Lost In Translation

Its one of those books which allures you because of the writer’s reputation; charms you enough to take it home; makes you sit with it for a certain number of pages when the charm slowly loosens its effects on you, and you no longer remain a captive either to the story or your continued reverence for the writer. Nothing can make you move forward except an imbecile love for literature and the sheer thrill of holding a book, every word of which was read by you, the reader. Mind you, I’m talking about actual readers and not visualizers who get an effect by cataloguing details and whisking the pages over irritably, and say “I’ve read that book.” These people tend to move round books instead of through them. Books have to be read and it is the only way of discovering what they contain. Please do not eat them, just read (worse luck, for it takes a long time) them.

Now coming back, I’ve absolutely no clue as to what went wrong with Chokher Bali. It has the color, gesture and outline in people and things, the usual stock-in-trade of any novelist, yet it somehow fails to click. I think it got lost in translation. O, yea I would rather learn Bengali, and read it in its original tongue than in its Anglican form! For translated works suffer a degree of descent in the mind after which the magic of the original verse disappears; and that rare quality by which- no one can tell how- some words stir the mind in a manner that is on the same level as music is to speech, and color is to painting, no longer effects the actual purpose. I hope you get my point?

Translation is an art in itself, and good translations demand certain amount of skill and creativity on the part of the translator. In most cases the translators come from a different age than that of the original writer, have different temperaments and aims, but they all intend to tell a story, and are in the process of creation. Now, as a reader if you happen to know both the languages in which the book exists, you’ll probably be able to give a better understanding of this problem. One look at the conversations and you’ll know that the writer has originally thought in some other language and has merely put his thoughts in a language foreign to his thoughts.

And, in case you are wondering what Chokher Bali means, well, it means a “mote in the eye”.

My Verdict:: it will make you abandon it in the middle, courtesy its slow movement but your love for Tagore will ensure that you’ve flipped the last page and have read the final words.

The Catcher In The Rye

I always thought chocolate had a drawback, albeit the brain sees it as happy food, producing those tingling sensations with every bite, ah! Chocolate is always a pleasure isn’t it? But the one drawback to it is its color. Charming to the taste it is dull to the eye. One would never eat it if one did not know from experience that it tastes better than it looks. Now, I would not have picked, The Catcher in the Rye, if I had not heard about it a zillion times. For one, the frontispiece looks as naked as a guttersnipe and the edition that I bought even lacked a blurb, and honestly I wouldn’t have purchased any other in such dishabille. Its strange to say, but the exterior hardly raised a sweet emotion or a tickling sense of property in me, the owner.

But lo! Magnificence lay inside! It would’ve been mere foppery to trick it out in some gay apparel. Boy! What a goddamn book that was! It killed me. And, as Caulfield puts it, “what really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of your and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” Only, if it could be really possible!

I remember hearing about it for the first time in the movie Jerry Maguire, in a passing monologue, probably just before Tom Cruise sets out to write his “mission statement”. Then blogs happened and every profile seemed to mention this queer-sounding book in the ‘best reads’ category. A sudden irritability begun creeping within, which could only be quieted by “reading” the goddamn book! And its always healthy to read the work of art itself than reading a whole lot of stuff ‘about’ the work of art! And, read I did!! However, it would be false to admit that the book had a “great” impression on me, and it’s not Salinger’s fault that I did not profit more. The book, Wikipedia says, is banned in lot of countries for the over usage of the word, “goddamn”. This can be imputed to the reader’s imperfect acquaintance with many of the words that Holden uses, but the same objection makes it a presumption in the reader to suppose that he can admire him as well. I won’t say that I loved Holden, but I certainly didn’t hate him either.
Raging a psychological war against the phonies, Holden was more pleasant to some persons for the few faults and weaknesses that he had. He did not daunt me, nor threw me to a distance, by his formidable virtues for he had none, however he delivered more than one expects from a sixteen year old. A hero of a different order; I thought that he was funny, in spite of the over whelming evidence in the contrary, courtesy a lousy vocabulary, which stands a better chance of creeping into your own lexis, boy, beware! I’m saying a lot of “goddamn” and “boy” these days, but its good that Holden dislikes saying “fuck”.

“But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how phoebe ( his sister ) and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them-all cockeyed, naturally-what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it.”

The owner of a queer faculty, Holden’s mind appeared to be rather suggestive than comprehensive. He had no pretence to much clearness or precision in his ideas, or in his manner of expressing them. To confess fairly his intellectual wardrobe had few whole pieces in it. It was content with fragments and scattered pieces of truth. Boy! What a hero for a novel! But, it takes guts of the highest order to create a character like Holden, and Salinger should be appreciated for this novelty. And do not attempt to battle your wits regarding the name of the book coz that is what Holden aspires to become in the near future,

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around-nobody big, I mean-except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

My Verdict:: Some readers can be thrilled, and others choked off, coz it demands an additional adjustment because of the perplexity of its method and theme. Some readers will adjust with delight, and others will refuse with indignation. Even if you refuse that would not imply your poverty of imagination, but only a disinclination to meet certain demands that the book expects from its readers.