Risqué Robbins

It has been a long time since, and my memory usually waxes dim on such subjects, or I would have whole heartedly wished to convey some notion of the manner in which Harold Robbins finds a place on my book shelf. There are two actually; Goodbye Janette, and The Carpetbaggers. These two I think dropped right from heaven, for I don’t remember buying them (that is ever since I started buying books) and for all my expeditions into streets where books are found I’ve never come across a Robbins work! My brother, a healthy contributor to the shelf is equally clueless, and so are mom and dad who do not believe in the concept of reading anyway. Nobody knows whom the books belong to; they are my family’s conundrum I guess, and the legacy is sure to stay unless some insane stroke of fate brings the real owner wandering to our doorstep! But, life isn’t celluloid, and therefore there’s hardly a chance of these ragged veterans getting back to their actual owner.

I believe I was still in my ‘Nancy Drew’ stage, probably in the eighth standard when I happened to flip through the pages of Goodbye, Janette. In many ways it was my first read, however I didn’t manage to complete it, for the sheer lack of patience and my arrant inability to come to terms with that thing called, sexuality. I realized it was one of those books which people call “dirty”, and I would be lying if I say that I did not want to continue, for at that impressionable age, with the hormones running amuck and the mind curious enough to de-cloud the myths about sex, made me flip more number of pages. The more I flipped, the more bedazzled I got, until better sense prevailed and made me drop the book out of sheer exhaustion. Unknowingly, I had become a reader of porn, although that word was quite elusive to me at that time.

Such a reading led to discussions with girl friends and the usual fuss about all matters relating to sex. Gosh, it looks so puerile now. But, what are you smirking at; you too have been there and done that! A dozen thumbs soiled the pages, following my publicity of its content, and a large number of people became porn readers as well!

But, I should hold my thoughts there and warn you from drawing conclusions based on the above statements! Now, Robbins isn’t appreciated much in the literary circles for his often graphic sexual detail, but boy, it’s amazing and almost unbelievable that he could actually write a book like, A Stone for Danny Fisher. For one, the book is absolutely “clean”, and not once does it come across as risqué, and boy, did Segal write Acts of Faith after reading Danny Fisher, coz it was out and out Segal-isque, and it had these deja-vu moments reminding me of Daniel Luria and all those Jewish traditions that one comes across in Segal’s Acts of Faith. I know Segal fans would probably kill me for such an analogy, but sorry guys, can’t help this time around!

Never in my wildest dreams did I think of Robbins of all to generate such magnitude of emotions. But isn’t it always good to be pleasantly surprised once in a while, as these final words of Danny Fisher:

I was not a great man whose history has been recorded for children to study in school. No bells will ring for me, no flags descend upon their mast……….for I was an ordinary man, my son, one of many, with ordinary hopes, with ordinary dreams and ordinary fears. I was the ordinary man about whom songs are never written, stories are never told, and legends are never remembered.

My Verdict: As readers we have a strong itch to show off all the great men whose works we have ever read. We even have our own individual lists of writers whom we consider to be great, and at times we are over-possessed with a sadistic pleasure of putting that which flutters the brain idly for a moment and then is heard no more in competition with some of the greatest works of art. And that is exactly where we fail as readers, for each writer has a unique ability and in the end everything boils down to the fact that, “different people have different ways of telling stories”, and it never serves good to reject someone based on first impressions!

Boy, I’m blessed with a soul so democratic!

The Triad & Other Stories

Even a careful eye would have missed it coz it refused to reveal itself; it was meant only for those eyes which had the patience and the ability to sit down alone and struggle with the writer, for the best way to know what a book contains is by reading it. Oblivious of its co-habitation with some of the greatest names in English Literature, it lay lambent, confident of its existence amongst such talismanic works of art. It was an old book redolent with the smell of antiquity and every time I opened it, the spine cracked, putting its health in jeopardy! I believe I was the first person to take it out of the library! And I had a tough time reading it, not because of its theme or manner of presentation but due to the constant feeding to the brain to handle the book “carefully”! Every turning of a leaf seemed like a requiem, almost as if it were accusing me of killing it!

It isn’t a classic (not in all senses though) and certainly not a book to be read in present times, and I wonder how many might have read it even in its own times. The book is a paradox, not because of its content, but due to its inappropriate timing. For, what may appear to readers of one generation as winning genius of the author, another generation may discard it as a thing of antiquity, or may seem to the next as a heavy dose of patriotism! Worse luck, Kanthapura would find itself on a sticky wicket in every age!! But, the vogue of an author is directly proportional to the taste of the age, and even classics are exposed to fluctuations in fashion, Kanthapura is no exception to this law!

R K Narayan & Mulk Raj Anand

Now, Raja Rao along with R K Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand formed the ‘Triad’ or the ‘Big Three’ of Indian fiction in English. But, unlike the other two, Raja Rao seems to be a little classic, and I whole-heartedly echo the New York Times Book Review, which says, “It has all the content of an ancient Indian classic, combined with a sharp, satirical wit and a clear understanding of the present…Raja Rao is perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most interesting writer of modern India.”

If you’ve read the Triad, then you’ll probably acquiesce, when I say that Rao is a little classical in his story telling. As far as, style is concerned, though his graces are not those most in favor at the moment, but the triumphs of his style are clear to all who understand the “art of writing”. It is a very bookish style, a kind of mannered-manner I suppose! He himself says in the foreword that,
“We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as distinctive and colorful as the Irish or the American…………the tempo of the Indian life must be infused into our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs. We, in India, think quickly, we talk quickly, and when we move we move quickly. There must be something in the sun of India that makes us rush and tumble and run on……………episode follows episode, and when our thoughts stop our breath stops, and we move on to another thought. This was and still is the ordinary style of our story telling. I have tried to follow it myself in this story.”

And it was actually these lines which made me read the book,
“it may have been told of an evening, when as the dusk falls and through the sudden quiet, lights leap up in house after house, and stretching her bedding on the veranda, a grandmother might have told you, newcomer, the sad tale of her village.”

My Verdict: Incorporation of the oral tradition into modern fiction makes it an excellent read, and I say, it’s a must for all those who wonder about the miracle of India’s struggle to freedom! Happy reading!

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.

Amir v/s Roark

“For you, a thousand times over.”

Surely there is a great depth of pathos in those unaffected words, and in the mere raising of human love and hatred to such a power that their normal receptacles no longer contain them. Its after a long time, probably since The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, and Tuesdays with Morrie, that a book has managed to leave me crushed in the end; it’s the ‘survivor’s guilt’ perhaps. But, as the book puts it, zendagi migzara, life goes on.

Its amazing how the world goes gaga over one orange haired guy (read, Roark), worships him coz he is perfection well defined, but no matter what the world seems to hold view, Roark will perhaps smash and distort but he will seldom illumine, at least not me. Fine, I accept his philosophy, or rather Miss Rand’s, but it still remains an ordinary world of fiction and it never reaches back. Of course comparison between these two books is extremely far flung, and one that seems deliberate (maybe it is), moreover, this blogger would rather genuflect before Amir, than a Roark. Girls like Roark. Sorry! They lurve him! Thank the universe, he doesn’t exist outside the front and back covers of the book, and even if he did, I doubt how many of the girls, who lurve him (ahem), would notice him, and even if they did, it would be interesting to see, how many would continue to lurve him, post sessions of cold gazes, and the irony of being with a man who doesn’t even acknowledge your presence. If you still lurve him, you must be Jesus!!

There’s a thing called prophetic fiction, and many would attest that The Fountainhead is a perfect example of the said category, but then there’s also a term called ‘preaching’, can you alienate that from The Fountainhead? The Roarks, the Francons, or the Wynands hardly ask us to share anything deeper than their experiences, and there’s a more chance of you empathizing with Keating than Roark himself!! I’ve no clue what your definition of a great novel is, but for me, it has to be in a region where it could be joined by the rest of humanity, and therefore, Amir is- all of us; for all his imperfections, cowardice, errors, and sufferings. He conveyed to me a sensation that is partly physical- the sensation of sinking deep into water, and seeing my mistakes floating far above me on its surface, tiny, remote, yet mine. Maybe its my curious attitude of not accepting people who never make mistakes; I respect imperfection to a large extent!

My Verdict on The Kite Runner:: It asks for endurance or loyalty without hope of reward, and Amir in spite of all his internal looseness is too tight with a philosophy that leads to a reflections on life and things. There is something in words that is alien to its simplicity. Read it to explore life through the body.

Now Playing:: 18 till I die……………..Bryan Adams

Shame

When i complete a book, it is days before i can shake off the characters, their idiosyncrasies, their habitat………a curious feeling that trails me everywhere, till I pick up another book and lose my mind between the front and back covers. There was something in the “ Magic Realism ” of Salman Rushdie that kinda seduced me to bed Shame, all over again.

The thing that struck me when i read it for the first time was undoubtedly the turbulent political history of our neighboring country; so full of conspiracies and power packed drama, and especially with our own past so intricately associated with their’s that the interest for each other’s histories is almost mutual. Drama, however much we despise it, does have the uncanny ability to sharpen our perception of the world, gives us some sense and understanding of who we are, makes us actors of a different kind and glorifies each passing day.

In Shame, drama; camouflaged in the realms of fantasy and imagination of Rushdie, adds those special effects, making the “ real ” appear almost metaphorical. It is a novel about Pakistan and the people who ruled Pakistan, largely focusing on the shifting relationship between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, under the appellation of Iskander Harappa and Raza Hyder. But for a reader, who is no way connected with the sub-continent, the novel will appear to him as a rich treat of fantasia…………with the introductions of a beast, ghost, at times; god as well, and of course the three witches ( so reminiscent of the three witches in Macbeth ), who share the symptoms of pregnancy, and boy, they are mothers of our hero; Omar Khayyam Shakil.

But I wonder what made the writer call Omar the hero of the novel; the action hardly takes place when this squabby being is around, except towards the end, but people seem to die and fall in love when he isn’t around; he’s more like a catalyst or maybe he’s a hero of a different kind!! Ok I wont divulge too many details, in case you are planning to read it, and I totally recommend it.

My Verdict:: Fantasy and imagination will never grow stale and they will occur naturally to writers of a certain temperament, but the fact that their number is fast declining is a matter of much concern. Three cheers to Rushdie. Boy, Indian writers absolutely rock!!

Loved this political satire:

“ How does a dictator fall? There is an old saw which states, with absurd optimism, that it is in the nature of tyrannies to end. One might as well say that it is also in their nature to begin, to continue, to dig themselves in, and, often, to be preserved by greater powers than their own.”

“ Well, well, I mustn’t forget I’m only telling a fairy story. My dictator will be toppled by goblinish, faery means. ‘ Makes it pretty easy for you,’ is the obvious criticism; and I agree, I agree. But add, even if it does sound a little peevish: ‘ You try and get rid of a dictator sometime.’”

( Boy, I can almost see him smirking at his own statement!! )

Now playing:: I breathe again…………Adam Rickitt

The Biryani Writer

We are Indians and we all like our ghar ki daal. But our predilection for mom-made food does not necessarily make us eschew the ocassional biryani. Infact we prefer having biryani most of the times!! Now, Chetan Bhagat enjoys a similar biryani status amidst book lovers, though most of the readers will deny accepting any such theory. These are the people who accuse his books to be way too entertaining, hokey,etc etc. Now, what else is the primary function of a book or are people too scared to get entertained?? Ironically these are the people who also figure among the first buyers of his books!! ' Reading ' first to ' criticise ' first........that sure is a deadly combination!!

At times according to our age, mood, and experience, and at times in the different hours of the same day, we prefer one writer, one book to another. And the best part about Chetan's books is that he saves the reader from the sheer pain of thinking, and the reader does not have to pay the price of losing him/her in another man's mind. Maybe thats the reason why he is so in vogue. However, one might question his writing skills which hardly match international standards, but then he caters to the needs of the domestic readers, the majority of which are not book readers anyway. Its always better to begin with Chetan than opting for say a Nabokov work.

Even the great Narayan was criticised for writing " pedestrian " work, so its not much of a surprise if Chetan generates much of flak; simplicity is never accepted easily anyways. And with the ever increasing inflation, one should be a fool to complain about the price of his books. My cousin ( another love-hate reader ) says there's nothing to learn from his books. Of course his books are not beautiful waters of learning when on plunging you emerge as a scholar. They are like watching a good movie; total paisa vasool. And no harm ever came in getting entertained. Why is it so difficult for people to understand that different people have different ways of telling stories??

This is what my cousin ( Akash ) had to say about Chetan's latest book, The 3 Mistakes of my Life:

Akash: " You know what are the three mistakes of his life?"

1. Studying at the IIT


2. Being an IIM pass out, and the most horrible one


3. Writing a book

We enjoyed a good laugh at this one, but then people will always envy them, who they wanted to be, but could not!!

My verdict on this book: a total entertainer, you wont demand your time back. We like having our biryani remember!!

Now Playing:: Aane wala pal.......................Kishore

The Mayor of Casterbridge

" ......................that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain."

Hardy, probably justifies the pessimism of his novel with that argument, which concludes, ' The Mayor of Casterbridge ', aptly subtitled as, ' A Story of a Man of Character '. It hardly wastes our mind on too many things; for whatever too much expands the mind weakens it................its the story of one man, Henchard, who is almost a natural force, at the mercy of his instincts and emotions, and lacking all objective understanding of the workings of the external world. The book hardly gives a sentimental largeness to the rendering of Henchard's life but on the contrary compels us to believe that, its quite easy to become an angel, but its quite a big task to survive as a mere human and to be guided by our pride, passion, and a kind of reasoning which streams not from the mind but from the heart itself!! Henchard's life is probably a classic epitome of the price one pays to act like a human being under a set of circumstances.............. the course of action projected by the original " selling " of his wife, which is determined in its later stages in the form of Nature, civilization, and human character which seem to be working against each other. And that probably gives it the shape of a genuine tragedy.

The novel is not wholly Henchard's story either. The other characters Farfrae, Elizabeth-Jane, and Lucetta-play significant parts in this battle between man and Nature, man and man, and between man and his own instincts. Henchard who remains a marauder all his life, in the end succumbs to the assault on his emotions by the other characters, and there's hardly a point in the story where any of the characters appear to dwell in the wrong side, except for Henchard while selling his wife. Therefore its probably not possible to rule out the role of circumstances in deciding the course of events.

Henchard's shifting relationship with Elizabeth-Jane, whom he first believes to be his daughter, then learns she is not, then wishes she were and claims that she is, until at last with the dramatic entry of Newson ( her real father ), which leads to Jane's rejection of Henchard and stripping him from all kind of relationship satus. The effect of such a rejection was to disqualify Henchard from humanity itself and he finally dies wretchedly in a hut on Egdon Heath.I dnt think Hardy wanted to convey anything through this fictional representation of his tragic vision of life, except to depict the arrant helplessness of human beings before anything thats " fated "!!

Cant help but conclude by quoting Shaw over here:

"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity."

A highly recommended book, for its language, the beautiful setting of the fictional Casterbridge, the never ending warfare between man and his emotions, and a pure and unadulterated depiction of man as he is!!

Certainly worthy of reading a second time on quiet evenings, especially with Kishore playing in the background.................you wont demand your time back, thats my verdict!!

Now Playing:: Veena ( instrumental ).................Talvin Singh