+: etcetera :+

By Sukhetu Mehta

What’s it like to be a member of an organized crime gang? Is it fun being a professional assassin? What’s it like to kill someone? Is the pay any good? Is there such a thing as a straight transsexual? What is it like to live on the footpath? To dance in a bar? To make a Bollywood movie? To get arrested and be “interrogated” by the bad cop? Or to be the cop doing the interrogation? To give all your money away and become a sadhu? If you’ve ever wondered about any of these things, Maximum City is a must read. Sukhetu Mehta’s answers to these questions and more are chilling, funny and devastatingly sad.

This wasn’t an easy book to read. The first hurdle was to get over the jealousy I felt over Mehta’s feelings for Bombay, his unshakeable conviction that the city of his childhood is “home”, irrespective of the fact that he’d spent more time out of it than in it. I’m afraid I can’t claim his roots. Although I’ve spent more time in Madras than in any other city, I’ve always been a bit of an outsider, no matter where I’ve lived. Every childhood memory Mehta associates with Bombay reminded me of my own lack of such associations.

Once I got over that challenge, then came the moral dilemma of what to think about disturbing truths: a killer’s calm account of his murder routine – he takes a bath, prays to Hanuman, eats a vegetarian meal (he isn’t one normally – just turns into one after taking a human life), and finally takes a long and peaceful nap; an ultra-religious father who makes his ill babies drink the urine of a cow twenty-ones times a day in lieu of taking them to an allopathic doctor; a young and beautiful girl who’s slashed her wrists so many times that she no longer has any sensation in some of her fingers; corporate greed so insatiable that an entire city may be irreparably damaged, affecting the lives of millions and millions of people; a graphic description of a cow being slaughtered, listing every last twitch, and spurt of blood… The list goes on and on and on. When I was younger, my faith in the belief that all knowledge is good for you was unwavering. I don’t know about that any more. This book is one more reminder that perhaps there are many things in the world I have no wish to know about. Mehta’s simultaneously fascinating and repulsive account steam-rolls on and I clung on for dear life, literally reduced to watching a Cary Grant movie a day to keep at least some of my illusions about life and my cheer intact.

But what a ride it is. From the systemic rot in our country’s urban planning policies to the existence of God, there’s nothing that Mehta’s colorful friends and acquaintances don’t touch upon. For any one who grew up in India, this book is incredibly tangible, filled with people you’ve heard about (much of Bollywood is featured, including Sanjay Dutt, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and guest appearances by Hritik Roshan and Preity Zinta), or can very easily imagine being. All of which makes it very easy to care about these people. And makes you reach surprising realizations about your own life. Personally, I’ve never felt more grateful for having had a plain vanilla life or over-protective parents than when reading this book. If I had a dime every time I felt “there, but for the grace of sheer fucking luck go I”, I’d have at least a month’s rent money, if not more.

Mehta’s writing isn’t fantastic. There are no big “so whats”, despite his rather desperate attempts to wring out a message or two every now and then. And one certainly doesn’t want to think about what writing this book must’ve done to Mehta himself. What this book is (once you’re well stocked on self-cures for possible nightmares and bouts of depression) is refreshing. To hear real versions of these stories, as opposed to the Bollywood version is worth every gasp. And for once, it appears that Bollywood actually tones things down. Reality is way more melodramatic.

Ironically, the book that Maximum City reminded me the most of was Bill Buford’s Heat (reviewed here). If Buford’s attempts at becoming a professional chef made me fantasize about quitting my day job and following my own dreams, Mehta makes me realize just how good that day job and my boring life are. Every one of us is curious about at least some of the topics that Mehta digs into. I’m ever so grateful that the spade is in Mehta’s hands and not mine.

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A book like this is difficult to review, especially for someone who has lived a life that is charmed, especially when compared with Ali’s. It feels churlish to disagree with her opinions. For it is well nigh impossible to establish any sense of authority in your disagreement, without having so much as encountered a fraction of the difficulties this woman’s survived. On the other hand, agreeing with her also doesn’t feel completely right – it feels in fact, like just the sort of thing a liberal westerner would do, fueled by equal parts of condescension and bewilderment at this alien world she hails from.

I shan’t go into the details – she has been in the news enough for most folks to have a general idea of her story. As for the book itself, Ali’s language is nothing to write home about, and there is at least one glaring typo (Enid Blyton becomes ‘Enid Blighton’, a mistake unnoticed by the book’s American publishers, but one that will be hard to miss for millions of ex-colonials like myself). It is her story that is so compelling, making the 350 pages go almost as fast as the latest Potter for what is essentially a biography-cum-political commentary. The first part, while horrific in parts, is the easiest to read. Apart from feeding your curiosity about a culture most of us haven’t been exposed to, this is the part that’s in black and white, and therefore easy to pick a side. In contrast, the second half of the book, where Ali talks of her escape to Holland and the persecution she later faced, is more difficult to deal with.

Ali has a keen mind that can strip away most situations to their basics. While much of her childhood memories is about the condition of women in Islamic countries, she also explains why Islam holds such appeal to African masses. Systemic rot of the political infrastructure has forced people to seek out order any place they can get it, and Islam, with its conservative approach could very well be the one thing that saves your life, literally – be it from AIDS or from something simpler (it is the Brotherhood that offers free healthcare, not the government). Of course, there is a price to pay. And this price, as is often the case, is paid the most by the weakest members of the club – the women.

The second half of her story is set in Holland and the United States, where she escapes to from war-torn Somalia. There are many admirable aspects to her story – for an immigrant who doesn’t so much as speak the language to rise to the position of a Member of the Dutch Parliament is a rollicking tale of the victorious underdog that should please anyone who’s ever enjoyed a Rajinikanth movie. Ali is enterprising, hard-working and courageous, and it’s immensely satisfying to see a live example of how playing by the book can lead to success, even in this cynical world. But whether she did play by the book is the crucial question. Yes, according to Infidel, but I’m not sure if there wouldn’t be a different version of the story were it Rita Verdonk (then Minister of Immigration) or Jan Balkenende (then Prime Minister) or the family of Theo van Gogh (the slain director), all of whom directly suffered as a result of their association with Ms. Ali, doing the telling. The case can definitely be made that if they suffered, it was because of their own actions, or because they became targets of terrorists, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for these people, who’ve ended up as little more than collateral damage in Ali’s holy cause. The last few pages of Infidel feel too much like a justification for her actions and opinions, as opposed to a straight forward narration of facts that the first half of the book is.

And Ali’s cause is definitely holy. While she starts out questioning the status of women under Islam, ultimately, it expands to the problem of integration. Ali advocates tighter integration, a ceasing of government funding for faith-based education, a reduction in government dole-outs for unemployed immigrants, etc. As laudable as her ultimate goal is – to give disenfranchised women a shot at empowerment – it is difficult to imagine how much of this will be viable. Her stance explains the reason the European right wing finds her so appealing. And her being such a shining example of amnesty gone right also endears her to liberals. While I applaud her nimbleness in navigating these apparently opposing sets of supporters, I can’t help wondering if she also isn’t as shrewd as she is brave, and that she thrives at least a little bit on the controversies she creates.

Over the last year, she has quit Dutch politics, opting to take up a position with a conservative DC think tank. This decision was partly fueled by threats to her life from Islamic fundamentalists who objected to her outspoken opinions about Islam, and also by controversies over the status of her Dutch citizenship. It is a pity that someone who was apparently starting to get some long overdue traction on issues relating to female immigrants is now reduced to the position of being a darling of American late night talk shows. In this country, immigration is an entirely different ball game from what it is across the pond, and we equate Islam too easily with terrorism that I wonder how much importance the powers that be place on the plights of Muslim women. With two of her core competencies being more or less irrelevant in this new country, I wonder what Ali will do next. She certainly can’t run for President… Legal hurdles apart, it’s hard enough for a White non-atheist ex-first lady to so much as get a shot at being elected, can you imagine the election campaigns against a Black ex-Muslim woman who is an avowed atheist?

After a wait of many months, I was finally able to lay my hands on a copy of Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. You may have read excerpts from this book in the New Yorker – there was one about Buford’s attempts to learn pasta-making, and another about his cooking and eating a whole hog. If you do remember those pieces, the rest of the book is much more fun.

I confess to a fascination with completely useless bits of information, and anybody who can explain what a “hotel pan” is, and do so in an amusing manner, is already a winner in my books. Kitchen jargon apart, this book is a mine of colorful characters. Mario Batali, known to food TV junkies as Iron Chef Batali, is one of them. The world of professional cooking seems to abound in such characters – Batali, for example, drinks wine by the case. Marco Pierre White, one of the foremost experts of French cooking, has thrown customers out of his restaurant for daring to order meat cooked the wrong way (the “right way” being what White thinks it is, of course). Other endearing and equally eccentric characters include a taciturn master butcher (known simply as the Maestro), a Tuscan bull (who is briefly suspected of being a homosexual for being bashful about getting it on with four cows), and Frankie, the terrifying sous-chef at Babbo (my favorite quote, “You’re doing this because you know we will fucking lose our fucking three stars if we start serving fucking instant [polenta], and if we lose our fucking three stars I lose my fucking job.”).

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Margaret Atwood is the James Bond of feminist fiction (and my apologies to feminists everywhere for that comparison). After you’ve read a few of her novels, characters and plots run into one another, and unless you’re an obsessive fan, you can’t really keep them straight. And yet you keep going back because the formula is so good, and even the nth rendition of it still leaves you wondering what’ll happen next, and convince you to return for the n+1th version.

I’m not sure if “ The Robber Bride“, “Cat’s Eye” and “The Blind Assassin” are meant to be a trilogy, but I can’t help thinking of them that way. My most recent read was The Robber Bride. It has many of the elements that make up the Atwood formula – middle aged women with a delicious brand of caustic wisdom, estranged children, siblings and parents, sappy men, and the mandatory super bitch, all glued together with some superb writing. It lacks the attractive bad boy that one can’t stop oneself from falling for. But it more than makes up for that deficiency by offering one of the most evil women in literature. ⇥ Continue reading

Lately, too many people have been showing off their reading. With obscure, impressive, and even the too-stultifyingly-dull-to-finish books already taken, we felt the only niche left for us was the embarrassing personal anecdote (somehow we always end up with that one, don’t we?) So here goes – our list of literary crushes and true loves:

The ones I now shudder to think of:

Ned Nickerson – Old Ned was pretty much the only reason I read whatever number of Nancy Drew books I did read. Couldn’t stand the girl, who I thought recognized a clue only if there were a big neon arrow screaming ‘look here for clue’, and even then she was very likely to mistake the neon sign for the clue placed directly below it. The boy friend was definitely hot, but in the long run, not hot enough to make me tolerate the ditsy she-sleuth. ⇥ Continue reading

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

(Some spoilers)

Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss is my first foray into works by the Desai clan. The experience has been good enough to warrant many more. The Inheritance of Loss reminds you that there are confused desis in India, UK and the US. The novel straddles three generations, and three different sorts of lost and dissatisfied Indians.

First, the anglophile ICS generation, loyal to a way of life that they perpetually aspire to, but never achieve. They live in Indian cities and villages, and long after the departure of the Brits, continue to fill their worlds with symbols from their ideal society: eating scones and cucumber sandwiches for tea, reading Agatha Christie, meeting one another at crumbling Gymkhana clubs, conversing among themselves in English, and with the servants in pidgin Hindi, and for all intents and purposes remain completely oblivious to the people, the language, the food and the problems that actually surround them. Many of the characters in this book belong to this generation - a retired Gujarati judge, a couple of Bengali sisters, an Uncle Potty of unknown origin?

Then there is the Amreeka-is-great generation. They believe they’ll be richer in the US, fatter, and surely happier. Biju, the cook’s son, is an illegal immigrant, working for less than minimum wages in one New York restaurant after another. His experience is understandably worse than that of the average H1B software type, but how different are they? Aren’t they all trapped in a common nightmare, even as they dream their common green-card dreams?

The green card, green card, the machoot sala oloo ka patha char sau bees green card that was not even green.

Unlike the previous generation which is happy in its yearning, this one bends over backwards to get to the land of their dreams. When they get there, it’s too late to wonder why they wanted to go there in the first place. At one point, Biju wonders:

What was he doing and why?

It hadn’t even been a question before he left. Of course, if you could go, you went. And you went, of course, if you could, you stayed?

Perhaps the Anglophiles are the smarter ones - yearning lasts longer than attainment, and therefore is better?

…love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.

Dissatisfied as they are, the Anglophile and the Yankophile are a mild lot. The third bunch is so disillusioned that nothing short of political autonomy - a separate x-stan / y-land (replace x and y with your preferred minority community / region) - will do. A good part of this novel takes place in Kalimpong in the late 80s - at the height of the Gorkha unrest. How alien the very idea is to the first two classes is best expressed by Lola (the Anglophile widow):

And what is this with the GOrkha? It was always GUrkha.

My friends and I have frequently marveled at India’s uncanny knack for survival as a country. It is a matter we pride ourselves on, particularly when we see so many others falling apart with much less provocation. [1] But given the latest news from India, I can’t help remembering this passage:

What was a country but the idea of it? ? How often could you attack it before it crumbled? To undo something took practice; it was a dark art and they were perfecting it. With each argument the next would be easier, would become a compulsive act, and like wrecking a marriage, it would be impossible to keep away, to stop picking at wounds even if the wounds were your own.

Desai’s novel is about class as much as it is about one’s sense of national identity. In any society, for a while these are maintained in hermetically sealed compartments, either out of ignorance or by force. But ultimately, people of different identities and classes do react to these differences. And when they do, some end up with illegal huts on their lawn, others get beaten to a pulp by the police. Yet others like Sai, the judge’s granddaughter who has a crush on her Indian-Nepali tutor, have their hearts broken.

The house didn’t match Gyan’s talk, his English, his looks, his clothes, or his schooling. It didn’t match his future. Every single thing his family had was going into him and it took ten of them to live like this to produce a boy, combed, educated, their best bet in the big world. Sisters’ marriages, younger brother’s studies, grandmother’s teeth-all on hold, silenced, until he left, strove, sent something back.

Sai felt shame, then, for him… The dilemmas and stresses that must exist within this house - how could he have let them out? And she felt distaste, then, for herself. How had she been linked to this enterprise, without her knowledge or consent?

I haven’t read Desai’s first novel (Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard), but I must say that The Inheritance of Loss still feels like an early work. Desai’s strengths lie in her ability to draw fresh insights out of characters and situations that appear cliched at first glance. However, towards the end of the book, it feels as if the author is panicking - worried that she might not be able to tie all those lovely characters with their lovely stories together into one cohesive whole. And she doesn’t. There is no great so-what at the end of this great build-up. People just go back to their old ways, or grudgingly resign themselves to whatever lousy cards they’ve been dealt with. Perhaps this makes it more real. After all, even Spiderman or Superman don’t take on poverty and beat it to a pulp.

And the balance that Desai maintains so well through the first two thirds of the book, giving equal importance to the three main story threads, is somehow lost in the last one-third. Some stories and characters are ignored at the expense of others. I felt a little like waiting in the queue at Thirupathi - I’ve waited a long time to get to that spot, and just when I feel like I’ve earned my right to savor the moment, I am bustled along by some cop shouting, “Jaragandi! Jaragandi!”

Bottom line: The Inheritance of Loss is a very good read. Kiran Desai is definitely someone to watch out for. If you were born in India in the late 70s as I was, you’ll find many things to relate to, and therefore enjoy in this book.

[1] As Southies born in the late 70s, I realize that my friends and I have had no experiences that might be classified as being “provocative”, so it’s mostly idle posturing.

[2] Go here to read Falstaff’s equally positive review. And here to read Pankaj Mishra’s take on the novel.

Review - Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

History is an interest I have only lately acquired. I believe my interest in history began shortly after I wasn’t required to remember five salient points about the First Five Year Plan. But it has taken a good decade, and then some, for me to actively seek out and read an actual book of history [1].

OK. So much for the build-up - the book: Rubicon by Tom Holland. It covers the last 100 or so years of the end of the Roman Empire, with a focus on the latter half. Starting with Marius and Sulla, we’re given a quick guided tour of the expansion of the empire and the implications of this expansion. The good things about the tour include interesting snippets of information about the personalities involved - Julius Caesar used to be a “loose-belted” dandy in his youth; rich Romans were curiously obsessed with fish; Mark Antony might have been bisexual, and more in the same vein.

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“Nostalgia’s just the longing for a time you know you can survive.”

- from The Well-Appointed Room by Richard Greenberg

It’s weird to start a post on Wodehouse on that sentimental note. But Greenberg succinctly sums up what I suspect is the most important reason I continue to read PGW. I owe my introduction to PGW to a friend of my dad’s. This friend is apparently a great fan, and my father remembered the author and got me The Head of Kays . I must have been oh, 10 or 11 then. I was quite livid with my father for buying me a book which featured neither Tin Tin nor Asterix, and worse, was apparently all about boys and cricket. I refused to read the book for I don’t know how long. In those days, I actually used to read everything I bought, or could lay my hands on. Frequently, I actually ran out of books to read.[1] On one such occassion, I finally gave up my pride and truly gave Kennedy and Fenn a chance.

Kays isn’t particulary funny. But having changed schools often myself, I completely related to Kennedy who finds himself in a new house. The book that made me a life-long fan was Leave it to Psmith , another gift from my dad. A serendipitous gift because it features Blandings Castle AND Psmith… I’ve never cared much for Jeeves (whom I consider to be the meanest character PGW ever created). Had I started with one of the Jeeves books, I doubt I’d have carried on with Wodehouse.

I’m not even going to attempt going over Wodehouse’s style. Entire forests must’ve been mown down for the topic. Instead am just going to indulge in nostalgia, and say why Wodehouse is special to me…

- I remember reading somewhere that people who read do so in order to feel like they belong - borrowing Wodehouse from the Madras British Council library made me feel like I was part of a club - PGW books from the BC always had a lot of notes on the margins, lines underlined, references to other books where the same characters were featured, lines that some previous reader had felt were “the best!”. Now, almost all of my friends read. But growing up, I didn’t really have anyone I could discuss books with (my dad’s participation was limited to footing the bill for my expensive hobby.) The doodles and underlines and notes on PGW books were the closest thing I had to a conversation…

- The suspicion with which my mom’s always regarded PGW. Apparently, the sight of her one and only spending holidays cooped up with a book, and periodically letting out maniacal howls of laughter while clutching tummy and rolling on the floor wasn’t my mom’s idea of “normal” behaviour. I’d try to explain the joke to her, but you know how PGW is. My mom would only get even more convinced that her child was apparently daft as well as crazy - why else would anyone laugh at the idea of a fat pig being stolen, or a secretary in lemon pajamas? When the Stephen Fry / Hugh Laurie Jeeves shows were broadcast on televsion, I believe I made my mom watch them. She’s never taken to PGW for some reason, and my forcing it down her throat didn’t help. Something changed in my mom’s opinion of me after she saw my tear streaked face as I read that last chapter in Leave it to Psmith - where Freddy Threepwood puts his leg through a rotting floor. I’ve done and read lots of things things that perplexed and continue to disturb my mom since then, but I’d like to think that that was the first.

In a fit of nostaligia, I watched the Fry-Laurie Jeeves series last week. It’s just not the same. Laurie and Fry are still great (although Laurie wears too much make-up *shudder*), but the aunts are no longer menacing. In my memory, I’d also confused the actor who plays Steggles as being Gussie Fink-Nottle. Aunt Agatha looks just like Aunt Dahlia and Bingo Little & Tuppy Glossop feel more like a couple of extras rather than being the jolly chaps they’re in the books.

I no longer howl with laughter when reading Wodehouse. But I still read him whenever I want to escape to a world where the worst thing that can happen is that an aunt might want you to steal a cow-creamer, and the most intelligence you need to possess is to not give your real name to the judge post boat-race night.

[1] Those were golden days, when one didn’t carry all the world’s guilt at not reading one or another book from a backlog longer than I care to make metaphorical jokes about. My mom told me that if I wish for many things in life, I’d be sent back at the end of this one so I could live out all my wishes. That was meant as a warning against wishing for too much, I think. Personally am not sure any number of lifetimes will get me through my reading back log.

For the next few days, I am going to write about my favorite humorists. This is my effort at reminding myself that there’s still lots of stuff in life that can make me laugh (with pleasure, not hysteria).

I’ll begin with David Sedaris. I was introduced to him by an ex- colleague who gifted me Me Talk Pretty One Day (easily the best gift I’ve ever received). I’ve been hooked ever since. Sedaris will be no stranger to regular readers of the New Yorker, or to listeners of NPR.

For the uninitiated, here are a few links where you can listen to the author. Warning: Do NOT attempt to listen to these recordings at work, or at any place where falling off your chair while searching your memory for something, anything to make the laughter stop can get you into trouble. After that build-up you’re bound to find anybody unfunny, but here goes anyways:

For the most part, Sedaris writes about himself, his family, life in North Carolina, his boyfriend Hugh and their adventures in France (the author & his partner split their time between France & the US, or used to till the last piece I read). It’s a real pleasure to listen to Sedaris because he delivers everything in a vaguely regretful monotone, which somehow makes situations and characters funnier. My all time favorite piece is ‘Jesus Shaves’, a hilarious account of Sedaris’s painful attempts at learning French. ‘Santaland Diaries’, an account of the author’s short-lived career as a supermarket elf is a close second.

I’m a sucker for self-deprecatory humor, and Sedaris is about as self-depreciating as humorists can get. He doesn’t bother with elaborate plots, or verbal pyrotechnics. His characters are drawn from life. But the effect is somehow not unlike PGW - both excel in developing a cast of characters that you come to love over time. His sisters, his lovable but weird parents, one very interesting brother, his rather sweet boyfriend (I suspect he says only the nicest things about him for obvious reasons) - you meet them all in different essays, and reading a new Sedaris piece is like catching up with a much loved and somewhat goofy family.

Humor can be caustic. Sedaris blends his with acceptance and love. Having grown up with Wodehouse and Thurber, I think I’m used to my humorists being nice people (or writing like nice people). Sure, I enjoy the more caustic kind, but poking gentle fun is somehow so much more fun.

Popular fiction is becoming like the restaurant business. If it’s new, it’s a good idea to try it now. In three months, you’ll get the same gravy / sauce (if the cuisine’s Italian) that is mass manufactured in Guangdong or Gurgaon and air-lifted to every restaurant in the world.

Take Austen. The lady writes a delightful comedy of manners and society. And since they didn’t have the internet back then, it took several hundred years for the mass production to start. First came Georgette Heyer, then Helen Fielding. Now, you have whole sections devoted to Chick-lit, all of which read exactly alike.

The Name of the Rose was great. Foucault’s Pendulum. Even better. We then move to 25 million copies of a somewhat re-hashed Foucault’s and before you know it, you have a whole genre of wannabe historical mysteries. The latest addition to this genre is Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. The premise looked interesting enough. Problem: a good two generations worth of mystery surrounding Vlad, the Impaler (aka Dracula), plus at least one kidnapped Professor of History. The heroine: another Professor of History who looks into old documents collected by her father, and his mentor and travels all over Europe to unravel the mystery and to rescue the missing person(s).

It’s such a pity that what made Eco’s old sauce work has now been reverse-engineered into its individual components. The ingredients for Writing a Historical Mystery:

1. One pinch of history (vital that this pinch be from some area that even science majors will know about)

2. 5 heaped scoops of nerdiness (why would anyone who is truly cool be remotely interested in Sir Francis Bacon or a 400 year old Romanian landlord?)

3. 2 tea-spoon full of Great-Looks (for your oeuvre to really have legs, the casting director must be able to use leggy actresses) [1]

4. One attractive reward that awaits the intrepid scholar / librarian / diligent student at the end of his or her adventure (helpful hint: world domination, buried treasure, heirs to sons / daughters of God, even cataloging a rare and extensive collection of books and manuscripts - all taken - please think of something else)

5. The following are essential ingredients that you cannot replace, no matter how adventurous you’re feeling: Istanbul / Constantinople, Rome, obscure village in some-country-formerly-behind-iron-curtain, at least 2 piazzas, 3 water fountains (at least one of which should be functioning - remember leggy heroine must get wet), 4 chapels, 17 libraries and 1 railway station (to remind your US audience that Europeans are so archaic they still use trains!)

6. Very important: Pique the readers’ curiosity at the end of every word / sentence / para / chapter. If you are confused about how you can do this, begin by replacing full stops with exclamation points!

Kostova sticks to all of these rules. I might have found the book merely tedious, but the “prize” (refer rule 4 above) offered by Kostova transports the book into the realm of the ridiculous. It’s not “propah” to disclose more. I will merely say that the secret had two of my friends in splits. I was in too much pain to laugh.[2]

When I consider this genre-fication phenomenon, I realize that the fault lies with me (as it almost always does). When I see a good thing, why can’t I just let it go? So, I loved Eco. I shouldn’t try to seek that same thrill over and over again. I should move on. The hang-ups that served me well in childhood (if you enjoyed one book in the Tin Tin series, reading allof them is a good thing) no longer apply. A good friend’s always asking me to expand my horizons. I’ll try to heed his advice in at least one area of life. No more wannabe Tolkiens, Ecos, or Austens[3].

[1] In my more paranoid moments, I wonder if this whole history + mystery movement hasn’t been started by academics who would appear to have finally hired Rick Renard or someone of his caliber. In my less paranoid moments, I wonder which celebrity is a Rosie Crucian / Free Mason / what-have-you (as you can see, Foucault’s Pendulum has left a lasting impression.)

[2] For a fee of twenty-five cents, full plot will be disclosed via personal email.

[3] You should be so lucky to get wanna be Tolkiens, Ecos or Austens. You’re more likely to end up with wannabe-wannabe-Tolkiens (a wannabe-Rowling or wannabe-Paolini for instance), wannabe-wannabe-Austens (the wannabe-Fieldings and the wannabe-Bushnells figure here)

Technically, it was Karthik who got tagged. But I’ve no powers of resistance against tags such as this. Am butting in. But Karthik - Veena I are both eager to know your own list.

Total number of books I own

About 300-400 (counting stuff from the dark ages, including my collection of Russian children’s literature). Practically of it is back home in India. I have less than 10 (although I suspect 25 may be a fairer number) in Dallas. My parents are under strict instructions to NOT lend my books out, and I conduct random, unannounced phone interviews to ensure that they’re sticking to the rules. Thankfully none of my cousins is into most of the stuff I read, but my old Asterix comics are under constant threat and that’s enough to keep me awake at nights.

Last book(s) I bought

Ponniyin Selvan Collection by Kalki as translated by CV Karthik Narayanan

Parthiban Kanavu by Kalki (another English translation)

Two Lives by Vikram Seth

Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies by McKinsey & Company Inc., Tim Koller, Marc Goedhart, David Wessels - purchased in a moment of madness I still can’t explain

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To call Kafka On The Shore an imaginative book would be gross understatement. It is wildly, feverishly, outrageously imaginative; a book where bizarre ideas share space with profound thoughts and sublime writing coexists with cheesy humor that this blog wouldn’t publish. (Yes, I can think of at least seven really funny things I’ve rejected - I’ll write a post about it soon. Plus I am disappointed you guys don’t know the difference between reviewer’s license and hyperbole.)

“Well, tell me then , Toro, is there some reason you’re here?”

“There is,” the black cat said. “I thought you might be having a hard time dealing with that stone all alone.”

“You got that right. Definitely. I’m in kind of a fix here.”

“I thought I’d lend you a hand.”

“That would be great,” Hoshino said. “Take a paws in your schedule, eh?”

In other words, Kafka on the Shore is just another Haruki Murakami book. Murakami is a delightfully inventive writer, and Kafka On The Shore brings together all the qualities that’ve made him so popular with audiences the world over. After his “discovery” in the mid-nineties with The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami, with his distinctive brand of writing that blurs the boundary between what is real and what is not, has acquired almost cult status in the West. On one level, his books are dense, broody musings on loneliness and love; on another they are racily narrated fantasies laced with generous (tongue-in-cheek) references to pop culture. The dichotomy intrigues, drawing readers into the books. And the books never disappoint: they are dreamy fantasies set in the present, and the author’s overactive imagination ensures that there is never a dull moment, if you’ll pardon the cliche.

Kafka on the Shore is a book about a young boy who calls himself Kakfa (Duh!) (which means crow in Czech, apparently)(Clarification: Kafka means Crow, not Duh!). Kafka, whose mom and sister had abandoned him early on, runs away from home at fifteen to get away from his dad. Kafka is also running away from a prophecy of his dad. (The parallels with Murukami’s short story in the New Yorker are obvious:

“Among the women a man meets in his life, there are only three who have real meaning for him. No more, no less,” his father said–or, rather, declared. He spoke coolly but with utter certainty, as he might have in noting that the earth takes a year to revolve around the sun.

) (etcetera: We close parantheses.())

In another thread in the book, Nakata, a lovable old man who lost his mind in a bizarre World War II incident leaves Tokyo for “somewhere west.” Nakata, who can talk to cats, hitchhikes his way (rather eventfully) to where Kafka is now, propelled by mysterious forces within his mind. He is running towards something, but he is also running away from a gruesome murder that he committed. Or did he?

Kafka ends up at a quaint little family library in a quaint little town. On the way though, he meets a girl who he thinks could be his sister. And at the library, he runs into the following people.

1. Oshima, the uber-smart library assistant who says mysterious, metaphysical, profound, philosophical things with a straight face. Like so:

“Speaking of contradictions,” Oshima suddenly says, “when I first met you I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time you’re running away for all you’re worth.” [Please nod sagely. There you go, that's it.]

Oshima is uber-smart, so quoting Yeats ( “In dreams begin responsibility”) and Aristophanes or drawing on Greek Philosophy ( “Cassandra’s curse”) to explain everyday predicaments comes easily to him. As does having a lot of fun at the expense of a couple of poor feminists:

“Yes, may I help you?” Oshima asks her amiably.

“Just to let you know, we are investigating public cultural facilities in the entire country from a woamn’s point of view, looking at ease of use, fair access and other issues,” she says. “Our group is doing a year-long investigation and plans to publish a report on our findings. A large number of women are involved in this project, and the two of us happen to be in charge of this region.”

[...]

“What we’ve concluded is that, unfortunately, this library has several issues which need to be addressed.”

“From the viewpoint of women, is what you’re saying,” Oshima commented.

“Correct, from the viewpoint of women,” the woman answers. She clears her throat.

[...]

“Well, first of all you have no toilet set aside for women. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

‘Yes, that’s right. There’s no women’s toilet in this library. We have one toilet for the use of both men and women.”

“Even if you are a private institution, since you’re open to the public don’t you think - in principle - that you should provide separate toilets for women and men?”

“In principle?” Oshima says.

“Correct. Shared facilities give rise to all sorts of harassment. According to our survey, the majority of women are reluctant to use shared toilets. This is a clear cae of neglect of your female patrons.”

“Neglect…” Oshima says, and makes a face as though he’s swallowed something bitter by mistake He doesn’t much like the sound of the word, it would seem.

“An intentional oversight.”

“Intentional oversight,” he repeats, and gives some thought to this clumsy phrase.

“So what is your reaction to all this?” the woman asks, barely containing her irritation.

“As you can see,” Oshima says, “we’re a very small library. And unfortunately we don’t have the sapce for separate toilets. Naturally it would be better to have separate toilets, but none of our patrons has ever complained. For better or for worse, our library doesn’t get very crowded. If you’d like to pursue this issue of separate toilets further, I suggest you got to the Boeing headquartes inSeattle and addreess the issue of toilets on 747s. A 747’s much bigger than our little library, and much more crowded. As far as I’m aware, all toilets on passenger aircraft are shared by men and women.”

“The tall woman frowns at him severely, her cheekbones jjutting forward and her glasses riding up her nose. “We are not investigating aeroplanes. 747s are beside the point.”

“Wouldn’t toilets in both jets and in our library - in principle - give rise to the same sorts of problems?”

“We are investigating, one by one, public facilities. We’re not here to argue over principles.

“Oshmias’s supple smile never fades during this exchange. “Is that so?” I could have sworn that principles were exactly what we were discussing.”

And so it goes. An exchange that later veers towards a discussion of red herrings, shifting analogies, Aristotle and phallocentric logicical fallacies before it ends with a revelation that would’ve been explosive in any other book. Here, coming after sardines raining and a dog interrupting Nakata’s conversation with a cat to lead him to a man dressed like Johnny Walker (whisky mogul, evil cat eater) who proceeds to eat live cat hearts, it is just another event. Murakami’s world is full of them.

Oshima is the reader’s muse in the book - erudite and unruffled, he “explains” (if you can call bits of tangential loud thinking that) what is going on to both Kafka and us.

2. (etcetera:we get our numbering right).

3. On the bus out of Tokyo, Oshima also meets Sakura, a hot young girl who he thinks could be his sister.Naturally. Kafka and Sakura form a bond on the bus, and later on, Kafka rapes her in his dream. But dreams blur into reality in this book, so one can’t really be sure. Sakura and Kafka carry on a conversation that might explain the preponderance of alarming coincidences in the book.

“Even chance meetings… Are the result of Karma.”

“Right, right,” she says. “But what does it mean?”

“That things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even the in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

4. And finally, Miss Saeki. She is the stately woman with a sad past she won’t discuss, who runs the library that Oshima works in. Kafka, naturally, thinks she could be his mom. There are tantalizing clues that seem to point to the theory - Miss Saeki was a lightning researcher and Kafka’s dad was once struck by lightning. But when Kafka asks her the question, all he gets is something to the effect of “You already know the answer to that.” And he accepts the answer and moves on. Occasionally, Miss Saeki becomes a fifteen year old girl and dons shiny white costumes and goes to Kafka’s room. This confuses Kafka no end, and his discussions with Oshima about Miss Saeki lead to the conclusion that this is probably a “living ghost.” The title of the book - Kafka on the Shore, is also the title of the hit single that Miss Saeki composed when she was young. The lyrics of the song are riddled with symbolism, and Kafka’s sees a lot of parallels between his life and the lyrics. And so on it goes…

Meahwhile, hitchhiking old man Nakata, after causing leeches to fall from the sky, ends up at the same town as Kafka, by sheer chance. Nakata has forgotten first person usage, so conversations with him remind you of conversations between Elaine and Jimmy.

Nakata is sleepy.

A truck driver who picks him up on the way is intrigued by Nakata and decides to accompany him on his quest for something that also happens to be - by chance - mentioned in Miss Saeki’s hit single.

The truck driver, Hoshino, later encounters a spirit dressed up as Colonel Sanders. Colonel Sanders has a slightly differerent job description here: he is a supernatural pimp, who gets Hoshino a girl that is very adept at quoting Henri Bergson and Hegel. Together, Hoshino and the prostitute find the perfect use for philosopy.

“See, you’re ready to go again,” the girl remarked, slowly seguing into her next set of motions. “Any special reqeusts? Something you’d like me to do? Mr. Sanders asked me to make sure you got everything you wanted.”

“I can’t think of anything special, but could you quote some more of that philosophy stuff? I don’t know why, but it might keep me from coming so quickly. Otherwise, I’ll lose it pretty fast.”

“Let’s see . . . This is fairly old, but how about some Hegel?”

“Whatever.”

[...]

“‘At the same time that “I” am the content of a relation, “I” am also that which does the relating.’”

The hilarious encounters between Sanders and Hoshino are the funniest parts of the book, with Murakami at his biting best.

“Listen - God only exists in people’s minds. Especially in Japan God’s always been a kind of flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Dougnal MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn’t God anymore. That’s what Japanese gods are like - they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American chomping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o - God’s no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. if you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Typical of Murakami, when the denoument comes (and goes), it leaves you with more questions than answers. Some philosophical, some practical. (”Was there a message in all this?” “What is he trying to say?” “Was Miss Saeki Kafka’s mom?”). What is the point, the overarching explanation that ties it all up? How could Hoshino start talking to cats? Was the stone the entrance to heaven? What is the significance of the paradise like land suspended between two worlds? Is this a fable? Or like a reviewer claims, is the whole book about giving shape to internal thoughts of the characters?

But then, a little bit of thought provides the answer: It doesn’t matter. There is so much fun to be had when reading the book, and some more fun thinking about all the questions, and that could very well be the whole point.

New York Times Featured Author Profile.

“And so,” the snotty bunch of hazers asked him, “do you read?”

“Yes sirs,” he said. Knighthood by coercion.

“What’s your favorite genre?” I asked, gazing at the immense forehead. “I was born with a large forehead, and no, that is not a receding hairline, you jerk” he would tell me later, when we had become friends.

But going back to now, his answer was “Science fiction. Asimov. Long pause. Sirs.”

We groaned.

Science fiction, in that little clique, was passe. It was boring and juvenile, a resort of failed fantasy writers (it was either that or . Worlds with scary green faced aliens and half baked scientific theories on time travel weren’t gonna cut it, not for hard nosed young men who could smoke a whole Benson & Hedges without coughing. By the way, we are a socially responsible blog and would like inform you that smoking in Bhutan can land you in jail, unless you are the king.

“Yes,” we said, “Foundation was good. Dick was good too.” Stifled laughter. “But that’s it. No new ideas anymore, and how many variations on time travel can you read ?”

“No, but …”

“Why do we get the sense you are trying to contradict us?”

“I mean yes… sirs. SF is not a happening field. I agree wholeheartedly.”

It has been a few years since the conversation happened, and I wish I could go back in time and take the side of the young man with a receding hairline and tell the others to go read Cyberpunk. That’ll only happen in bad science fiction, so I’ll have to make do with a tribute to Neal Stephenson.

The problem with sci-fi (we all thought) was that it took itself too seriously. ‘Twas a genre lost in its gadgets, a genre enamored with its clairvoyance, a genre filled with stuffy geek-writers who believed that mediocre plots could be transformed into classics when set in the future in imaginary planets. Margaret Atwood helped weaken the impression (you can’t really call her works science fiction, so scratch that) and William Gibson broke its resolve, but Neal Stephenson shattered it, burnt the remnants and shot the ashes up in the air with the weapons that he invented in Snow Crash. He did this by adding one ingredient to his books: irreverent satire. A self deprecating tone. Scathing social commentary. Intriguing new social orders, a healthy interest in the flow of money, an awareness of the impact of technology on people. Ok, I was off by a few ingredients. Big deal.

His books are elaborately plotted and incredibly detailed ( and very long), drawing on ideas from several sources: Snow Crash blends in virtual reality with notions of a libertarian future, The Diamond Age is about society’s response to nanotechnology. The complexity of the ideas is balanced by the irreverent, satirical tone of the narrative - Stephenson’s books never take themselves too seriously. And that endears them to you - a self deprecating geek discussing his ideas with passion is much more likable than someone earnestly trying to sell stories about plants that grow on Mars. This excerpt from Snow Crash is typical of how Stephenson treats conventional science fiction , turning hackneyed ideas into fun.

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.

When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway — might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of a gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity.

The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave, wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn’t want to pay for it. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took out his gun, centered its laser doo-hickey on that poised Louisville Slugger, fired it. The recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on his face. Didn’t get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.

The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator’s car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car’s tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator’s car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady’s thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.

Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them.

Just when you think “Bond wannabe”, you find out. That the Deliverator delivers pizzas in a world run by corporations. That the deliverator is a software engineer with attitude. And you grin, shake your head and move on to the next chapter about Governmentless worlds.

The Deliverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator’s report card would say: “Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.”

After Snowcrash and The Diamond Age - Cyberpunk Classics - Stephenson changed tack. Cryptonomicon, his follow-up book, isn’t really Science Fiction, it is a “historical techno-thriller.” It is an outstanding book that has been has been compared in its breadth and scope to Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon’s dense World War II classic. But Stephenson won’t mind it being called Science Fiction:

“The science fiction approach doesn’t mean it’s always about the future; it’s an awareness that this is different.” [Link]

The book

follows two parallel sagas: that of cryptographers during World War II attempting to crack Axis codes and that of their descendants attempting to use modern cryptography to build a data haven in the fictitious state of Kinakuta, a small nation [...]. It also details the political machinations that follow both efforts. [Link]

A much more confident Stephenson digresses heavily, including a pointless short story written by one of the characters and Perl source code for a cryptographic algorithm he describes in the book. The book is a delightful read, each digression a source of unexpected pleasure. Stephenson blends in his fictional protoganists with real life people: Dr. Waterhouse, his cryptographer hero spends time with Alan Turing, and Einstein and Churchill make cameo appearances as themselves. Cryptonomicon is smart, supremely funny and densely packed with ideas and an acute awareness of the several societies spanned by the plot.

[...]When he does get to the right floor, thought, it is a bit posher than the wrong one was. Of course, the underlying structure of everything in England is post. There is no in between with these people. You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at sometime in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank. None of them have cars, but when they do, they are three-ton hand-built beasts. The concept of stamping out a whole lot of cars is unthinkable.

[...]Waterhouse has forgotten all of their names. He always immediately forgets the names. Even if he remembered them, he would not know their significance, as he does not actually have the organization chart of the Foreign Ministry (which runs Intelligence) and the Military laid out in front of him. They keep saying “woe to hice!” but just as he actually begins to feel sorry for this Hice fellow, whoever he is, he figures out that this is how they pronounce “Waterhouse.” Other than that, the one remark that actually penetrates his brain is when one of the Other Guys says something about the Prime Minister that implies considerable familiarity. And he’s not even the Main guy. The Main Guy is much older and more distinguished. So it seems to Waterhouse (though he has completely stopped listening to what all of these people are saying to him) that a good half of the people in the room have recently had conversations with Winston Churchill.

And perhaps in response to criticism that he couldn’t tie up his plots properly, Stephenson ends Cryptonomicon well, tying up most loose ends. An awesome, awesome read.

A review of Cryptonomicon at Slashdot.

Which brings us to the Baroque Cycle, his ambitious trilogy set in the early 18th century. Stephenson insists that the Baroque Cycle is still Science Fiction, because the book mostly focuses on science in the Baroque Era. Hmm. He continues using the technique of blending in fictitious people with real ones - the duel between Newton and Leibniz forms the backdrop for a large part of the cycle.

It is not Cryptonomicon, but it is a fine book nevertheless. Even though it feels a bit like reading a smart schoolboy’s scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings from the 17th century, the writing sparkles, and the characters intrigue. (And the second book in the trilogy is set in eighteenth century India, which is another reason to read it).

And the books are also… you know what, this post is way too long. So without much ado, I’ll conclude.

Therefore, I conclude, Neal Stephenson is a good writer who writes elaborately plotted science fiction full of irreverent humor. Hence, I infer, you will all go read his books and write your own reviews. Please wipe your glazed eyes and go back to your own blogs. If you are a came through google, sorry, no naked pictures exist on this blog, except on one post. Continue searching.

We are just a day or two into the new year. The year that just passed was a year in which Agatha Christie hogged more or less all the limelight, even though she is not that hot. In two separate studies, scientists claim to have unlocked the secret of why her books are so popular, even though they feature protagonists we’d rather not drink tea with.

Scientists at the Universities of London, Birmingham and Warwick “loaded Christie’s novels onto a computer and analyzed her words, phrases and sentences.” The results of the study show that

[S]he peppered her prose with phrases that act as a trigger to raise levels of serotonin and endorphins, the chemical messengers in the brain that induce pleasure and satisfaction.

[Another] finding was that she used a very limited vocabulary. “It means that readers aren’t distracted and so they concentrate more on the clues and the plots,” said Dr Pernilla Danielsson from the school of humanities at Birmingham University. [Link]

Here’s Mark Lieberman’s take at the Language Log.

Christie used a limited vocabulary, “pleasing and gentle” language even though the plots were macabre, and repeated certain “mesmerizing” phrases over and over again to stimulate serotonin and other chemicals in the body.

Favourite words or phrases, repeatedly used in a “mesmerising” way, help to stimulate the pleasure-inducing side of the brain. They include she, yes, girl, kind, smiled and suddenly. Common phrases include “can you keep an eye on this”, “more or less”, “a day or two” and “something like that”. [Link]

Let’s summarize the recipe for bestsellers: Repeating the same things over and over again, gentle presentation, familiar phrases, sixth grade vocabulary. And let’s also state our opinion of the whole stylometric study: Duh! Just read any three books by Robert Ludlum, and you’ll know. Familiarity sells. Familiarity and simplicity, we are convinced, are the key ingredients that make popular art so… popular. Actually, duh again. There is a whole industry in India, um.. I mean, South Asia that has been using the formula successfully for ages - Indian movies are all about familiar settings, dumbed down plotting and an insistence on making audiences feel good. The next time someone asks Ram Gopal Varma why he keeps remaking his own movies (and those of others), he should quote Professor Danielsson, stylometry, serotonin, Agatha Christie and Antara Mali. And Anu Malik - what can I say? I respect him a lot more now. Something like that.

The repetitive nature of Bollywood means titling movies is a hard, hard task. How many ways can you headline the same article? Guy beats up Bad Guys, falls in Love with Girl. Girl Falls in Love with Guy who beat up Bad Guys. Bad Guys beaten up by Guy that Fell in Love with Girl. Love fallen into by Girl and Guy who beat up Bad Guys. And so on. Which, by the way, is a great segue into the next Agatha Christie finding.

According to a statistical study commissioned by Lulu.com, Agatha Christie’s Sleeping Murder is the “perfect title” for a bestselling novel and John Le Carre is the most consistent producer of “good” titles. [Link]

Figurative or abstract titles, such as “Sleeping Murder,” or “Presumed Innocent,” produce more top-sellers than literal ones, such as “The Da Vinci Code.”

A title’s length does not affect sales — contrary to publishingindustry wisdom, which decrees that bestseller titles be short. Another increased respect moment here. Remember all those Hindi movie titles: DDLJ. HAHK. K3G. Damn. These guys knew.

Through the Language Log a link to the statistical analysis tool used for the study. The Lulu Book Title Analyzer. Please don’t forget to leave comments complimenting the intriguing figurative title I chose for this post.

[Previous Post on why Bollywood is high literary art.]

PS: Agatha Christie picture courtesy The Free Library.

A New Yorker review of The Economy of Prestige, a book by James English where he argues that “the threat of scandal” is essential to the viabilty of a literary award, and that it is “at least as important that the prize go to the wrong person as that it go to the right one.” That explains Banville. (sorry Lavanya).

When the first Nobel Prize in Literature went to Sully Prudhomme, in 1901, the choice was regarded as a scandal, since Leo Tolstoy happened to be alive. The Swedish Academy was so unnerved by the public criticism it received that its members made a point of passing over Tolstoy for the rest of his life—just to show, apparently, that they knew what they were doing the first time around—honoring instead such immortals as Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, José Echegaray, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Giosuè Carducci, Rudolf Eucken, and Selma Lagerlöf.

English says that for prizes to “matter” they need to be thought of as “fundamentally scandalous” by the public - scandalous in the sense that art should really have nothing to do with winning or losing.

In English’s view, therefore, [Toni] Morrison’s friends and admirers violated the protocols of prize-bashing not because they publicly criticized the choice of the National Book Award judges but because they acknowledged that the award really matters, that it is (in their words) a “keystone honor” that helps to validate a book and establish its author. Their statement pointed out, in the frankest terms, that there is a literary marketplace, and that power and authority–”cultural capital,” to use the term that English borrows from the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu–accrue to those who succeed in it. Art does not receive its reward in Heaven; it is one of the things that belong to Caesar.

English speculates that this willingness to speak without embarrassment about the significance of prizes and awards, and about the whole economy of cultural production and consumption, may, paradoxically, signal the demise of the prize system.

The book also sounds a hopeful note for wannabe creators:

There are now more movie awards given out every year–about nine thousand–than there are new movies, and the number of literary prizes is climbing much faster than the number of books published.

Nice. I’ll remember that for the next time I run into an award winning writer.

‘Tis the season for the coming out of recluses : First Illayaraja, famously idiosyncratic genius, performs his first live concert in decades, and even manages to enjoy it. Then, an actual, substantive Philip Roth interview appears in the Guardian. And now, Annie Proulx - who equates celebrity to being displayed on a meat rack - reluctantly talks to a few publications before the release of Brokeback Mountain, the movie based on her New Yorker short story from the late nineties.

Proulx started her career writing hunting stories for a men’s magazine, and to avoid the inevitable “What’s a name like Annie doing in a magazine like this?” - the editor wanted her to change her name to something more, well, masculine. Joe or Zack, perhaps? Finally a compromise was arrived at: Proulx added an E to her name and started writing as E.A.Proulx. Even after she became popular, the E persisted. BrokeBack Mountain was her first work as just plain Annie - even the Pulitzer winning Shipping News was credited to E. Annie Proulx. ^[1]

Most of Proulx’s tales are set in rural America, and her writing is brilliantly evocative (and unconventional and surprisingly humorous), effectively doing what she wants it to do - “make landscapes rise from the page, to appear in the camera lens of the reader’s mind.”

More than her lyrical writing, the allure of Proulx’s work lies in her steadfast refusal to glamorize a landscape that’s often a victim of its own beauty in the hands of lesser writers. Her rivers always run brown, and she’s not afraid of staining the pristine snow of the mountains with a little bit of pee. People treat animals cruelly and handsome, hardy cowboys fall in love with each other. Fly fishing is hard work, rodeo bull riders whimper when they fall and life on the whole is pretty darn hard. It is the average working class world, projected on white snowscreens.

In her own words,

It is not pastoral nostalgia that shakes me but imagined histories built on such slender clues as a rusted tobacco can nailed to a lodgepole pine and containing a miner’s claim from the last century, or an unchecked panhandle windmill boring a mad hole in the sky…

My introduction to Proulx was through The Shipping News, her Pulitzer winning book about a quintessential loser named Quoyle. Saddled with the responsibilty of raising his two daughters when his wife leaves him for another man, Quoyle decides to move his family - the kids and an old aunt - to Newfoundland. Actually, it was the Aunt’s will, and Quoyle complies. He finds a job in a newspaper office, and slowly, the family starts to settle down in the aunt’s ramshackle old home. As the gloom of winter starts to take over, Quoyle starts experiencing something close to hope.. “it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”

The Shipping News is a brilliantly written book, and Proulx possesses an acute awareness of her setting and characters. Every character has a backstory, and exhibits the odd quirk or two (but never quirky enough to be caricatures) and when they all come together, it makes for a very satisfying read. Did I say brilliantly written? At unexpected moments, Proulx decides to do away with prepositions and conjunctions in her sentences, adding a wry, darkly funny tone to the writing.

Quoyle, grinning. Expected to hear they were having a kid. Already picked himself for godfather.

Quoyle at the back of the meeting, writing on his pad. Went home, typed and retyped all night at the kitchen table. In the morning, eyes circled by rings, nerved on coffee, he went to the newsroom.

And then there are the gimmicks. Each chapter begins with the description of a knot from The Ashley Book Of Knots, and after a few chapters it is fun to try and figure out what would happen based on the knot described. Here’s the first chapter:

Quoyle: A coil of rope.

A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be walked on if necessary.

For what’s essentially a catalog of a gloomy life, The Shipping News can also be incredibly funny. Quoyle tends to think in newspaper headlines, and Proulx uses this throughout the book to great effect. Just this one “trick” lightens up the book tremendously, and transforms what could have easily become a laborious literary novel into an accessible classic.

Saw the commonplaces of life as newspaper headlines. Man Walks Across Parking Lot at Moderate Pace. Women Talk of Rain. Phone Rings in Empty Room.

Here’s an excerpt.

Coming back to Brokeback Mountain, Proulx says she spent more time on this short story than she would on a novel and it shows. It is a beautiful short story. (In fact, all the stories in Close Range are great reads).

They were raised on small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state, Jack Twist in Lightning Flat, up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar from around Sage, near the Utah line, both high-school drop-out country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life.

Jack and Ennis end up tending sheep together on Brokeback Mountain, and their friendship turns into a sexual relationship. The change happens without ado - naturally, almost like it was destined to happen. It is cold, come in to the tent, there is enough room on the bed, then it happens. It is clich�d, but Proulx intended it to be clich�d: it is not really that different, she seems to be saying. Their love is forbidden love; Jack wants them living together but Ennis is worried about the consequences. The two of them part ways and try to lead “normal” lives - wives, kids - while pining for each other. And then,… I won’t give it away, just read it if you can get hold of it somewhere.

Update: A Brokeback Mountan FAQ at annieproulx.com.

And a Falstaff review of the movie.

[1]: I got this from the Complete New Yorker, which is my stranded-on-a-desert-book now. Ok, DVD, but still.

First things first: I am back. So is the webmaster.

I wanted to write something about why American Pastoral was such a cool book, but I won’t now: What if one of the hundreds of people I’ve hurt by my razor sharp wit shoots me to death, and blames it on poor Philip Roth? He can’t even defend himself in court, he’s such a reclusive old man. Now why would I think that, you ask? Read this:

I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk. You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not. Anything other than this talk. Fairytale talk. As soon as you generalise, you are in a completely different universe than that of literature, and there’s no bridge between the two.” [Roth interview in The Guardian].

On the day I beat PrufrockTwo to a link, I will buy you all coffee.

Although I am not sure if Philip’s straight shooting abilities extend to actual weapons, I won’t risk it. Plus, my wit is very sharp, and the list of my enemies is long.

Why now, you ask? Why American Pastoral, you ask? Well, here’s why.

David McMahon, writing in the Indian Express quotes Mike Whitney, former Australian bowler talking about Sachin Tendulkar.

Whitney was bowling to the youngster in a county game in England in 1990, shortly after the Mumbai batsman had made his Test debut. ‘‘Sachin was on 99 and I bowled him with an inswinging yorker. But it was a no-ball.’’ No doubt grateful for the timely reprieve, Tendulkar duly reached his century off the next delivery. As he completed the single to bring up three figures, the Indian exchanged a brief glance with the bowler.

Whitney still chuckles at the memory. He thought Tendulkar was going to sledge him. Instead, he said something that startled the bowler even more than a four-letter word. ‘‘He said to me, ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mister Whitney’.’’

I thought it was, umm.. , very cute and all and even chuckled a bit, but on second thought, I wonder if Sachin gets the irony at all. And that’s what led me to Roth, to American Pastoral. If you go back and read the first few pages of the book, you are struck by something. Roth could very well be talking about Sachin Tendulkar.

Yes, everywhere he looked people were in love with him. The candy store owners we boys pestered called the rest of us “Hey-you-no!” or “Kid-cut-it-out!”; him they called, respectfully, “Swede.” Parents smiled and benignly addressed him as “Seymour.” The chattering girls he passed on the street would ostentatiously swoon, and the bravest would holler after him, “Come back, come back, Levov of my life!” And he let it happen, walked about the neighborhood in possession of all that love, looking as though he didn’t feel a thing. Contrary to whatever daydreams the rest of us may have had about the enhancing effect on ourselves of total, uncritical, idolatrous adulation, the love thrust upon the Swede seemed actually to deprive him of feeling. In this boy embraced as a symbol of hope by so many - as the embodiment of the strength, the resolve, the emboldened valor that would prevail to return our high school’s servicemen home unscated from Midway, Salerno, Cherbourg, the Solomons, the Aleutians, Tarawa - there appeared to be not a drop of wit or irony to interfere with his golden gift for responsibility.

But wit or irony is like a hitch in his swing for a kid like the Swede, irony being a human consolation and beside the point if you’re getting your way as a god. Either there was a whole side to his personality that he was suppressing or that was as yet asleep or, more likely, there wasn’t. His aloofness, his seeming passivity as the desired object of all this asexual lovemaking, made him appear, if not divine, a distinguished cut above the more primordial humanity of just about everybody else at the school.

I told you I was sharp, didn’t I? Tomorrow, I will tell you all about Dan Brown and Sourav Ganguly. Until then, go away, and please don’t be jealous.

A striking feature of the Lord of the Rings books is the author’s vivid rendering of Middle Earth. J.R.R Tolkien chose an imaginary setting for his books, but he provided his readers so much information about them – maps, historical contexts, evocative descriptions of landscapes - that it was hard to believe that the whole thing was made up. Tolkien filled his books with an overwhelming amount of descriptive detail at every opportunity he could, creating an array of detailed snapshots of the setting for readers. The effect was something unusual – a credible fantasy.

Stylistically, there couldn’t be a writer farther away from Tolkien than Raymond Carver. Where Tolkien would use a hundred words, Carver uses ten; where Tolkien’s characters wax poetic, Carver’s just grunt. Tolkien took pride in the length (and breadth) of his works, Carver was a minimalist from the Hemingway school.

But after reading Where I’m Calling From, Carver’s last collection of short stories before his premature death, one can’t help feeling that Carver did to the human being what Tolkien did to Middle Earth - his stories are a series of silhouettes that spotlight the world of his subjects. Like Tolkien’s verbose snapshots, the silhouettes work rather well. No writer I’ve read comes close to capturing the textured world of the guy next door as well as Carver does here.

Carver’s most remarkable achievement is the genuineness of his characters. A few sentences into every story a familiarity envelops you – you’ve met these people, you know how they talk – followed by awe at how true it all sounds. The dad in Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes could’ve so easily been mine; the odd couple in Put yourself in My Shoes could’ve been the weird people next door that maids hated to work for.

The whole experience of reading a Carver book is mind-blowing – it is like watching events unfold at your neighbor’s house through a skylight. And it is here that the author’s spare style comes in so handy – Carver keeps his descriptions down to a minimum, letting the reader’s imagination fill in the backdrop: these people could be your neighbors as much as they are mine.

A lot has been written about Carver’s minimalist style, but while his writing is spare and stark, he has an amazing eye for just the right details – passing mentions of an odd stray dog, a wet shoe or daddy’s muscles somehow lend a more complete feel to the stories, and the overall effect is that of something way more than the sum of its parts. (I so want to pun on his spare sentence construction and him not sparing a detail, but I’ll pass).

In “What’s in Alaska,” for example, two couples get together for an evening. And as the evening progresses, laced with drinking and drugs, Carver chooses to focus a lot of attention on the brand new shoes of one of the men – his doubts about the shoes seem to somehow mirror how he feels about the changes in his life. It is totally unexpected, and incredibly poignant.

Midway through the book, there seems to be a slight shift in Carver’s style. He’s a little more chatty, and the tales have a sunnier feel to them. You could sense a writer trying to break free from a style that was starting to cramp him, but unfortunately for Carver (and us) his life ended before he could finish his experimentation.

According to this essay by William Stull, professor at the University of Hartford, sometime after the publication of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Carver thought he would hit a dead end if he continued to head down the path of increased minimalism, and

[...]what followed over the next two years was an artistic turnabout, “an opening up” during which he restored and expanded the work he had pared down under the influence of editor Lish, Hemingway’s “theory of omission,” and his own purgative impulses. Two small-press books, Fires and If It Please You, display the outcome of this process. In addition, Carver wrote a dozen new stories in a higher, more hopeful key. The first of them, “Cathedral” (Atlantic Monthly, September 1981), he termed “totally different in conception and execution” from his previous work.

Truth, I’m sure you’ve heard, is stranger than fiction. If you believe that, then Carver’s short stories are the closest fiction can get to the truth.

Update: Here’s Falstaff on Carver. Neat.

Graham Greene, we hear, sucked at spelling. And so, when playing Scrabble, he resorted to the classic poor speller’s trick: quoigning new words.

The problem, according to Meyer, was that [Graham] Greene’s spelling was “deeply dubious”, and the pair did not have a dictionary. Durin