my responsibility, my duty to my father and all the people who relied on us as the sufi’s representatives and whose stories are intertwined with ours”.
It must be said, however, that the quality of writing grows noticeably flabby as the book progresses. It is as though the author is using up his richest material to begin with, and then improvising as he realizes that he’s running out of steam. Thus, for example, when it comes to Karsan’s boyhood, there are etched portraits of his schooldays and interactions with his associates: the truckdriver Raja Singh, the schoolteacher Mr David, Pradhan Shastri, head of the local mock-RSS league, Shilpa, a shrine volunteer and Karsan’s “voluptuous torment”. These evocations fade away once Karsan reaches America: in contrast, we find here fewer scenes and more summaries, fewer portraits and more over-simplified character sketches.
In particular, a short essay on communal violence late in the book comes across as all too polemical: “That the most ghastly violence imaginable, perpetrated on women and children, could occur in the state of Gandhi makes one wonder too how aberrant was the Mahatma; was he real after all?” Here, and elsewhere in the book, the humanism is conventional, a form of sentimental realism.
In fact, the contrast between this and the sections dealing Karsan’s boyhood and relationship with his father lead one to wonder if the novel would have been more successful had Vassanji steered clear of the topic of contemporary communal violence. As Roth would have said, the extravagance – and horror -- of reality still trumps novelistic invention.
THE ASSASSIN'S SONG M.G. Vassanji
In his much-debated 1961 essay 'Writing American Fiction', Philip Roth argued that “the American writer in the middle of the 20th century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe and then make credible much of American reality…The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist”.
Consider now the spate of so-called 9/11 novels, from Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to DeLillo’s Falling Man. None of these can be said to particularly successful as novels: it’s as if the effort to be topical has enervated the imagination.
When it comes to writing from the subcontinent, the dark cloud of communal violence is fast becoming our version of 9/11. In recent times, there was Raj Kamal Jha’s Fireproof, David Davidar’s The Solitude of Emperors and now, M.G. Vassanji’s The Assassin's Song. Though Vassanji was born in Kenya, grew up in Tanzania and has been a resident of Canada since 1978, this, his sixth novel, is set primarily set in India. How successful is he in delineating the impact of communal tensions on everyday life?
The Assassin’s Song features another one of those introverted, out-of-place narrators whose alienation from his surroundings spurs on the narrative. It is the story of Karsan, first son of the guardian of Pirbaag in Gujarat, the interdenominational shrine of Sufi Nur Fazal, known as the Wanderer. Now ensconced in a room at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Shimla, Karsan narrates the tale of how his life has come full circle. He recalls his childhood days, his early friends and relationship with his brother and parents; having to bear the load of knowing that he is to be the next keeper of the shrine; and his escape to Harvard and attempt to establish a family life overseas, away from the weight of history.
Though all else falls away, the sufi’s songs stay with him. What also remains is the question he is compelled to ask himself: “Do we always end up where we really belong?”
Interwoven into this narrative is the tale of Nur Fazl himself, of how he came to Gujarat from Central Asia in medieval times, his reception in the royal court, his wanderings and dalliances, leading to the establishment of his shrine. The contrast between the Sufi’s all-inclusive message and contemporary, polarized times is clear.
Vassanji’s is a quiet, unshowy voice with the ability to rise, on occasion, to a muted lyricism: “The past was told to me always accompanied by song; and now, when memory falters and the pictures in the mind fade and tear and all seems lost, it is the song that prevails”. This is embellished by the infrequent, judicious use of metaphor: the sufi’s songs are “as precious as pearls”; Karsan stands “silent as a shadow”; and a library’s oversized volumes lie flat on their sides “like basking reptiles”. Moreover, the sections that deal with the sufi’s ascendance are texturally dissimilar to those that involve Karsan’s experiences. Which is apt, as the former partakes of myth and legend, while the latter is essentially a personal exploration.
Of course, in the background to all of this, like a refrain waiting to announce itself, is the spectre of communal violence, something that’s touched upon in the Sufi’s interactions with the Indian people, in the character of Pradhan Shastri, in historical conflicts with Pakistan and in the other religious shrines that Karsan and his family visit in his boyhood. All of this comes to a head with the 2002 riots in Gujarat, which will have a pulverizing effect on Karsan’s ancestral home, causing him to reflect even more cogently on his inheritance of loss.
The futility of such hatred apart, another theme in The Assassin’s Song is that of the burden of being the first-born and the weight of expectations this throws up. This is seen in Karsan’s relationship with his intransigent father, as well as in his dealings with his brother, who adopts the name Mansoor and is suspected of dallying with militants from across the border. A passage late in the book perhaps could be said to sum up its aim: “…I have resolved to remember, construct a shrine of my own…a bookish shrine of songs and stories. This is my prayer, if you will, this is my fist in the air, my anger so unlike [my brother’s]; it is my responsibility, my duty to my father and all the people who relied on us as the sufi’s representatives and whose stories are intertwined with ours”.
It must be said, however, that the quality of writing grows noticeably flabby as the book progresses. It is as though the author is using up his richest material to begin with, and then improvising as he realizes that he’s running out of steam. Thus, for example, when it comes to Karsan’s boyhood, there are etched portraits of his schooldays and interactions with his associates: the truckdriver Raja Singh, the schoolteacher Mr David, Pradhan Shastri, head of the local mock-RSS league, Shilpa, a shrine volunteer and Karsan’s “voluptuous torment”. These evocations fade away once Karsan reaches America: in contrast, we find here fewer scenes and more summaries, fewer portraits and more over-simplified character sketches.
In particular, a short essay on communal violence late in the book comes across as all too polemical: “That the most ghastly violence imaginable, perpetrated on women and children, could occur in the state of Gandhi makes one wonder too how aberrant was the Mahatma; was he real after all?” Here, and elsewhere in the book, the humanism is conventional, a form of sentimental realism.
In fact, the contrast between this and the sections dealing Karsan’s boyhood and relationship with his father lead one to wonder if the novel would have been more successful had Vassanji steered clear of the topic of contemporary communal violence. As Roth would have said, the extravagance – and horror -- of reality still trumps novelistic invention.
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