Book Review – The Sellout by Paul Beatty

I’ve wanted to read ‘The Sellout‘ by Paul Beatty ever since it won the Booker Prize. It was the first American winner of the Booker Prize and I wanted to find out how an American winner of the Booker Prize looked like. I finally got around to reading it.

The narrator of the story is a good person, a law-abiding citizen. As he says on the first page –

“This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations. I’ve never burgled a house. Held up a liquor store. Never boarded a crowded bus or subway car, sat in a seat reserved for the elderly…But here I am, in the cavernous chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, my car illegally and somewhat ironically parked on Constitution Avenue, my hands cuffed and crossed behind my back, my right to remain silent long since waived and said goodbye to as I sit in a thickly padded chair that, much like this country, isn’t quite as comfortable as it looks.”

So how does this good black man end up at the Supreme Court with his hands cuffed? The rest of the story tries explaining that.

There is good news and bad news. When I started reading the first page, I started laughing. I found it brilliant. I was expecting the next page to be like that. I was expecting every page after that to be like that. That is too much pressure on the writer. It is easy to write a brilliant first page. It is hard to replicate that through the rest of the book. At around page 11, I felt that the story wasn’t moving, the book was hard to read, it wasn’t as good as the first page. I wanted to DNF the book. But I went and took a nap and came back to the book after a few hours. I told myself that I’ll read till the end of the prologue, which was till page 24. If things don’t improve by then, I thought I’ll dump the book. Luckily for me, the book improved by that time. It became better and by around page 100, I was laughing after every page. The humour was sharp, dark, infectious. I got used to that while reading the second half, but it was still good. I wasn’t sure how the story ended. What judgement did the court pass in the end? Was the narrator innocent or guilty? I’m not sure. I’m sure the answer is hidden somewhere in the end, which a more intelligent reader will be able to discern. But I couldn’t.

This book is not for everyone though. It is not a typical Booker Prize winner. Many readers have complained that they couldn’t get the book and they felt that it was too American. It is definitely American. But if you are able to get into it, it will make you laugh aloud throughout. I don’t think a book which was filled with satire or dark humour has won the Booker Prize ever. Or atleast in recent years. The only book I know which came close was Steve Toltz’ ‘A Fraction of the Whole‘. The first part of that book which stretched to around 200 pages was filled with dark humour and was hilarious. Steve Toltz’ book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2008, which was really a long time back. Otherwise humour and satire don’t find much favour with Booker Prize judges. So it is surprising that Paul Beatty’s book got in and it won.

So if you want to read the book but you’re also not sure, I’d suggest the same thing that I did. Read the prologue which stretches to 24 pages and see whether it works for you. It will take an hour or less and there are worse ways of spending your time. If the prologue is good and it is up your alley, you can enjoy the rest of the book. If it isn’t, you can dump the book and move on. There are other books to read and other things to do.

Paul Beatty has written three other novels before this. This is his last novel. It came out in 2015. So it has been nearly 10 years. So unless he is a writer like Donna Tartt or Jeffrey Eugenides, who comes out with a new book every 10 years, I think we can more or less assume that he has retired. It is sad, because his writing is really good. I don’t know whether he writes short pieces, essays and articles these days. I don’t keep in touch with the literary world that way, and so I don’t know. Paul Beatty has edited a book called ‘Hokum : An Anthology of African-American Humor’. I want to read that sometime.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“In neighborhoods like the one I grew up in, places that are poor in praxis but rich in rhetoric, the homies have a saying – I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six. It’s a maxim, an oft-repeated rap lyric, a last-ditch rock and hard place algorithm that on the surface is about faith in the system but in reality means shoot first, put your trust in the public defender, and be thankful you still have your health.”

“…what little inspiration I have in life comes not from any sense of racial pride. It stems from the same age-old yearning that has produced great presidents and great pretenders, birthed captains of industry and captains of football; that Oedipal yen that makes men do all sorts of shit we’d rather not do, like try out for basketball and fistfight the kid next door because in this family we don’t start shit but we damn sure finish it. I speak only of that most basic of needs, the child’s need to please the father.”

“And why Wednesdays?”

“You don’t know? You don’t remember? It was the last talk your father gave at the Dum Dum Donuts meetin’. He said that the vast majority of slave revolts took place on Wednesdays because traditionally Thursday was whippin’ day. The New York Slave Revolt, the L.A. riots, the Amistad, all them shits,” Hominy said, grinning woodenly from ear to ear like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Been this way ever since we first set foot in this country. Someone’s getting whipped or stopped and frisked, whether or not anyone done anything wrong. So why not make it worthwhile and act a fool Wednesday if you gonna get beat on Thursday, right, massa?”

“One of the many sad ironies of African-American life is that every banal dysfunctional social gathering is called a “function.” And black functions never start on time, so it’s impossible to gauge how to arrive fashionably late without taking a chance of missing the event altogether.”

“His latest installment was a nonsensical race forum on public access called ‘Just the Blacks, Ma’am’. It aired at five o’clock Sunday mornings. Ain’t but two niggers in the world awake at five o’clock, and that’s Foy Cheshire and his make-up artist. It’s hard to describe a man wearing probably close to $5,000 in a suit, shoes, and accessories as disheveled, but up close in the streetlight that’s exactly what he was. All spit and no polish, his shirt wrinkled and losing its starch. The bottoms of his barely creased silk pants ringed brown with dirt and just starting to fray. His shoes were scuffed, and he reeked of crème de menthe. I once heard Mike Tyson say, “Only in America can you be bankrupt and live in a mansion.””

“I’ve always liked rote. The formulaic repetitiveness of filing and stuffing envelopes appeals to me in some fundamental life-affirming way. I would’ve made a good factory worker, supply-room clerk, or Hollywood scriptwriter. In school, whenever I had to do something like memorize the periodic table, my father would say the key to doing boring tasks is to think about not so much what you’re doing but the importance of why you’re doing it. Though when I asked him if slavery wouldn’t have been less psychologically damaging if they’d thought of it as “gardening,” I got a vicious beating that would’ve made Kunta Kinte wince.”

“…sometimes I’m jealous of Hominy’s obliviousness, because he, unlike America, has turned the page. That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”

“If forced to sit next to someone, people violated the personal space of women first and black people last. If you were a black male, then no one, including other black males, sat next to you unless they absolutely had to.”

“After two hours of swapping stories about slum life in Dickens and what Hominy was up to, I’d find myself miles from home, surfing with seals and dolphins at increasingly remote spots like Topanga, Las Tunas, Amarillo, Blocker, Escondido, and Zuma. Drifting onto private beachfronts where, soaking wet, the billionaire locals would stare at me as if I were a talking walrus with a willow-tree Afro when I’d walk through their sandy backyards, knock on the glass sliding doors, and ask to use the phone and the bathroom. But for some reason nonsurfing white folk trust a barefoot nigger carrying a board. Maybe they thought to themselves, His arms are too full to make off with the TV, and besides, where’s he going to run to?”

“I’ve experienced direct discrimination based on race only once in my life. One day I foolishly said to my father that there was no racism in America. Only equal opportunity that black people kick aside because we don’t want to take responsibility for ourselves. Later that very same day, in the middle of the night, he snatched me up out of bed, and together we took an ill-prepared cross-country trip into deepest, whitest America. After three days of non-stop driving, we ended up in a nameless Mississippi town that was nothing more than a dusty intersection of searing heat, crows, cotton fields, and, judging by the excited look of anticipation on my father’s face, unadulterated racism.”

“Regardless of your income level, the old adage of having to be twice as good as the white man, half as good as the Chinese guy, and four times as good as the last Negro the supervisor hired before you still holds true.”

“Daddy never believed in closure. He said it was a false psychological concept. Something invented by therapists to assuage white Western guilt. In all his years of study and practice, he’d never heard a patient of color talk of needing “closure.” They needed revenge. They needed distance. Forgiveness and a good lawyer maybe, but never closure. He said people mistake suicide, murder, lap band surgery, interracial marriage, and overtipping for closure, when in reality what they’ve achieved is erasure.”

“Sometimes I forget how funny Hominy is. Back in the day, to avoid the succession of booby traps laid by the white man, black people had to constantly be on their feet. You had to be ready with an impromptu quip or a down-home bromide that would disarm and humble a white provocateur. Maybe if your sense of humor reminded him there was a semblance of humanity underneath that burrhead, you might avoid a beating, get some of that back pay you were owed. Shit, one day of being black in the forties was equal to three hundred years of improv training with the Groundlings and Second City. All it takes is fifteen minutes of Saturday-night television to see that there aren’t many funny black people left and that overt racism ain’t what it used to be.”

Have you read ‘The Sellout’? What do you think about it?

Book Review – The Awakening by Anita Agnihotri (Translated by Nandini Guha)

Arjun is a cobbler’s son. But he is not interested in pursuing the family business. He wants to make idols for worship during Puja time. But no one is going to buy an idol made by a cobbler’s son. So what happens to Arjun and the people who are a part of his life forms the rest of the story.

Arjun’s story and the impact of casteism on poor people is the main theme of the book. But there is also a parallel story in the book. It is about how young people went to war against the government in the ’60s and ’70s and how they were arrested and tortured and killed by the government and how this impacted their families.

Though events from both these parallel stories are interleaved through the book, they don’t intersect each other. Towards the end the two plots brush each other, but otherwise they are really two independent stories.

I loved both these stories but I found it strange that they didn’t come together and merge with each other. It looked to me like two novellas were merged to create this novel.

One of the things that I loved about the book was the way it describes how Puja idols are made. It was beautiful art, but it also looked like a very complicated process, and the life of the artisans who made it seems to be very hard.

The part of the book which was about parents losing their children to police violence in custody was very heartbreaking to read. I can’t imagine what parents went through during that time. It was a difficult period in contemporary Indian history.

I enjoyed reading ‘The Awakening‘. Anita Agnihotri has written a novel about a newly appointed civil servant and her challenges at work, which is based on her own experiences. I want to read that. She has also written a novel about the river Mahanadi, which is quite famous. I want to read that too.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“There was a time when lights from the windowpanes dazzled the boats midstream. At that time the town had honour and dignity. The grandeur of the wealthy was considered a reflection of the town’s well-being and health. The poor of course lived no differently than they do today. If a history of their survival were to be written it would be the same down the ages – they fought for survival either standing tall or crawling on all fours.”

“A big steamer would lead the way followed by four boats filled with straw. During the day they sailed down the river, dropped anchor at the onset of night. In this way with several halts, the two day journey was completed in four days. Gaur had been plying his boat for more than 15 years now. He carried an earthen barrel filled with drinking water and a porcelain jar containing lime pickle, crimson coloured rice and a fish curry. In the Bada area the paddy had long stalks so the straw from here was longer and there was great demand for it since it was used for all sorts of purposes. He’d been just 25 when he first sailed on the river, and his heart trembled. He could barely look at his wife when he took leave of her. The river pirates, the danger of fever and of course the great Master who with thunderbolts of yellow and black could take a life at will, without warning – all this was in his heart. And then there were the crocodiles and tortoises whose home was the river. Despite all this Gaur had gone. The river held a magnetic attraction for him. Every year at this time his blood was excited by the call of the river, the boundaries of home, fields all became confining. Gaur would become irritable, his appetite would diminish and sleep would evade him. Then his wife Kajli would scold him with a wry face, “Go on. Go now, leave for the outdoors. I can see home cooked food is not suiting you any more. There’s nothing for me to understand. So don’t make any excuses. A strange sickness is what you have, honestly!” On a cloudy afternoon, or on an evening when the sun had set, Kajli’s face would torment him to death as it floated up into the sky looming above the river.”

“Actually Swapnabha had never seen his mother at all. The name Swapnabha, meant that he was the dream that his mother had barely fulfilled on earth, and disappeared into thin air thereafter.”

“Possibly from the age of fourteen whenever anger and grief overwhelmed him, Arjun, with the scalpel in his hands and the artistry of his fingers, transformed his anger into pictures on clay. Next to the peaceful Lakshmi idol, would be created a storm-tossed owl its eye-brows crinkled up in a frown. Or the lion’s mane would embody the velocity of a tempest. Since the time Arjun could transform and mould beautiful shapes, he had never had to come home to the drudgery of cooking his own meals.”

“They carried on much like a tree whose heart had been emptied when the birds flew away but had still spread its branches in all directions. Even today, people came to sit in the shade of the tree and small plants dreamed of living and growing bigger by entwining themselves in the tree’s branches.”

“Dolls made out of unbaked clay got washed away during the monsoons. Of course they were more durable if they were fired. Then they lasted for a long time. But in what condition they survived, what they endured, only the doll could tell. Too much heat was also dangerous. If a vertical crack appeared anywhere, then one day it would shatter into smithereens. There were amazing similarities between man and clay idols. Man was born on this earth, and with its clay he created the image of a God, who could neither be touched nor held. However the image was not actually a God, it was more human really. Urmi was one such burnt-clay goddess-doll. Even before she could learn about life and start a family she had fallen into the fire…Yet Urmi, seemed to have walked on fire with ease. However, that a crack was gradually forming within her, thanks to her proximity and repeated encounters with fire, was something no one had realized. Much later, one day, Urmi suddenly cracked into pieces. In a household, people who suppressed their own traumatic feelings had a tough time. They looked fine, keeping calm in the face of other people’s troubles. However, if the pain in their hearts rose up in revolt, then what a sight that would be! No one would accept it. Every one would be irritated. They would say, what on earth is this! We never expected such an exhibition from her. If someone who drank regularly came home sober one day people would be pleased. But if somebody who never touched liquor was to imbibe a peg or two one day people would rise up in consternation. Urmi discovered that her situation was somewhat similar. The family members were so used to her never expressing herself verbally, that Urmi’s voice now sounded strange to their ears.”

Have you read ‘The Awakening’? What do you think about it?

Book Review – By the Lake by John McGahern

I discovered John McGahern through an essay by one of my favourite essayists, Anne Fadiman. Later when I went to the bookshop to spend a few pleasant hours browsing books, I saw John McGahern’s ‘By the Lake‘ there and couldn’t resist it. All this happened years back. Since then the book has been languishing in my bookshelves. I finally got around to reading it.

There is a lake in an Irish village. Ruttledge and Kate live near the lake. They’ve moved here from London sometime back, because they wanted to enjoy the quiet rural atmosphere. Their best friends are Jamesie and Mary. What happens to these two couples and their families and friends and other people who live nearby and the animals they take care of, during the course of a year, is described in the rest of the book.

I loved ‘By the Lake’. Some of the characters in the story are rich, some of them are poor, some of them are talkative, some of them are quiet, some of them are religious, some of them are not. But nearly all the characters are charming and likeable, and some of them are eccentric. There is one character, who can be regarded as bad, but he  is also charming in some ways. It was hard for me to pick one favourite character because I loved them all. The description of nature and village life is very beautiful and is an absolute pleasure to read. I highlighted so many favourite passages in the book. I’ve never read an Irish book like this. The Irish books I’ve read till now are typically indistinguishable from English books, or they talk a bit about Catholic religion, and that’s how we know that they are Irish. But this book is very different. It describes Irish village life and it sounds authentically Irish and is very different from anything I’ve read till now. I don’t know whether this is how an Irish village looks like now or whether this is how it looked like once upon a time, or whether this is John McGahern’s imagination on how he’d like an Irish village to be. Whichever of these is true, this book’s version of Ireland and the Irish village life is very beautiful and charming. I loved it and I’m glad I read it.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

Quote 1

Patrick Ryan : “How is England?”

Johnny : “England never changes much. They have a set way of doing everything there. It’s all more or less alphabetical in England.”

Patrick Ryan : “Not like this fucken place. You never know what your Irishman is going to do next. What’s more, the chances are he doesn’t know either.”

Johnny : “Everybody has their own way. There are times when maybe the English can be too methodical.”

Patrick Ryan : “No danger of that here. There’s no manners.”

Kate : “Some people here have beautiful manners.”

Patrick Ryan : “Maybe a few. But there’s no rules. They’re all making it up as they sail along.”

Quote 2

“Then the pony took him home. Unless there was wind or heavy rain he was always seen to be asleep in a corner of the trap as they passed between the two bars in Shruhaun. There was so little traffic on the roads, his nature so unassuming and easygoing, his little weakness so well known, that this quiet passage drew no more attention than affectionate smiles of recognition. No one even shouted a mischievous greeting. Generally, he woke coming in round the shore, the pony’s pace quickening in anticipation of being released from the trap and watered and given hay and oats. If the quick change of pace hadn’t woken him, he would be quickly shaken awake by the rutted road.”

Quote 3

“Bill Evans could no more look forward than he could look back. He existed in a small closed circle of the present. Remembrance of things past and dreams of things to come were instruments of torture.”

Quote 4

“As he listened to the two voices he was so attached to and thought back to the afternoon, the striking of the clocks, the easy, pleasant company, the walk round the shore, with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought it back, blaming the whiskey. The very idea was as dangerous as presumptive speech: happiness could not be sought or worried into being, or even fully grasped; it should be allowed its own slow pace so that it passes unnoticed, if it ever comes at all.”

Quote 5

“They could not live with him and they could not be seen – in their own eyes or in the eyes of others – to refuse him shelter or turn him away. The timid, gentle manners, based on a fragile interdependence, dealt in avoidances and obfuscations. Edges were softened, ways found round harsh realities. What was unspoken was often far more important than the words that were said. Confrontation was avoided whenever possible. These manners, open to exploitation by ruthless people, held all kinds of traps for the ignorant or unwary and could lead into entanglements that a more confident, forthright manner would have seen off at the very beginning. It was a language that hadn’t any simple way of saying no.”

Quote 6

“The days were quiet. They did not feel particularly quiet or happy but through them ran the sense, like an underground river, that there would come a time when these days would be looked back on as happiness, all that life could give of contentment and peace.”

Quote 7

“The table was laid, a single candle lit, the curtains not drawn. As they ate and drank and talked, the huge shapes of the trees around the house gradually entered the room in the flickering half-light, and the room went out, as if in a dream, to include the trees and the fields and the glowing deep light of the sky. In this soft light the room seemed to grow enormous and everything to fill with repose.”

Quote 8

Jamesie : “Do you think is there an afterlife?”

Ruttledge : “No. I don’t believe there is but I have no way of knowing.”

Jamesie : “You mean we’re like dog or cat or a cow or a when we are dead we are just dead?”

Ruttledge : “More or less. I don’t know from what source life comes, other than out of nature, or for what purpose. I suppose it’s not unreasonable to think that we go back into whatever meaning we came from. Why do you ask?”

Jamesie : “I’ve been thinking about it a lot since Johnny went.”

Ruttledge : “What do you think?”

Jamesie : “I think if there’s a hell and heaven that one or other or both of the places are going to be vastly overcrowded.”

Ruttledge : “I suspect hell and heaven and purgatory even eternity – all come from our experience of life and may have nothing to do with anything else once we cross to the other side.”

Jamesie : “At the same time you wouldn’t want to leave yourself too caught out in case you found there was something there when you did cross over.”

Have you read John McGahern’s book? What do you think about it?

Book Review – If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (translated by William Weaver)

I’ve wanted to read Italo Calvino’s ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller‘ for a long time. I finally got around to reading it.

The story starts with the reader going to a bookshop and getting Italo Calvino’s latest book ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller’. The reader reads it and it is interesting. A mysterious guy gets down at a railway station in the middle of nowhere and waits for someone. Someone is supposed to come there and exchange suitcases with him. But that guy doesn’t turn up. It looks like a classic crime novel by James Cain or Raymond Chandler. But after some point, the pages in the novel start repeating. So our reader goes to the bookshop after that and tries to return this book and get a new copy. But other copies in the bookshop have the same problem. What happens after this, and the adventures that this reader has forms the rest of the story.

There is good news and bad news. The good news first. The book started very well. It was exceptional. It was gripping and made me want to turn the page and find out what happened next. The chapters alternated between the reader’s viewpoint and a chapter from the novel which was very interesting. The story was written in the second person, which must have been very rare at the time Calvino published the novel. There were many beautiful passages in the book. This is all the good news.

Now the bad news. Calvino goes overboard with what he starts at the beginning of the book (at the end of the first chapter the pages are repeating, at the end of the second chapter pages are missing and there are blank pages etc.) and after some point, the book becomes so outrageous that it sinks under its own weight and under the weight of Calvino’s own intelligence and experimentation. After some point I found the going very hard but I still ploughed my way through the book. But when I reached the halfway point of the book, I gave up. I decided that I’ve had enough. I flipped through the second part of the book, and it didn’t seem to improve much, it was worse, though there were still beautiful passages in it, and when I reached the end I read the last few pages.

I got ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller’ because I loved the title. It was very atmospheric and evoked images of a quiet village and a lonely man walking into it in the rain. We want to know what happens next. (There is an Estonian book by Rein Raud called ‘The Brother’ which evokes a similar atmosphere, but Rein Raud’s book delivers on that front.) I also loved the fact that the book was written in the second person and the author lures the reader into the story with that and makes the reader a part of the story. But when I actually read the book, it didn’t work. I felt that if the author had stayed with the atmosphere that the book evoked at the beginning, it would have been much much better. But the author tried doing too much after that and the book implodes. Atleast that is what I felt. I really wanted to like this book. I’d waited so long to read it. Readers whom I respect and admire have all raved about it. But it didn’t work for me.

I’d like to think that my reading taste is quite broad. I read all kinds of books. I like most of the books I read. And so I’m very disappointed that I couldn’t like this. I’m not one of those readers who, after reading a book, goes and finds out what other readers and reviewers and critics have said about the book, and then tailors his opinion to fit the majority opinion. Reading a book is like eating food or dessert for me. I don’t really think about other people’s opinion about a dessert (I love recommendations but my experience with the dessert is my own). I just go and try the dessert and see whether I like it or not. I read in the same way. I read a book and then see whether I like it or not. I wish things were different but unfortunately this is how it is. And though everyone is raving about this book and people are calling it Calvino’s masterpiece, I was disappointed by it. Reading it was an underwhelming experience for me. I always thought that Calvino would become one of my favourite writers. It doesn’t look like it is going to happen now.

I wonder sometimes whether as a reader, I’ve hit a wall. This has happened to me before when I studied mathematics and when I learnt new languages. When I studied mathematics in school, at some point, the teacher started teaching calculus and probability, and the difficulty level was so high suddenly that I couldn’t make the leap. I struggled through the last two years of high school and my grades crashlanded. The same thing happened with every new language I learnt. Everything will be going well and I’ll understand every word, and every grammatical construct, but at one point there will be a jump in the difficulty level, and that would be the end for me. After this happened repeatedly, I stopped learning new languages. I’m wondering now whether I’ve hit a similar wall in reading. I’m wondering whether I’ve reached the end of my evolution as a reader, and whether I can’t handle the increased complexity in a book anymore. Till now, I’ve hated the stream-of-consciousness style – ‘hate’ is probably a strong word, it is better to say that I found it challenging – but I’ve enjoyed other forms of experimentation in a book. I’ve read other books by OuLiPo writers and enjoyed them – I think Raymond Queneau’s ‘The Flight of Icarus’ is a masterpiece – but I was not able to love Calvino’s book in the same way. Should I assume now that this is the end for me, and I should just stick to books that I like and avoid experimental stuff? I don’t know what to do. I always liked trying new things, reading new kinds of books, and broadening my horizons. Thinking that this is the end is very hard for me. Let me see what the future holds. As far as Italo Calvino is concerned, I have three more books by him – a collection of essays called ‘Why Read the Classics’, a collection of Italian folktales, and a novel called ‘Cosmicomics’. I’ve read some essays from ‘Why Read the Classics’ and liked them. So I think I’ll like that book. Italian folktales sounds wonderful. A collection of folktales can’t go wrong, can it? What is the worst that can happen? As far as ‘Cosmicomics’ is concerned, I’m expecting that the first 20 or 50 pages will be very good, like ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller’, and then it will all go to hell. So I’ll look forward to reading those 20 to 50 pages. After that no more Calvino for me.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book. (I know you are laughing at me now. This is too many favourite passages from a book which I say I didn’t like. This is life, and this is how it is.)

“It’s not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn’t serious.”

“For a couple of pages now you have been reading on, and this would be the time to tell you clearly whether this station where I have got off is a station of the past or a station of today; instead the sentences continue to move in vagueness, grayness, in a kind of no man’s land of experience reduced to the lowest common denominator. Watch out: it is surely a method of involving you gradually, capturing you in the story before you realize it – a trap. Or perhaps the author still has not made up his mind, just as you, reader, for that matter, are not sure what you would most like to read: whether it is the arrival at an old station, which would give you a sense of going back, a renewed concern with lost times and places, or else a flashing of lights and sounds, which would give you the sense of being alive today, in the world where people today believe it is a pleasure to be alive.”

“I, on the contrary, have been convinced for some time that perfection is not produced except marginally and by chance; therefore it deserves no interest at all, the true nature of things being revealed only in disintegration.”

“Perhaps this diary will come to light many, many years after my death, when our language will have undergone who knows what transformations, and some of the words and expressions I use normally will seem outdated and of ambiguous meaning. In any case, the person who finds this diary will have one certain advantage over me: with a written language it is always possible to reconstruct a dictionary and a grammar, isolate sentences, transcribe them or paraphrase them in another language, whereas I am trying to read in the succession of things presented to me every day the world’s intentions toward me, and I grope my way, knowing that there can exist no dictionary that will translate into words the burden of obscure allusions that lurks in these things. I would like this hovering of presentiments and suspicions to reach the person who reads me not as an accidental obstacle to understanding what I write, but as its very substance; and if the process of my thoughts seems elusive to him who, setting out from radically changed mental habits, will seek to follow it, the important thing is that I convey to him the effort I am making to read between the lines of things the evasive meaning of what is in store for me.”

“Reading is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once and is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead….Or that is not present because it does not yet exist, desired, feared, possible or impossible. Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be….”

“The Koran is the holy book about whose compositional process we know most. There were at least two mediations between the whole and the book: Mohammed listened to the word of Allah and dictated, in his turn, to his scribes. Once the biographers of the Prophet tell us while dictating to the scribe Abdullah, Mohammed left a sentence half finished. The scribe, instinctively, suggested the conclusion. Absently, the Prophet accepted as the divine word what Abdullah had said. This scandalized the scribe, who abandoned the Prophet and lost his faith. He was wrong. The organization of the sentence, finally, was a responsibility that lay with him; he was the one who had to deal with the internal coherence of the written language, with grammar and syntax, to channel into it the fluidity of a thought that expands outside all language before it becomes word, and of a word particularly fluid like that of a prophet. The scribe’s collaboration was necessary to Allah, once he had decided to express himself in a written text. Mohammed knew this and allowed the scribe the privilege of concluding sentences; but Abdullah was unaware of the powers vested in him. He lost his faith in Allah because he lacked faith in writing, and in himself as an agent of writing.”

“Listening to someone read aloud is very different from reading in silence. When you read, you can stop or skip sentences: you are the one who sets the pace. When someone else is reading, it is difficult to make your attention coincide with the tempo of his reading: the voice goes either too fast or too slow. And then, listening to someone who is translating from another language involves a fluctuation, a hesitation over the words, a margin of indecision, something vague, tentative. The text, when you are the reader, is something that is there, against which you are forced to clash; when someone translates it aloud to you, it is something that is and is not there, that you cannot manage to touch.”

Have you read ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller’? What do you think of it? Which is your favourite Italo Calvino book?

Book Review – Days and Nights in the Forest by Sunil Gangopadhyay (Translated by Rani Ray)

I got Sunil Gangopadhyay’s ‘Days and Nights in the Forest‘ many years back when it first came out in English translation. I loved the description of the book on the back cover and that is why I got it. I finally got around to reading it.

Four friends board a train and get down at a small station in the middle of nowhere. There is forest all around. These four friends are all from the big city. They want to stay in the forest for a while and enjoy the quiet and the solitude. But things don’t go according to plan. What happens during their stay in the forest is told in the rest of the story.

There is good news and bad news. The good news first. The story sounds quite realistic. The characters in the story feel real. There is no attempt to make the tribal folks, the santals, look exotic. They look like real people. Also Sunil Gangopadhyay’s prose is simple and spare and moves the story at a good pace. The pages just flew by!

More good news. There is a beautiful introduction by the translator at the beginning of the book. It is very interesting to read. And the final piece of good news. The description of the book on the back cover. It is exceptional. If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you. Here is how it reads.

“Set in the turbulent 1960s, ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’ (‘Aranyer Dinratri’) was the second novel that a young Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote. Largely autobiographical, it is the story of a whimsical, impromptu journey that four city youths – Ashim, Sanjoy, Shekhar and Robi – take into the forests of Palamau.

The four friends blithely imagine that their escapade into the wilderness will distance them from ‘civilization’ and take them closer to pristine nature. In reality, the solitude and austere majesty of the forest force them to look deeply into themselves and confront their all-too-human follies and ‘civilized’ foibles in new, unexpected and frightening ways. As they hear the ominous sound of one tree after another being felled, encounter mercenary traders bent on milking the forest for all it is worth, and see the simmering unrest flickering in the eyes of the tribal inhabitants, they are compelled to look well beyond their own time to a plundered and violated world where the forest can never be a pastoral utopia – a world that is, inexorably and inescapably, our own. They return to Calcutta ineffably changed – sadder, older, more introspective.

‘Days and Nights in the Forest’ was made into a celebrated film by Satyajit Ray very soon after its publication. Now translated for the first time from the original Bengali into English, this prescient and sophisticated novel remains as sharply relevant more than forty years after it was first written.”

It is good, isn’t it?

Now, the bad news. I didn’t see all these coming out in the book. The story in the way it is told, is not satisfying, there is no conflict between the tribals and civilization (it seems to be a product of the blurb-writer’s imagination), I don’t remember any scene where trees were felled in the forest or any mercenary traders milking the forest for all it is worth (again seems to be a product of the blurb-writer’s imagination). The blurb seems to imply that this story is about the clash between civilization and the pure, pristine, primitive way of living, and it is about how our modern civilization has destroyed the environment. That is a beautiful plot, and I love that plot, and that is the reason I got this book. But this book doesn’t have that plot. How there is such a big gap between what the story is and how the blurb writer understood it – I don’t know. I remember Amy Tan once telling this story. She said that sometimes she wrote in one of her stories that a character wore a blue shirt. When she later went and read the Cliff Notes of her novel, the Cliff Notes said that this character wore a blue shirt, and that indicates that the character is feeling ‘blue’, that is she is depressed. Amy Tan said that this was not what she meant at all. She just meant that her character wore a blue shirt. There is no interpretation there, there is no subtext there. It is just a simple case of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). The same problem seems to be there in Sunil Gangopadhyay’s book. It is a simple story of four young men going to the forest and doing questionable things, but this has been interpreted as a case of the clash of civilizations and environmental devastation. Even if I stretch my imagination, I’m not able to make that leap.

This book was made into a movie by Satyajit Ray. Maybe the movie is better. Maybe all the subtext is there in the movie. Maybe people saw the movie and enjoyed it and projected that interpretation into the text. Who knows. But I’m hoping to watch the movie sometime. It is a Satyajit Ray movie after all. It will be good.

Reading ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’ was an underwhelming experience for me. Probably because I came with high expectations. I know now that we can’t trust the blurb anymore. And if we can’t trust the blurb, the only thing we can do is jump blindly into a book, and hope that the risk pays off. It is like jumping into the river and hoping that we’ll learn swimming on the way. But reading is less risky. And there are worse ways of spending your time. And you have an opportunity of writing a review like this. So all things considered, it is not that bad.

Have you read ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’? What do you think about it?

Book Review – The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore

One of my book club friends who was running a library, closed her library down and moved abroad. At that time she put all her library books on sale. I got some books from that sale. That is how I discovered ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne‘. I found the title very haunting and that is why I got the book. Later I discovered that it was Brian Moore’s centenary and readers were celebrating it. I wanted to read this book at that time, but couldn’t. I finally got to read it now.

Judith Hearne is a forty-something woman. Recently she has moved to a new place. Her fellow lodgers are a diverse cast of characters. One of those lodgers is the landlady’s brother. The landlady also has a grown-up son living with her. The landlady’s brother shows interest in Judith and starts courting her. Judith feels that he wants to marry her. But things don’t go as she thinks. As Judith gets hurtled from one thing to another and as her life crashlands, our heart breaks as the story hurtles to its tragic end.

When I first discovered the book, I thought the title meant that Judith Hearne was a woman who was quiet, lonely, passionate and who yearned for love and who was probably in love with someone but the other person didn’t love her back. I thought that the story was about that. But after reading the book, I felt that this was not what it was about. The word ‘passion’ in the title is probably closer in meaning to the way it is used in the phrase ‘The Passion of the Christ’. Here the word ‘passion’ describes the suffering that Jesus went through during the last period of his life. This book seems to have a similar theme – it describes the suffering that Judith Hearne went through most of her life – how she lived with her aunt and her aunt refused to let her get independent, refused to let her stay in a job, and whenever a man tried courting Judith how her aunt put an end to that, and how Judith finally ended up taking care of her aunt full-time and when her aunt passed Judith hoped that she might get some inheritance but she didn’t get much, and she ended up being middle-aged with no employment and no husband and family, how Judith regarded the O’Neills as her friends and visited their home every weekend and how they put on a mask and treated her nicely when she went to their place but treated her with contempt and laughed at her behind her back, how she went to church to confess but the priest didn’t show much interest or sensitivity to her confession, how she started losing faith in God and hoped for a sign but nothing happened and she felt dejected and depressed – these and other things which happen, this is Judith Hearne’s modern day passion, this is her suffering. The ending is heartbreaking. Why a simple person with small wishes and desires, who wishes to find happiness in small ways is treated badly and crushed by people and society – it is heartbreaking to read. We’d have met a few Judith Hearnes in our lives – I have – and reading this book brought back old memories of them and made me cry.

Some of my favourite parts from the book.

“For it was important to have things to tell which interested your friends. And Miss Hearne had always been able to find interesting happenings where other people would find only dullness. It was, she often felt, a gift which was one of the great rewards of a solitary life. And a necessary gift. Because, when you were a single girl, you had to find interesting things to talk about. Other women always had their children and shopping and running a house to chat about. Besides which, their husbands often told them interesting stories. But a single girl was in a different position. People simply didn’t want to hear how she managed things like accommodation and budgets. She had to find other subjects and other subjects were mostly other people. So people she knew, people she had heard of, people she saw in the street, people she had read about, they all had to be collected and gone through like a basket of sewing so that the most interesting bits about them could be picked out and fitted together to make conversation.”

“If no one hears?

No one.

No one. The church, an empty shell, nobody to hear, no reason to pray, only statues listen. Statues cannot hear.

And if I am alone?

If I am alone it does not matter what life I lead. It does not matter. And if I die I am a dead thing. I have no eternal life. No one will remember me, no one will weep for me. No one will reward the good I have done, no one will punish the sins I have committed.

No one.”

“She was feeling tired. Why, the Mass was very long. If you did not pray, if you did not take part, then it was very, very long. If you did not believe, then how many things would seem different. Everything : lives, hopes, devotions, thoughts. If you do not believe, you are alone. But I was of Ireland, among my people, a member of my faith. Now I have no – and if no faith, then no people. No, no, I have not given up. I cannot. For if I give up this, then I must give up all the rest. There is no right or wrong in this. I do not feel, I do not know. Why should I suffer this?”

Other reviews

Lisa (ANZ Litlovers)

Claire (Word by Word)

Caroline (Beauty is a Sleeping Cat)

Have you read ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne’? What to you think about it? Which is your favourite Brian Moore book?

Book Review – Before Memory Fades : An Autobiography by Fali S. Nariman

I saw in the news recently that Fali Nariman has passed away. I felt sad when I heard the news. Fali Nariman was one of the great lawyers from India. He spent a significant part of his career working as a lawyer at the Supreme Court. He is one of the last of the greats – someone who was born before Indian independence, who started his law career at around the same time India became a republic, who has seen in close quarters most of the big happenings in the country from a legal, constitutional perspective and who has been part of those happenings. He is also from the time when lawyers were well read and very articulate – Nariman quotes from Shakespeare and Chesterton and Matthew Arnold and James Barrie and Omar Khayyam and other classic writers in his book.

This book, his autobiography, came out in 2010. I got it at that time. But for some reason I couldn’t read it till now. I didn’t know why I had to wait for the man to die before reading his book. I feel ashamed.

In his book, Nariman describes his childhood in Burma and how his family moved back to India when the Japanese invaded Burma. He also describes his schooling in Shimla and his favourite teachers there, briefly touches on his college life in Bombay, and later tells us how he became a lawyer. Then we get to know more about his work, about the fascinating people he met, and the interesting experiences he had.

The book starts in chronological fashion, but after sometime it becomes topical, and each chapter feels independent and is about a particular topic. One is about the Emergency, another is about his favourite judges, some are on legal topics like how water sharing disputes among states are handled in India, how judges to the Supreme Court are appointed. There is one big chapter dedicated to his role as a lawyer in the case related to the Bhopal gas tragedy. The autobiographical, anecdotal parts of the book are easy to read. The chapters in which Nariman talks about the law are harder. The level of difficulty is between an article meant for the general audience and a legal brief. A lawyer will find those chapters easy to understand, but a general reader will find them challenging. But it is possible to get through this by careful reading, looking at those sections of the Constitution and reading articles on the relevant judgements, most of which are probably available online. Those chapters cannot be read like a regular book, but need more closer reading like a textbook.

My favourite parts of the book were about his childhood and other personal chapters at the beginning of the book, and the parts of the book about his favourite lawyers and his favourite judges and the chapter in which he talks about the Emergency and Constitutional amendments. Nariman asks an important question in that part – how much Constitutional amendment is allowed and is it possible for a government to amend away the whole Constitution including suspending things like fundamental rights? Is there something called the basic structure of the Constitution which cannot be touched or is everything open to amendment and change? It is an important question, it is a fascinating question, and Nariman spends considerable amount of time on it.

My least favourite part of the book was the one on the Bhopal gas tragedy. In the case related to this, Nariman represented Union Carbide, the company which was responsible for the tragedy, in the court. I expected that he’d explain what happened in that case from his perspective, why he took it up and how he defended it, and whether he had any moral compunctions in doing that, as he was working against the victims here. But, unfortunately, Nariman resorts to legalese here, and reproduces a long article which he wrote on this topic, in which everything is vague and obtuse and hard to understand. If we show enough patience and are able to wade through the legalese, we can get to what he is saying, but whatever he is saying doesn’t answer any questions. It is frustrating to read that chapter because it is such a stark contrast to the rest of the book, which is crystal clear. Representing Union Carbide in that case was a black spot in Nariman’s career. But it was a distinguished career in which he did many good things and fought the good fight many times, and so what is the fun in a long distinguished career if there isn’t a big bad blackspot somewhere? This was his. My only disappointment was that he didn’t own up to it.

I loved reading Nariman’s book. Parts of it were easy to read and flowed smoothly, while other parts were challenging to read. I’m glad I read it, though it took me many years to get to it.

Fali Nariman inspired generations of lawyers and judges. He was active in his work till the end. He even published a big book on the Indian Constitution last year, when he was 94. His passing is a big loss to the legal fraternity and to his well-wishers everywhere. But Nariman lived a long life, a good life, a rich life, in which he did many amazing beautiful things. It is time to celebrate that. Nariman ends his book with these lines –

“I belong to a minority community, a microscopic, wholly insignificant minority, which spurned the offer made (at the time of the drafting of our Constitution) – to Anglo-Indians and Parsis alike – to have, for at least a decade, one special representative in Parliament. We rejected the offer. In the Constituent Assembly, Sir Homi Mody said that we Parsis would rather join the mainstream of a free India. We did, and we have no regrets. We have made good, just as my mother’s ancestors (the Burjorjees of Calicut) – two centuries ago – made good in Burma.

I have never felt that I lived in this country at the sufferance of the majority. I have been brought up to think and feel that the minorities, together with the majority community, are integral parts of India.

I have lived and flourished in a secular India. In the fullness of time if God wills, I would also like to die in a secular India.”

It touched me somewhere deep in my heart when I read that.

Here are a couple of articles on Fali Nariman.

Article 1

Article 2

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

Quote 1

“…the writ of habeas corpus which was granted by each one of the nine high courts in the country was denied by the highest court. The judgments of the high courts of India which took the contrary, more liberal view, were declared erroneous, and set aside by the apex court. By denying habeas corpus, the Supreme Court had set back the clock of liberty, proclaiming its helplessness against arbitrary arrests and malafide detentions. It was judicial pusillanimity at its worst!

The lone dissent was that of the seniormost judge in the Supreme Court (next only to Chief Justice Ray), Justice H. R. Khanna, who refused to rationalize tyranny. He would not bow down to insolent might. ‘Life and liberty are not conferred by any Constitution’ he said, ‘they inhere in men and women as human beings.’ But Khanna was in a minority – a brave minority of one. Historians of the Supreme Court will doubtless record that it was only in the post-Emergency period (not during the Internal Emergency of June 1975 March 1977) that the highest court gave vent to expressions of grave concern about violations of human rights! A sobering thought for human rights activists – and for judges and lawyers.

In a book titled ‘Six Men’, Alistair Cooke, eminent broadcaster and says of the late Duke of Windsor (for a few months King Edward VIII before he finally abdicated), ‘He was always at his best when the going was good.’ It was when the going was rough (while the Emergency of June 1975 lasted) that a few of our judges (alas, too few!) were at their best. One of them (and the most notable of them) was H. R. Khanna, with his lone dissent in the infamous Emergency Case (ADM Jabalpur). He showed what a brave judge could do. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Khanna knew, when he signed his dissenting judgment, that he was signing away his future chief justiceship – which was only a few months hence. Khanna was No. 2 on the court (seniority-wise), and (other things being equal) would have become the chief justice of India on the retirement of Chief Justice Ray on 28 January 1977. Inexorably, when the time came, ‘other things’ were not considered equal (by the government of the day). Khanna was ‘superseded. Justice M. H. Beg (No. 3) was appointed the chief justrice of India. Khanna resigned – but in a blaze of glory! It is for good reason that Khanna’s portrait (though not a very good likeness of him) hangs in the court where he sat – Court No. 2.

Jean Monet, father of the European Union, once said that the world is divided into two types of people – ‘those who want to be somebody and those who want to do something.’ Khanna is remembered, and will always be remembered, long after many chief justices of India are forgotten, because he did something for which he deserved to be remembered.

One of the lessons of the Internal Emergency (of June 1975) was not to rely on constitutional functionaries. These functionaries failed us – ministers of government, members of Parliament, judges of the Supreme Court, even the president of India.”

Quote 2

“But a written constitution safeguarding the rights of citizens does not add up to very much – they are just words. When the historian, Edward Gibbon, completed the first volume of his classic, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he was permitted to present it to the Duke of Gloucester, brother of King George III. He was well received. When, a few years later, he presented the second volume of almost equal length, the prince received the author with considerable affability, saying to him, as he laid the heavy volume on the table, ‘Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr Gibbon?’ Not only academicians and politicians but a good many intellectuals around the world have harboured similar sentiments about the proliferation of documentation in the area of human rights – declarations, conventions, resolutions, treaties… Words, words, words … The United Nations (UN) is long on instruments relating to human rights (they say), but its member states are significantly short on performance. Universalization of human rights may well have been achieved, but only on paper. Effective implementation is lacking. There is much truth in this criticism. Sovereign nation states often impede the quest for universalization. What governments profess (around the world) and what they practise (within the state) hardly ever coincides. The most important single factor in the implementation of human rights is not documentation, but the spirit of the people.”

Quote 3

“I was privileged to appear before Justice M. Hidayatullah when he presided on the bench of the Supreme Court as chief justice of India from February 1968 to December 1970. He was erudite, but carried his learning lightly. Always charming and courteous to the Bar, he had a flair for the appropriate turn of phrase (the French call it, le mot juste). But it was not only in his judgments that he was eloquent. His brief but precise introduction to the sixteenth edition of Mulla’s classic work on Mohammedan Law is a piece of writing unmatched in India’s legal annals.

His extrajudicial utterances were not without humour. His description of the three great organs of state: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary – will be long remembered for the barbed innuendos. About the proliferation of bureaucrats in the government, he adapted an old nursery rhyme to produce what he described as ‘a poem of truth’ :

“One civil servant with nothing much to do

Wrote a Memorandum and there were two,

Two civil servants over cups of tea

Formed a working party, and there were three

Three civil servants drafting forms galore,

One whispered ‘Planning’ and then there were four

Four civil servants found they could not thrive

Without coordination, and then there were five.”

And so it went on to the last lines which were :

“Nine civil servants very busy men,

Just ask them what they find to do.

You’ll find they have grown to ten.”

About Parliament, his observation was that only a handful of people really took seriously to the task of law making. Others were silent spectators, which (he said) was not a bad thing, because a legislature which said nothing and did much was to be preferred to one where members talked too much and did nothing! And as for the judiciary he believed that in writing judgments, judges should not pontificate or indulge in grandiloquence. Quoting Dr Johnson he pointedly compared ‘certain writings’ to a meal which is ‘ill-killed, ill-dressed, ill-cooked and ill-served’, an apt description of judicial opinions that are badly written! Haddi, as he was popularly known, loved quoting Samuel Johnson. Even his scintillating autobiography is titled ‘My Own Boswell’. It does one good to remember a judge as eloquent and as distinguished as Hidayatullah.

His lasting memorial for posterity is the judgments he has left behind. After 59 years at the Bar, I am convinced that the finest epitaph for a judge is, ‘He never wrote bad judgments – only elegant ones, eminently readable by one and all!’ A fitting epitaph for dear Haddi.

Quote 4

“At this ripe old age (besides the family and staff) what sustains me are two things. First (and frankly), the possibility and the thrill (even now) of winning a difficult case (‘The race is over, but the work is never done while the power to work remains!’). And second, the affection of all my colleagues at the Bar (young and old) whose company I greatly value and enjoy, so much so that a couple of years after being allotted (by the chief justice of India) a small chamber in the building on the road opposite the Supreme Court (after I kept it for a few months), I surrendered it because I did not find it of use. I did not like sitting alone in my chamber waiting for my (fewer and fewer) cases to come up in court. At 80 plus, it is better to sit in court, and listen and learn (as Sir Jamshedji used to say) or sit in the lounge and talk to friends (old and new) at the Bar.

At this age, one does not – one should not – think of one’s professional future.

A few months ago, I addressed an international seminar in New York and was introduced to the audience by a ‘friend’ who said (with a wink and tongue in cheek) that ‘Mr Nariman is also President of the Bar Association of India almost since the time of the Norman Conquest’; a gentle hint, perhaps, that I retire from official positions (and active practice). Well, who knows, someday I might. But as advised at present, I propose to die with my boots on!”

Have you read Nariman’s book? What do you think about it?

Book Review – The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani (Translated by Jamie McKendrick)

I discovered Giorgio Bassani’s ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis‘ through Caroline’s (‘Beauty is a Sleeping Cat) recommendation. I finally got around to reading it.

The narrator of the story is going on a road trip with friends. While they stop on the way to do some sight-seeing, the narrator ends up near the family cemetery of the Finzi-Continis. The narrator looks back at the time when he knew the Finzi-Continis and was very close friends with them. The story goes back in time as we discover the narrator’s friendship with the Finzi-Continis, the father Ermanno, the son Alberto, and the daughter Micòl, with whom he falls in love. What happens after that and how things reach the present state is told in the rest of the story.

‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’ is a beautiful love story. It is also a story of friendship and family, and the inexorable happening of bad things in history. It is the time when the fascists are in power in Italy, and they have started targeting the Jewish people. The main characters in the story, including the narrator and the Finzi-Continis are all Jewish. So what happens to this particular group of Jewish people who try to find love and friendship and who try to discover the meaning of art during these dark times when the future is uncertain is what this book is about.

There are many long, descriptive sentences in the book, which made me think of Proust and Mann and other masters. The translator Jamie McKendrick had this to say about the long sentences –

“In Bassani space is always faceted by time, and description is never uncoupled from the narrative movement, slowed down as it may be, towards what will occur. Even stylistically, in his prolonged sentences, often interrupted by parentheses, we sense a counter-impulse to slow time down, to savour as much as is humanly possible of its fullness, before it pushes on towards a vanishing point of loss and destruction. Here his instinct as a novelist is very like the tennis games he describes in the Finzi-Continis’ garden, which continue on past dusk into the darkness with a stubborn refusal to abandon the joy of playing.”

I loved what he said, about how the long sentences slow time down.

The main characters in the book, are fascinating, but my favourites were some of the minor characters. The narrator’s dad is a very interesting character, and towards the end of the book he has a long conversation with his son, which was one of my favourite parts in the book. Ermanno, the Finzi-Continis’ father, is also a very fascinating character. He almost treats the narrator like his son, and the conversations they have are very beautiful. There is also Perotti, who has been working at the Finzi-Continis’ place since he was a boy. There is one scene which reveals his beautiful soul – I loved that scene very much. I also loved Jor, the dog.

I always love descriptions of food and drink in a book. I loved this one here –

“Skiwasser – a thirst-quenching drink made of water and raspberry syrup in equal measures, with the addition of a slice of lemon and a few grapes…though Skiwasser, as the name testified, was a winter drink, for which reason it should have been served boiling hot, still, even in Austria there were some people who in summer, so as not to stop drinking it, drank it this way, in icy ‘draughts’ but without the slice of lemon, and then they called it Himbeerwasser”

I want to try Skiwasser and Himbeerwasser now 😊

I enjoyed reading ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’. Any story which grazes the Holocaust even very lightly – we know how it is going to end. So part of the ending is heartbreaking. But the narrator has survived to tell the story, so there’s that.

There is an article on the five most important Italian novels that we should all read. It is in the form of an interview with the translator Tim Parks. ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’ is one of the books featured in that article. You can find it here. Thanks to Lisa (ANZ LitLovers) for sharing this article.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“But mark my words : it’s better it’s ended this way…You’ll get over it. You’ll get over it, and much sooner than you think. I am sorry : I can guess what you’re feeling at this moment. But, do you know, I envy you a bit. In life, if you want to understand, seriously understand how things are in this world, at least once you have to die. And so, given that this is the law, it’s better to die when you’re young, when you still have so much time before you in which to pick yourself up and recover… To come to understand when you’re old is unpleasant, much more unpleasant. It’s hard to know how. There’s no time left to start again from scratch, and our generation has made one blunder after another. In any case, you at least are still young enough to learn, God willing! In a few months, you’ll see, all this that you’ve had to go through will no longer seem real. Perhaps you may even feel happy. You’ll feel yourself enriched by this, feel yourself… I don’t know …more mature…”

“Dickinson’s poem was wonderful – I wrote – but her translation was also excellent, particularly in the way it showed a somewhat dated taste, a bit ‘Carduccian’. Most of all I appreciated her faithfulness. With dictionary in hand, I had compared her version with the original text in English, finding nothing questionable except, perhaps, one detail, which was where she had translated ‘moss’ which actually meant muschio, muffa, borraccina with ‘erba’, grass. I continued by saying that all the same, even in its present state, her translation worked very well, and in such things beautiful inaccuracy was always better than a ploddingly correct ugliness.”

“You said we were exactly alike,” I spoke again. “In what way?” But yes, yes we are – she exclaimed – in the way, like you, I’ve no access to that instinctive enjoyment of things that’s typical of normal people. She could sense it very clearly : for me, no less than for her, the past counted far more than the present, remembering something far more than possessing it. Compared to memory, every possession can only ever seem disappointing, banal, inadequate… She understood me so well! My anxiety that the present ‘immediately’ turned into the past so that I could love it and dream about it at leisure was just like hers, was identical. It was ‘our’ vice, this: to go forwards with our heads forever turned back. Wasn’t it true?

Have you read ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’? What to you think about it?

Book Review – Brideshead Revisited : The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder by Evelyn Waugh

I’ve wanted to read ‘Brideshead Revisited‘ for a long time. I’ve heard many readers say that it is Evelyn Waugh’s finest book. I finally got around to reading it.

It is the time during the Second World War. A part of the English army moves to a new camp in a village. There is a huge countryhouse there in the middle of nowhere and it is beautiful. The Commander asks Captain Charles Ryder to organize things there. We soon discover that this place is not new to Ryder. He has been there before, many times before, he was close friends with the people who lived there. Ryder narrates us the story of how he first visited this place and what happened after that, and how things came to be as they are now.

‘Brideshead Revisited’ is a story about being young and the crazy things we do when we are young, growing up and how life changes in big ways. It is also about love, loss, family, faith. It is also a love letter to English country houses. To me it also looked like Waugh’s defence of the Catholic religion. Halfway through his life, Evelyn Waugh converted to Catholicism, and I think his love for his new faith shows in the book. Waugh himself says this in the introduction to the book –

“This novel…lost me such esteem as I once enjoyed among my contemporaries and led me into an unfamiliar world of fan-mail and press photographers. Its theme – the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters – was perhaps presumptuously large, but I make no apology for it.”

There were many fascinating characters in the book, but my favourites were two minor characters – Charles Ryder’s dad who is a very interesting person (the way he corners his son in conversation is legendary), and Nanny Hawkins who is such a beautiful soul.

The edition I read was a Penguin Classics hardback. The paper inside was so thick. I haven’t seen thick paper like this in a book in a long time. I’ve seen books with thick paper like this only in the library. It was beautiful.

This is the second book by Evelyn Waugh I’ve read. The first one was ‘Decline and Fall‘, his first ever novel. It was good and I liked it, but it wasn’t amazing, as I’d expected. To be honest, I found it a bit underwhelming. I couldn’t understand the hype about the book or about Evelyn Waugh. I liked ‘Brideshead Revisited’ more. It was longer, there was more plot, I liked some of the parts very much, especially the conversations between Ryder and his dad, the scenes in which Nanny Hawkins makes an appearance, and some of the descriptions of paintings and the Brideshead countryhouse. Still, I wanted to love it, and was hoping that it would become one of my favourite novels, but unfortunately, that was not to be. The best I can say is that I liked it more than ‘Decline and Fall’. Evelyn Waugh has been called one of the great prose stylists in English in the 20th century. But after reading two of his novels, I still don’t know what the fuss is about. I can’t resist comparing ‘Brideshead Revisited’ with ‘A Month in the Country’ by J.L.Carr, which has a similar mood. Carr’s book is much better and more beautiful. It is one of my favourite books. But Carr is not as well-known as Evelyn Waugh. Which is a shame. So this is where things are now. I have one more Evelyn Waugh book called ‘Vile Bodies’. I don’t know whether to read it now. I think that time can be better employed reading another book I might like more. Alternately, reading an Evelyn Waugh book is much more productive than  mindlessly scrolling through social media or watching random YouTube videos. So I might still do that.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

Quote 1

“Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and the plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsud drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second and then – phut! vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing.”

Quote 2

Charles Ryder : “One of the problems of the vacation is money, father.”

Ryder’s Dad : “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about a thing like that at your age.”

Charles Ryder : “You see, I’ve run rather short.”

Ryder’s Dad : “Yes?”

Charles Ryder : “In fact I don’t quite know how I’m going to get through the next two months.”

Ryder’s Dad : “Well, I’m the worst person to come to for advice. I’ve never been “short” as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke? On the rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that. Your grandfather once said to me, “Live within your means, but if you do get into difficulties, come to me. Don’t go to the Jews.” Such a lot of nonsense. You try. Go to those gentlemen in Jermyn Street who offer advances on note of hand only. My dear boy, they won’t give you a sovereign.”

Charles Ryder : “Then what do you suggest my doing?”

Ryder’s Dad : “Your cousin Melchior was imprudent with his investments and got into a very queer street. He went to Australia.”

Charles Ryder (to himself) : I had not seen my father so gleeful since he found two pages of second-century papyrus between the leaves of a Lombardic breviary.

Charles Ryder : “Father, you surely don’t want me to spend the whole vacation here with you? Won’t you find it rather a bore having me at home for so long?”

Ryder’s Dad : “I trust I should not betray such an emotion even if I felt it.”

Quote 3

“She spoke as though it were a matter of weeks rather than of years; as though, too, before our parting we had been firm friends. it was dead contrary to the common experience of such encounters, when time is found to have built its own defensive lines, camouflaged vulnerable points, and laid a field of mines across all but a few well-trodden paths, so that, more often than not, we can only signal to one another from either side of the tangle of wire. Here she and I, who were never friends before, met on terms of long and unbroken intimacy.”

Have you read ‘Brideshead Revisited’? Which is your favourite Evelyn Waugh book? Do you think he is one of the great prose stylists?

Book Review – A Still Life by Josie George

I discovered Josie George’s ‘A Still Life‘ through Caroline’s (‘Beauty is a Sleeping Cat‘) recommendation. Got immersed in it the past few days and just finished reading it.

Josie George has chronic illness since the time she was a kid. It limits where she can go, what she can do. She decides to chronicle one year of her life, looking at her life through different seasons, and also looks back in time, to see how it all started and how it all unravelled. As Josie George says in her prologue –

“Usually, when you are unwell, people expect one of two stories : either you get better – you beat it – or you get worse and die. Stories of everyday living and undramatic, sustained existence, stories that don’t end with cures or tragic climaxes but that are made up of slow, persistent continuation as you learn and change – stories about what happens then – they may be harder to tell, but I believe they’re important too. I believe we need to tell more of them.”

It is not all frustrating and painful and heartbreaking, though that is all there. It is also beautiful and joyful and serene and contemplative. Josie George’s writing is meditative and contemplative and flows smoothly like a river. It is an absolute pleasure to read. I couldn’t stop highlighting passages – there were so many favourites. This is early days yet, but I think this book will be one of my favourites of the year.

Sharing some of my favourite parts.

“Difference is an odd thing. I’m beginning to realise that it’s a spectrum – no, a wedge. Yes, that’s it. We all have a place in it, we’re all different, but some of us are undeniably more different than others. The thin edge of the wedge is a strange place to exist. The further down into difference you go, the more of you that doesn’t match, the tighter it all gets. Fewer and fewer people look like you or act like you or live like you. Fewer and fewer environments fit your body or meet your needs, spaces catered for the masses. Opportunities and choices shrink. It gets harder to see yourself in other people, harder to find common ground. You begin to realise what a privilege it is to have the ability to blend in, and what it really means when you don’t, can’t. More and more people begin either to look past you and through you, or to stare. I have never decided which is worse. I suspect getting older feels the same: I’ve just had to learn it sooner.”

“I have a habit of leaving flowers in vases long past their best, until they are puckered and wrinkled, losing their petals and manners. This habit’s not from idleness or fatigue though, this is more a kind of lived intention: I don’t give up on things any more. I want to love beyond first bloom and easy convenience, all through the inevitable changing and fading. I want to see what happens when things stop being perfect. I have learnt, painfully, that love without curiosity is short-lived. I want a life now where love doesn’t run out; to see things for everything they are, for as long as they live. And so, I let my flowers turn every colour they know, change their shape, cast new shadows, in defiance and in pride. Perhaps, I think, if I do, I will learn how to love my people better. Myself, even.”

“I will admit it: some days, I feel broken. Like a wave is broken. Not damaged, just scattered. The kind of lonely that makes you feel stretched so thin, you stop being able to see yourself.”

“I so rarely know how to be acceptable; how to be unwild. We love to talk of being wild in human terms as something exciting, alluring, the stuff of movies and pin-ups but when you watch wild things, you begin to understand that this is not what wildness means. It is nothing so conveniently pleasing. To be truly wild is to be skittish, capricious, trusting of few. It is to be pulled to home and warmth and the sensory comfort of familiar bodies, not to newness and excitement. To be wild is to be wary, heeding instinct louder than promise. It is the hope that those who see you will see you only for love, not as prey, and a wish for not too many eyes on you at once. It is to crave simplicity: an undisturbed spot, a full belly, a body that knows itself. To be wild is to be drawn to sing one perfect song over and over, like the great tit in the pine trees now, and for that to be enough for you to belong where you are. It is to live close to death and change but not let it panic you into worse. It is to steer yourself endlessly towards the things that nurture you, to be unable to stop or deny yourself. I am wild.”

“The older you get, the harder it is to experience a singular grief. Instead, when loss comes again, it doesn’t bring something solid all the way through or isolated, it brings you a Russian doll. Loss comes; a new layer of grief forms. And instead of staying still, it opens, and out all the others pour, popping into their composite forms until you are sitting surrounded by an eager, bleeding crowd of them. Grief is cumulative and to feel one kind is to feel at least a little of them all, renewed. When I wake from the shock, there it is, right here in my hands. All my past losses, nestled.”

“I don’t know what to do today so I will make a cup of tea. There is nothing else for it. I have forgotten everything. I have no idea what the hell anything means or who I am supposed to be or what I’m supposed to be doing. I am all blank, all gone, but for this one thread of me left. Look, it leads to the kitchen. I will follow it until I reach the kettle and then I will make a cup of tea and everything will be OK again, maybe. Maybe it will. How funny that drinking tea is the one act of hope that endures; the one thing that resists falling through that trapdoor of panic and despair. You could lose faith in everything else, but you would still take a cup of tea held out, I know you would. On the days when I can barely stand my face in the mirror, I will still, carefully, kindly, brew myself a cup of the stuff. It is an untouchable parlay. A gap in the wall. A truce in the most complicated feeling of everything.”

“And yet this tangle of muscle and bone, this pumping heart, these busy thoughts: these are what have got me this far. This is the form that will see me through all the rest of my days, whatever shape it’s in, whatever it looks like, however much it struggles. These are the only hands that will let me stroke and soothe the people I love, the only back that will root me when I need to hold firm. My breath is the only space that will allow me to pause and gather myself in and maybe finally, finally do what’s right. My mind is the only one I get to work with. This is my one ride. So many of us search endlessly for some sense of a lasting home and forget that we already inhabit it. However imperfect, our body is the one thing that’s ever really ours. It’s the one thing we get to keep hold of all our life.”

Have you read ‘A Still Life’? What to you think about it?