Thursday, February 21, 2008
Great Yates
I read -- and marvelled at -- Richard Yates' classic, Revolutionary Road, for the first time only late last year, and resolved to get my hands on his other books as well -- a resolve forgotten until I spotted his moving, disturbing novella, Cold Spring Harbour, in a bookshop last week. Why, I asked myself after putting it down, isn't this writer better known? In a pleasing coincidence, The Guardian's Nick Fraser asks the same question in this excellent piece that sums up Yates' themes, his life, his obscure fame and probable revival. James Wood is quoted as saying: "He is a reader's writer, always lucid, elegant and frequently poignant", which is good enough reason to now seek out his short stories.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Another Jodha Akbar
The lastest issue of the New Yorker --- and how fortunate we are that it's all available online -- carries a piece by Salman Rushdie, clearly an extract from his forthcoming The Enchantress of Florence, featuring Emperor Akbar and his queen, Jodhabai who, in Rushdie's hands, is an imaginary character: "Queens floated within his palaces like ghosts, Rajput and Turkish sultanas playing catch-me-if-you-can. One of these royal personages did not really exist. She was an imaginary wife, dreamed up by Akbar in the way that lonely children dream up imaginary friends, and in spite of the presence of many living, if floating, consorts, the Emperor was of the opinion that it was the real queens who were the phantoms and the nonexistent beloved who was real. He gave her a name, Jodha, and no man dared gainsay him."
Should have thought of that, Mr Gowarikar.
Should have thought of that, Mr Gowarikar.
Here Come The Clones
This appeared in the February 18th issue of Tehelka.GENERATION 14 Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Literary dystopias usually feature faceless, totalitarian regimes that crush dissent and redefine what it means to be human. As such, they’re perfect cautionary tales for writers to pose their Big Questions: What are the mechanics of power? (Orwell’s 1984, Zamyatin’s We). What are the perils of creating an ‘ideal’ society? (Huxley’s Brave New World). How is feminism subverted? (Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale).
It’s into this category that Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s Generation 14 falls. Though there are several digressive sections in this novel that could more properly be termed speculative or fantastical, the framework is clearly science fiction. The necessary questions the author raises – at times too conspicuously -- revolve around the meaning of a shared humanity and the necessity of plurality of expression.
Set primarily in the 24th century, the novel concerns the fate of a clone in a manner quite different from Ishiguro’s poignant Never Let Me Go. Here, we encounter Clone 14/54/G, the fourteenth copy of an “Original” who begins to mutate by recollecting memories – having “visitations”, as she puts it – of incidents in times past. As a member of a sanitised and stratified Global Community comprising Originals, Superior Zombies, Firehearts and other Clones, she’s viewed with suspicion by the reigning powers until they realise that this may help clear up a long-standing mystery. It turns out that her Original, an iconoclastic anthropologist, was killed during her speech at a great celebration just before she was to reveal an important secret. Her clone, by channeling the Original’s sense and memory impressions, may stumble upon this secret too, and the regime starts to coddle her in various ingenious ways. As is common in such novels, there’s underground resistance towards the supreme power, and members of this movement contact the clone, winning her over to their side.
So far, so ingenious. Sarukkai-Chabria has clearly immersed herself in this new world’s features as well as in the behaviour and treatment of its citizens. The section after this build-up contains the Original’s own musings, which end just before the address she is to make. This serves to deepen our understanding of the Clone’s predicament.
At this point, though, Generation 14 takes a dismaying structural turn, with several long, anecdotal reports of the “visitations” themselves. Drawn from India’s past, these are first-person accounts by, among others, a parrot in a nawabi Lucknow household, a meditative fish caught up in a Kashi flood, a bereaved mother after Ashoka’s Kalinga war, and a wolf-dog journeying southward with his master to vanquish local tribes. Most are linked by unexpected and violent acts and the penalties to be paid. The intention, of course, is to demonstrate plurality, but though the author displays considerable chutzpah in writing these narratives, they serve as an extended and annoyingly lengthy digression from the Clone’s fate.
Sarukkai-Chabria is also a poet, and this is evident from the prose she employs, which is resonant and allusive. At times, this rises to an exalted, almost Vedic, pitch and this, it must be said, becomes hard to digest when extended for too long.
As for the novel’s climax, this is less vividly realised than the rest of the book: there is an overtness, a spelling out of themes, that jars. Take this sentence, for example, uttered by one of the clone’s chief allies: “What if there is, again, the possibility of plurality of expression and belief? And justice? If there could be acceptance of difference, Clone, what boundlessness then…what creativity!”
There is much imaginative depth and richness to be found in Generation 14; equally, there’s an eagerness to over-extend the ambit as well as overstate the case, which makes it less compelling than it could have been.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Present Tense
This appeared in today's edition of The Hindustan Times
PAST CONTINUOUS Neel Mukherjee
One of the devices used by novelists attempting to ‘write back to the centre’ is to re-imagine characters from earlier works of fiction. Most tellingly employed by Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea, which told the story of the first Mrs Rochester from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, this ploy was also at the heart of Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs, which presented the point of view of Magwitch, the transported convict from Dickens’ Great Expectations.
Now, in Neel Mukherjee’s debut novel, Past Continuous, we’re re-introduced to Miss Gilby and her relationship with Bimala and Nikhilesh – characters who first appeared in Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World. Past Continuous isn’t just about Miss Gilby, though. The author has bigger fish to fry, and he intercuts the tale of the English governess in India with that of another stranger in a strange land: that of Ritwik, who, in his early twenties, leaves Kolkata to study in London. Miss Gilby’s story, we come to realise, is actually being written by Ritwik while in London.
An enervating Kolkata in the Seventies and Eighties; a frenetic London in the Nineties; and a revolutionary Bengal at the turn of the last century: clearly, the author is in the grip of an overweening ambition which, though obviously not something to be discouraged, needs both talent and control to be successfully realised. Alas, not much of either is visible in Past Continuous.
Take Ritwik’s tale, for instance. The separate strands of his existence on display – maternal mistreatment, penurious childhood, parasitic relatives, convent school exploits, exhaustion with his hometown, relationships with fellow-students in London, cruising for gay sex in toilets and alleyways – remain just that, separate strands. One of the ways in which a novel is different from life is that in the former, one finds a clear flow of cause and effect, an accretion of parts to form a greater whole, and this is missing in the tale of this unfortunate youth. Ritwik’s story is, one supposes, meant to be organic and artless instead of plotted, but instead comes across as all too fragmentary. An unfortunate side-effect of this is a lack of empathy towards the character, barring the moments when we learn of his mistreatment as a child.
Miss Gilby’s tale is more focused and controlled but here too, there’s a wearying sense of ennui for neither of them possess the energy -- inwardly or outwardly directed – to bring about a change. In addition, the governess’ story doesn’t really cast Tagore’s novel in a new light, making one wonder what the point is.
Yet another strand of this novel is that of Ritwik’s aged English landlady, Anne Cameron, a link between Miss Gilby and the present. This is meant to be the novelist’s tap upon the tuning fork to make the two narrative prongs vibrate in sympathy; what we hear instead is a dull clunk.
The relationship between Ritwik and Anne is, however, one of the better things in Past Continuous, combining affection and unlikelihood in equal measure. Mukherjee goes too far, though, in introducing a puzzling strain of magic realism when rare birds mysteriously appear in Anne’s garden, a link to Miss Gilby’s interest in ornithology.
Almost two-thirds of the way into the book, Ritwik embarks upon a cash-for-sex relationship with Zafar, rich Saudi and possible arms dealer, a liaison that has the potential to focus his hitherto wayward life. Ah, one thinks, this novel’s coming to life at last. But no: things fizzle out soon enough.
Also aggravating is the affectation of the prose. Ritwik’s tale is narrated in a faux-Nabokovian manner, and the clashing of misjudged adjectives that sometimes ensues is alarming. (What, after all, are “tenuous relatives” or even a “deliciously slurpy peek”?) This, though, pales in front of the author’s nod to James Joyce in Anne Cameron’s stream-of-consciousness musings. “Murder your darlings,” one murmurs, turning the page. The sections dealing with Miss Gilby contain interesting period detail and are more straightforwardly written. But it’s when the author goes so far as to include advertisements promoting swadeshi as well as newspaper clippings on the partition of Bengal that things get out of hand.
Towards the end of Past Continuous, the always-solipsistic Ritwik muses, “All lives have an onward flow, a beginning leading to a middle leading to an end; only his seems to be a swirling eddy in someone else’s flow, destined to whirl round and round for a brief while till a change in current or wave pattern obliterates it.” It’s in making these swirls and eddies cohere and providing them with a historical resonance that Mukherjee’s book falls short.
PAST CONTINUOUS Neel Mukherjee
One of the devices used by novelists attempting to ‘write back to the centre’ is to re-imagine characters from earlier works of fiction. Most tellingly employed by Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea, which told the story of the first Mrs Rochester from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, this ploy was also at the heart of Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs, which presented the point of view of Magwitch, the transported convict from Dickens’ Great Expectations.
Now, in Neel Mukherjee’s debut novel, Past Continuous, we’re re-introduced to Miss Gilby and her relationship with Bimala and Nikhilesh – characters who first appeared in Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World. Past Continuous isn’t just about Miss Gilby, though. The author has bigger fish to fry, and he intercuts the tale of the English governess in India with that of another stranger in a strange land: that of Ritwik, who, in his early twenties, leaves Kolkata to study in London. Miss Gilby’s story, we come to realise, is actually being written by Ritwik while in London.
An enervating Kolkata in the Seventies and Eighties; a frenetic London in the Nineties; and a revolutionary Bengal at the turn of the last century: clearly, the author is in the grip of an overweening ambition which, though obviously not something to be discouraged, needs both talent and control to be successfully realised. Alas, not much of either is visible in Past Continuous.
Take Ritwik’s tale, for instance. The separate strands of his existence on display – maternal mistreatment, penurious childhood, parasitic relatives, convent school exploits, exhaustion with his hometown, relationships with fellow-students in London, cruising for gay sex in toilets and alleyways – remain just that, separate strands. One of the ways in which a novel is different from life is that in the former, one finds a clear flow of cause and effect, an accretion of parts to form a greater whole, and this is missing in the tale of this unfortunate youth. Ritwik’s story is, one supposes, meant to be organic and artless instead of plotted, but instead comes across as all too fragmentary. An unfortunate side-effect of this is a lack of empathy towards the character, barring the moments when we learn of his mistreatment as a child.
Miss Gilby’s tale is more focused and controlled but here too, there’s a wearying sense of ennui for neither of them possess the energy -- inwardly or outwardly directed – to bring about a change. In addition, the governess’ story doesn’t really cast Tagore’s novel in a new light, making one wonder what the point is.
Yet another strand of this novel is that of Ritwik’s aged English landlady, Anne Cameron, a link between Miss Gilby and the present. This is meant to be the novelist’s tap upon the tuning fork to make the two narrative prongs vibrate in sympathy; what we hear instead is a dull clunk.
The relationship between Ritwik and Anne is, however, one of the better things in Past Continuous, combining affection and unlikelihood in equal measure. Mukherjee goes too far, though, in introducing a puzzling strain of magic realism when rare birds mysteriously appear in Anne’s garden, a link to Miss Gilby’s interest in ornithology.
Almost two-thirds of the way into the book, Ritwik embarks upon a cash-for-sex relationship with Zafar, rich Saudi and possible arms dealer, a liaison that has the potential to focus his hitherto wayward life. Ah, one thinks, this novel’s coming to life at last. But no: things fizzle out soon enough.
Also aggravating is the affectation of the prose. Ritwik’s tale is narrated in a faux-Nabokovian manner, and the clashing of misjudged adjectives that sometimes ensues is alarming. (What, after all, are “tenuous relatives” or even a “deliciously slurpy peek”?) This, though, pales in front of the author’s nod to James Joyce in Anne Cameron’s stream-of-consciousness musings. “Murder your darlings,” one murmurs, turning the page. The sections dealing with Miss Gilby contain interesting period detail and are more straightforwardly written. But it’s when the author goes so far as to include advertisements promoting swadeshi as well as newspaper clippings on the partition of Bengal that things get out of hand.
Towards the end of Past Continuous, the always-solipsistic Ritwik muses, “All lives have an onward flow, a beginning leading to a middle leading to an end; only his seems to be a swirling eddy in someone else’s flow, destined to whirl round and round for a brief while till a change in current or wave pattern obliterates it.” It’s in making these swirls and eddies cohere and providing them with a historical resonance that Mukherjee’s book falls short.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Myth Making
This is from the latest issue of TimeOut Mumbai.
THE AGE OF SHIVA Manil Suri
In his The Elephanta Suite, Paul Theroux had some uncomplimentary things to say about Indian novelists who wrote family sagas, implying that they were out of touch with the nation’s everyday realities. Well, he’s not going to like Manil Suri’s The Age of Shiva very much. This is the story of Meera Sawhney, which begins in Delhi on Republic Day 1955 when she meets the man she will marry. It continues through her married life in Delhi to her move to Bombay with her husband, till the present day, when she gains a deeper understanding of what to do with the rest of her life.
The form of the novel is that of Meera narrating her tale to her son, Ashvin, and Suri is remarkably candid about the powerful yet rocky relationship between the two, not shying away from erotic overtones. Ashvin apart, Meera’s tale has to do with her efforts to gain independence from the men who try to take charge of her life: her secular, erudite, yet controlling father; her weak, philandering husband who squanders his life in dreams of becoming a playback singer in Bombay; and her rapacious brother-in-law, who rises to become a senior official of a right-wing nationalist party.
As with the earlier The Death of Vishnu, Suri’s prose is quiet and plain, yet imbued with telling, quotidian detail that bring characters and situations to life. His evocations of the Shiva-Parvati-Ganesh myths and their linkages with the present are also effective.
It must be added, though, that in parts the book is too elaborately plotted -- in particular, some attempts to yoke the events of contemporary Indian history to Meera’s life are forced. Leading one to conclude that had the book pivoted more on the mythological than the historical, it would have emerged the stronger for it.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Mum's The Word
This appeared in today's The Sunday Express
AMMI: LETTER TO A DEMOCRATIC MOTHER Saeed Mirza
Film directors who write are a comparatively rare species. Offhand, one can think of Neil Jordan, whose The Crying Game and Mona Lisa on celluloid are matched by novels such as The Dream of a Beast and Sunrise with Seamonster. Then, of course, there was Satyajit Ray, whose Feluda and Professor Shanku characters remain popular. To this short list, you can add the name of Saeed Akhtar Mirza, whose last feature film, Naseem, appeared over a decade ago. Mirza’s book, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother, isn’t strictly classifiable as a novel, being a series of vignettes comprising Sufi fables, childhood memories, re-imaginings and a short film script to boot. As he himself writes, it can be categorised as “miniatures set in a mural: a kind of reflective, personal journey set in a background of ideas, politics and history”.
The danger of such a text resembling a diaristic ragbag is always present, but Ammi does have the virtue of being loosely held together in the form of long, rambling addresses to Mirza’s deceased mother. Another problem, however, is that Mirza wears his politics on his sleeve, overloading the text with polemic. Thus, liberal, anti-materialistic and anti-communal values are openly espoused, with several asides dealing with the glories of the Ottoman Empire in its heyday as opposed to today’s free-market West. It’s not that one has a bone to pick with such attitudes; it’s just that open proselytizing weakens the spine of any book if it’s not seamlessly integrated into the narrative.
That having been said, it’s undeniable that there’s an endearing charm to much of Mirza’s unaffected prose. In particular, his imagined tale of the love story of Nusrat Beg and Jahanara, set in the Thirties and Forties, is winsome and beguiling. Also readable are some of his childhood memories, along with passages that describe his ideological awakening and his days at FTII. And his recreation of the gentle, calm Bombay that his parents arrived in to create a future for themselves is certainly evocative. At these times, one finds oneself wishing that Mirza had planned the entire volume in the form of a memoir, rather than casting his net so wide and far.
Less pleasing are the author’s many ruminations on the crassness of today’s capitalist times and the little homilies on communal tensions, particularly relating to the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the riots and subsequent bomb blasts in Mumbai. One has no quarrel with his humanistic sentiments, but his editorialising contains nothing that one hasn’t come across before in column after newspaper column.
The latter portion of the book again reveals the looseness of the structure: here, one finds pen-portraits of some of the marginal and dispossessed Indians that Mirza has encountered during his travels across the country. These are illuminating, yes, but seem to belong in quite another volume. The film script that Mirza appends to the book by way of epilogue, dealing with the plight of an Afghan refugee in the United States shortly before and after the strike on the Twin Towers, is notable for the economy with which it creates characters – but is weakened by breaking the show-don’t-tell rule in its final scenes.
In his preface, Mirza candidly confesses that his wife, Jennifer, “liked the book in many parts but somehow felt that as a whole it seemed disjointed and lacked cohesion”. Despite the revisions the author made because of this comment, it still rings true.
AMMI: LETTER TO A DEMOCRATIC MOTHER Saeed Mirza
Film directors who write are a comparatively rare species. Offhand, one can think of Neil Jordan, whose The Crying Game and Mona Lisa on celluloid are matched by novels such as The Dream of a Beast and Sunrise with Seamonster. Then, of course, there was Satyajit Ray, whose Feluda and Professor Shanku characters remain popular. To this short list, you can add the name of Saeed Akhtar Mirza, whose last feature film, Naseem, appeared over a decade ago. Mirza’s book, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother, isn’t strictly classifiable as a novel, being a series of vignettes comprising Sufi fables, childhood memories, re-imaginings and a short film script to boot. As he himself writes, it can be categorised as “miniatures set in a mural: a kind of reflective, personal journey set in a background of ideas, politics and history”.
The danger of such a text resembling a diaristic ragbag is always present, but Ammi does have the virtue of being loosely held together in the form of long, rambling addresses to Mirza’s deceased mother. Another problem, however, is that Mirza wears his politics on his sleeve, overloading the text with polemic. Thus, liberal, anti-materialistic and anti-communal values are openly espoused, with several asides dealing with the glories of the Ottoman Empire in its heyday as opposed to today’s free-market West. It’s not that one has a bone to pick with such attitudes; it’s just that open proselytizing weakens the spine of any book if it’s not seamlessly integrated into the narrative.
That having been said, it’s undeniable that there’s an endearing charm to much of Mirza’s unaffected prose. In particular, his imagined tale of the love story of Nusrat Beg and Jahanara, set in the Thirties and Forties, is winsome and beguiling. Also readable are some of his childhood memories, along with passages that describe his ideological awakening and his days at FTII. And his recreation of the gentle, calm Bombay that his parents arrived in to create a future for themselves is certainly evocative. At these times, one finds oneself wishing that Mirza had planned the entire volume in the form of a memoir, rather than casting his net so wide and far.
Less pleasing are the author’s many ruminations on the crassness of today’s capitalist times and the little homilies on communal tensions, particularly relating to the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the riots and subsequent bomb blasts in Mumbai. One has no quarrel with his humanistic sentiments, but his editorialising contains nothing that one hasn’t come across before in column after newspaper column.
The latter portion of the book again reveals the looseness of the structure: here, one finds pen-portraits of some of the marginal and dispossessed Indians that Mirza has encountered during his travels across the country. These are illuminating, yes, but seem to belong in quite another volume. The film script that Mirza appends to the book by way of epilogue, dealing with the plight of an Afghan refugee in the United States shortly before and after the strike on the Twin Towers, is notable for the economy with which it creates characters – but is weakened by breaking the show-don’t-tell rule in its final scenes.
In his preface, Mirza candidly confesses that his wife, Jennifer, “liked the book in many parts but somehow felt that as a whole it seemed disjointed and lacked cohesion”. Despite the revisions the author made because of this comment, it still rings true.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Unholy Smoke
Apologies for the absence. Have been busy with a lot of work, with a little travel, with re-reading Martin Amis (Money, The Information, Experience) and with reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Meanwhile, here's a review that appeared in the latest issue of TimeOut Mumbai.
TREE OF SMOKE Denis Johnson
The award for the novel with the most apt title ought to go to Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. This much-praised novel branches off in all directions, and time and again, you’re struck by the narrative’s opacity.
Johnson’s subject is America’s war in Vietnam, following in the footsteps of authors such as Norman Mailer and Robert Stone. He also references the work of others who’ve composed narratives dealing with Westerners in the Far East, notably Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad.
Tree of Smoke, however, is quite different from its forbears. Johnson is primarily interested in mood and resonance, but the plot, such as it is, deals with the exploits of William “Skip” Sands, a CIA operative in Vietnam, his uncle, Colonel Sands, as well as a vertiginous cast comprising layabouts, agents, double agents, soldiers and civilians. Skip leaves the US to engage in psychological operations against the VietCong, in territory that’s mentally and geographically murky.
Johnson traces his activities from 1963 to 1970, with a concluding leap forward to 1983, and episode follows episode in quick succession with large slabs of well-crafted dialogue. Overall, the novel is remarkable for its surreal, sometimes hallucinatory tone. As one of the characters says: “Psy Ops is all about unusual thinking, man. We want ideas blown up right to where they’re gonna pop. We’re on the cutting edge of reality itself. Right where it turns into a dream”.
Johnson’s tough-minded prose is shot through with strains of lyricism, but on occasion, lapses into the portentous. However, he’s remarkably specific about the landscape, clothes, food and interiors of his characters, giving the novel its realistic heft.
Henry James famously deplored 19th century novels for being “loose, baggy monsters”. Despite its strengths, this is the term that comes to mind after finishing Tree of Smoke. At more than 600 pages, it’s not for the faint of heart or limp of wrist.
TREE OF SMOKE Denis Johnson
The award for the novel with the most apt title ought to go to Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. This much-praised novel branches off in all directions, and time and again, you’re struck by the narrative’s opacity.
Johnson’s subject is America’s war in Vietnam, following in the footsteps of authors such as Norman Mailer and Robert Stone. He also references the work of others who’ve composed narratives dealing with Westerners in the Far East, notably Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad.
Tree of Smoke, however, is quite different from its forbears. Johnson is primarily interested in mood and resonance, but the plot, such as it is, deals with the exploits of William “Skip” Sands, a CIA operative in Vietnam, his uncle, Colonel Sands, as well as a vertiginous cast comprising layabouts, agents, double agents, soldiers and civilians. Skip leaves the US to engage in psychological operations against the VietCong, in territory that’s mentally and geographically murky.
Johnson traces his activities from 1963 to 1970, with a concluding leap forward to 1983, and episode follows episode in quick succession with large slabs of well-crafted dialogue. Overall, the novel is remarkable for its surreal, sometimes hallucinatory tone. As one of the characters says: “Psy Ops is all about unusual thinking, man. We want ideas blown up right to where they’re gonna pop. We’re on the cutting edge of reality itself. Right where it turns into a dream”.
Johnson’s tough-minded prose is shot through with strains of lyricism, but on occasion, lapses into the portentous. However, he’s remarkably specific about the landscape, clothes, food and interiors of his characters, giving the novel its realistic heft.
Henry James famously deplored 19th century novels for being “loose, baggy monsters”. Despite its strengths, this is the term that comes to mind after finishing Tree of Smoke. At more than 600 pages, it’s not for the faint of heart or limp of wrist.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Books 2007
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)