Don Q, via Cide Hamete

Do we live in the age of translation?

Cervantes, an early instance of greatness in the "history" of the novel, has a ready answer in Don Quixote. The novel is presented as a translation by a Spanish-speaking Moor, from the Arabic of a certain historian named Cide Hamete Benengeli, of the history of the knight errant Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza. While the unnamed narrator recounts this "translated" history, he constantly reminds us of this fact. At several junctures in the novel, the narrator interjects the (i) translator's and (ii) his own annotations of the Arab's version of the events. In Part II, for example, the narrator interrupts the story to say:

Cide Hamete, the chronicler of this great history, begins this chapter with the words: 'I swear as a Christian and as a Catholic ...'; to which the translator adds that when Cide Hamete swore as a Christian and a Catholic, being a Moor, as he most certainly was, he only meant to say that just as when the Christian and Catholic swears something he swears, or should swear, the truth, and he swears to tell the truth in everything he says, so Cide Hamete was also telling the truth, as if he were swearing as a Christian and a Catholic, in everything he wrote about Don Quixote ... [Part II, Chapter XXVII, tr. John Rutherford]

Ah, the truth! And then Cide Hamete (through the translator, via the narrator) goes on to discuss a seeming "inconsistency" of previous events in the first part of the history, specifically the theft of Sancho Panza's donkey by the convict Ginés de Pasamonte. The inconsistency arises presumably from the "printers' carelessness" that led to the omission of the incident in the publication of the first part of the history. This "has led many people to offer their opinions and blame the printing mistake on the author's poor memory."

It appears then Cervantes craftily introduces a mistake in this long and clumsy history, but its teller (Cide Hamete), its translator, and its narrator are there to set the record straight. The mistake acquires a new kind of significance as Ginés, now a puppeteer and master of a fortune-telling ape, becomes embroiled again in the glorious adventure of our knight errant and his squire.

To answer the question posed above, it may be best to quote again an interruption by our narrator regarding the integrity of the history, demonstrating as it is how the telling of Truth (with the capital t) in every History is ever so relative in every telling of it. At every remove, of the novelist from the story, of the translator from the source, of the teller from the tale, and of the reader from the page (not to mention the English translator's remove from the Spanish prose), the accumulation of subjective interpretations and authorial decisions is staggering.

It is said that in the original manuscript of this history one reads that when Cide Hamete came to write this chapter his translator did not render it as the Moor had written it, with some sort of complaint against himself for having undertaken such a dry and limited history as this one about Don Quixote, always feeling himself restricted to talking about him and Sancho, never daring to venture out into any digressions or more serious and entertaining episodes; and Cide Hamete added that to have his mind, his hand and his pen always constrained to writing about one subject and speaking through the mouths of so few characters was intolerable drudgery, which yielded nothing to the author's advantage, and that to avoid this problem he had in the first part had recourse to certain tales, like those of Inappropriate Curiosity and the Captive Captain, which stand, as it were, apart from the main story – although the other tales narrated there are events in which Don Quixote himself was involved and which could not be omitted. [Part II, Chapter XLIV]

And then the narrator went on to describe Cide Hamete's justifications for the apparent divergence of style between the first and second parts of the history. Both the translator and narrator of the Quixote seem to be acting as apologists for the historian, smoothing out the wrinkles in the narrative, and justifying the choices and style of its composition.


Note: I'm presently on page 792 of the book, which I'm reading intermittently since July as part of a group read. Obviously I was waylaid by other books and failed to stick to the schedule. I still have some 200 pages to cover.

Masque of Africa

I am not enjoying Naipaul's exploration of Africa and its beliefs as much as I have enjoyed some of his other works. I think I can blame it largely on expectation mismatch. I was expecting a look at some African traditional beliefs, their placement in some context, some pattern - and some perspective on what they mean to a people. Au contraire, Naipaul seems to be exploring those beliefs often in a touristy manner, which seems uncharacteristic of him.
He has so far traveled to Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and is now in Ivory Coast. In Uganda, he goes to the Kasubi tombs, and explores the tradition of Kabaka - the kings of the Buganda, a kingdom/region within Uganda. The one thing that seemed catchy was the way Kabaka were buried:

The corpse of the king would have been dried over a slow fire for three months. Then the jawbone would have been detached and worked over with beads or cowries; this, together with the umbilical cord, also worked with beads, and the penis and testicles, in a pouch of animal skin, was what would have been buried here. The rest of the body, the unessential man, so to speak, would have been sent somewhere else.

In both Uganda and Nigeria, he meets lot of people who fleece him, and while meeting every godman, Naipaul seems to be constantly agonizing over how much money he would have to pay. His distrust and the agony is almost comic, but not quite. It appears like his experience is constantly colored with this agony, and almost always he seems to not want to carry out a plan he himself suggested. So if anything sounds worse than the touristy nature of his exploration, it is the reluctance of that tourism.
There is one story is Nigeria, not so much about beliefs, but related to social customs - the story of Laila and her daughter. Laila marries a Muslim king, against all advice, and finds herself having to live with her husband's other marriages and the 'mess of harem life'. She struggles to bring her daughter out of this life and marries her off to an old Arab doctor who lives in Dubai. In time, the doctor too brings a second wife home. It is a sad tale, and to imagine the frustration of this young woman is heart-breaking.
The Ghana section is almost too touristy, something that I hardly enjoyed. It was also a more political commentary than one on beliefs.
The section on Ivory Coast has begun with the legend of Houphouet who went through an elaborate ritual to gain power. Exotic.

John Banville - The Lemur

The Lemur (a book that can be breezed through in a couple of hours as I discovered yesterday) is a book by John Banville's alter ego Benjamin Black. Banville does not seem to mind blurbs that read 'John Banville writing as Benjamin Black.' In fact it seems like a hint to the reader, John Banville Lite production.

My earlier encounter with the Black version was Christine Falls (oh Quirke!) Both books must be called literary thrillers. There are no agonizing sentences (like in Banville) but some descriptions are so beautiful - a shadow seems like a blotch of watered ink (I can't find the page on the book so that I may quote the exact sentence. One good reason in favour of an ebook.)

John Glass, a former journalist, is recruited by the billionaire Bill Mulholand (also Glass's father-in-law) to write his biography. Glass hires a researcher whom he nicknames the Lemur to gather the 'truth' about his subject. Things start to go wrong when the Lemur is murdered.

Black twists every conventional clue on its head and ultimately whodunnit becomes far less important than the many whys that are subtly pointed to. The Black books are psychological thrillers in the sense that the primary murder takes a backseat to the protagonist's psychological journey through the process of uncovering the murderer.

Still, for thrill, I'd rather read watered ink shadows than ridiculous jumping off helicopters over Rome.

Kitne Pakistan (Partitions)

I am a little ashamed to be reading this book in translation when it has been originally written in Hindi, my native language. I just chanced upon the translation in a Delhi bookstore, and was instantly interested - mainly with the cover, but also with the idea. Given the scarcity of Hindi bookstores, I realized there were slim chances that I would find the original version soon, and decided to settle for the translation (surprisingly, a friend - a Hindi movie fan(!) has the Hindi version, which I some day hope to read)
Everyone born in India and familiar with Indian movies will likely know Kamleshwar - the scriptwriter of some legendary Hindi movies like Aandhi, Chhoti Si Baat, Burning Train, Mausam. But I has never read his written word, and Kitne Pakistan is becoming a wonderful introduction.
In Kitne Pakistan, Kamleshwar has dealt with the cruelty of Indian partition of 1947 in a very unique way. A writer who calls himself adeeb (a litterateur) , and his assistant Mahmood argue cases transcending geographies and times, questioning Gods, kings, autocrats and politicians on their atrocities against humanity. Their trial is against many partitions that have fractured people in the name of religion, justice and more.
The first trial (more like a polite yet accusing letter) concerns the defence minister and prime minister of Pakistan, who, with the aggression of Kargil have violated the promise of peace made in 1972. Soon follows the story of Indra and his violation of Ahilya, rishi Gautam's wife. Adeeb questions Rishi's treatment of his wife and the terrible curse he puts on her, the prime victim of this duplicity. This is the grave partition by the Brahmins - to separate womankind and treat them with different standards.
There is a rather interesting story of Gilgamesh and Sumerian deities, where the deities are shown to be as power-hungry as the human kings, and try to crush Gilgamesh the powerful human king. Centuries later, the land of Gilgamesh is under fire from NATO missiles, and adeeb accuses Kofi Annan, the UN head for his neglect. His summons for Annan are beautiful and reflect the despair of the neglected modern world.

In case he has forgotten, remind Mr. Annan that the world is witness to the conflicts that take place in the name of global economic enterprise and threaten to destroy common man in every country and culture. A dark chapter, based on blind faith has opened in history and leading to genocide. So long as these conflicts are perpetuated, dysfunctional communities will emerge, giving birth to an unjust and unprincipled world. Fish will continue to perish in Danube.

Interspersed with these trials are some love stories (so far I have only read two), which are themselves fractured or left affected by the partition, and depict, a bit sentimentally how partitions kill love, happiness, conversation.
On every page of this wonderful book, there is a new hypothesis, perhaps even new facts. I am currently in the middle of Mountbatten's confessions to Edwina on his role in the Indian partition, and though not shocking, its a bit startling to read this confession.

In a Strange Room

A week ago, on one of those impulses that make you buy shoes you don't need, I ordered Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room. Glassy-eyed, unable to tear yourself away from the window display of the shoes, hovering until you can resist no longer, I kept checking my email for the shipping information and then kept refreshing the webpage with the tracking details every hour to see if the book had landed in Chennai. Then there was the agony of waiting until it got to my doorstep. This is the point at which you have paid the bill for the shoes, the frenzy of impulse slowly replaced by the unease of post-impulse. Now the book should have been opened, flipped and delegated to one of the many to-read summits, stoking the same guilt as the unnecessary shoes. But what happened instead was I started reading it in earnest. For the next few days, whenever I found time to read, I picked up In a Strange Room instead of foraging among the other half-reads and squandering ten minutes on the dilemma of what would be good to read now.

In my imaginings of how memory could be narrated, I always envisioned fragments that the reader would pick up and connect. What Galgut does is quite brilliant. Instead of fragments what we get is a sequence of events with fabrications, forgotten bits all admitted to. But the best part is the switching of voices from third to first person and back to third. The first time I encountered the switch it was startling. A few times into them I was able to appreciate how well the first person conveys the sense of immediacy the narrator feels with certain moments in his memory of each journey. Isn't that how it is with memory. You try to recall something that happened and at some point you can feel the breeze on your face as if you were back again at that beach. I always feel that distinct awful aftertaste of vomit when I look at the cover of Richard Bach's Curious Lives (I refer to it as THAT ferrets book) because when I was gifted that book I was in my first trimester and had just thrown up lunch. Voice switch is not the only thing Galgut does. He plays around with tense as well. The overall effect is of zooming in and out of these journeys, rewinding, forwarding, upping the volume sometimes and pressing on mute occasionally.

As I was reading In a Strange Room I kept thinking of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. I don't know why except that the latter was another 'memory' book.Their contrasts are vast and interesting but that is for another post. In all this talk about shoes and impulses I missed mentioning the flip-flops. So reasonable, so useful, so comfortable, so comforting. I also ordered Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. That arrived along with Galgut's. Since it was a book one heard about a lot and since Rilke was showing up everywhere in my readings, I sat with the Letters last night, read a couple, starred a few lines, set it aside and went back to reading Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment. Dyer was focusing on the lonely overcoated man going nowhere and how he was such a recurring theme in photographs. As is habitual with Dyer jazz found a way into the discussion about snow and photographing from windows and Eugene Smith. In the late 1950s - early 1960s, Smith holed himself in a Manhattan building and set up six cameras near windows (he went on to rig microphones as well) and obsessively photographed the street below. On the floor above his apartment, a loft, some jazz musicians met regularly to jam. Smith started photographing their sessions. Except for a solitary shot of Smith's street, Dyer included no other photographs and I found myself thinking how I would have to look them up.

In the 2009 fall issue of the Paris Review, there is a wonderful collection of prose fragments of Rilke. I like to read those fragments every now and then. This morning, given the sampling of letters last night, it seemed fitting to pull out the magazine and read parts of Rilke's Interiors. After savouring a few paragraphs I casually turned a couple of pages and stared in wonder at Eugene Smith's photos of the Jazz Loft looking back at me.

Did I mention that Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room, consisting of three different journeys, originally appeared as three separate novellas in the Paris Review?

Aunt Julia & The Scriptwriter

After Mario Vargas Llosa won his Nobel for literature this year, I thought it was time to bring down this book from my shelf and read it. I have had the book for almost two years, but somehow never came down to it, and here I am, 250 pages into the book and thoroughly enjoying it.

Rise quoted Aira in the last post - 'The longer the book is, the less it is literature'. One controversial statement which can negate many a works written by Aira's colleagues of Latin American writers. For, it seems to me, verbosity and several pages are the typical characteristic of Latin American writing. In fact, at close to 400 pages, Aunt Julia... lies on the thinner side of this portfolio. But still it has pages and pages dedicated to an adulterous love-affair between an 18-year old aspirant writer and his 32-year old aunt Julia, and to the eccentricity of a scriptwriter for radio dramas. This original thread, in my opinion, seems to be the least interesting part of the book. The love-story is yawn-boring, and you can only so much enjoy the eccentricity of a Bolovian script-writer who does not talk to anyone.

So what is so interesting in this? To me, frankly, it has been the slightly sensational, irrational and over the top stories that the scriptwriter is writing, which appear as alternate chapters of the book. These are stories where the protagonist is usually a 50 year old male, is detached from the world around him, and great at his work. (In other words, a man crafted after Pedro Camacho - the scriptwriter). These stories are written for effect, no doubt, and highlight many sensational sins of modern lives - incest, parricide, lunacy, self-castration, various forms of cold and hot murders, etc. Despite their sleaziness, (or perhaps because of it) there is something engaging about these stories. They always end in a 'What will happen next...', and though they don't generate the kind of curiosity where you sit for pages wondering what happened to the last story, you are a bit unhappy when the story ends.

In the original thread, the comparison between the writing of protagonist and the script-writer appear several times. While the scriptwriter can churn out endless stories for his serials in one sitting, never looking back on them; the aspirant writer hangs on to some small idea (borrowed), and writes a dramatic story around it, which he puts through various iterations, until it becomes so synthetic that he comes to hate it himself and throws it away. Which one makes better literature? I don't know, for we never get to see the protagonist's stories. But throughout the book, the script-writer seems to hold the bastion, indicated in the reverence with which everyone treats him. It seems that Llosa respects the ability to tell stories. So do I.

Prolegomena to César Aira

"The longer a book is, the less it is literature," the Argentinean novelist Cesar Aira said in a recent interview. With this standard, The Hare (248 pages), Aira's longest fiction available in English, is presumably the least literary of the lot. The rest of his translated fictions are of novella length: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (87 pages), How I Became a Nun (117 pages), Ghosts (139 pages), and The Literary Conference (90 pages).

Brevity seems to be the general rule. The exceptions, as with The Hare, are rare. Brevity denotes focus. Spontaneous combustion of ideas. Short gestation of larvae. Fleeting span of attention. Quick entertainment. Literary lite. Aira's stories court all of these. Then briefly, without warning, they suddenly pull away from their encasing, take flight on newly-minted wings.

In addition to their compact form, a distinct characteristic of Aira’s works is their sharp turns of plot. His style is of the improvised sort. His narratives are digressive. They go off tangent. They leap quantum mechanically. The plots become entangled. This owes in part to the method of writing that Aira adopted for himself. He never edits his work, never plans ahead what he is going to write, and just writes whatever comes to mind. He calls it the el continuo ("continuum") or la huida hacia adelante ("forward movement").

(This makes it sound like everything on the page is drawn by random chance. It may be true to some extent. Just as, sometime in January, it was chance that brought me face to face with a book called Ghosts in a bookstore, six hundred ninety-nine pesos. Damn. So expensive for a short book. It was chance that spurred me to read it and never look back again. It was worth every centavo. Like what Roberto Bolaño said, once you start reading Aira, it will be hard to stop. Translators from the Spanish need to descend on the books like vultures. Seriously.)

A third characteristic of Aira’s outputs is his ginormous number of books. To date, he has produced some 70 books to his name, an average production of two books a year. (He is perhaps rivalled only in this department by James Patterson and minions, Patterson clones.) Thankfully, these works are now slowly trickling down in English. The independent publisher New Directions, who brought out his last four short books in translation, has just acquired the rights to eight more of his works. The translator Chris Andrews is currently working on Varamo, while The Seamstress and the Wind (trans. Rosalie Knecht) is due out in June 2011.

Yet another quality of Aira's experiments (for they are nothing but fictional experiments, pseudo-theoretical ventures, quick business deals, educated guesses, unfinished proofs, hypothetical hypotheses, to be tested by time and the reader's patience) is their diversity. His oeuvre is a mix of genres, from the low blow to high art. Aira's prose is not so much a hybrid form but half man, half machine. Cyborg is the term: half fiction, half machine. In a shelf devoted to Aira, the fault lines of sci-fi sit snug with a ghost story, memoir gone berserk, child psychology and psychopathology, architectural musings and unbuilt construction, cinematographic battle scenes, and stunning nature writing. He does pick out deliberately several elements from air to fire, like the last airbender.

We can add one more to these identification keys of an Aira book. Each novel, or novella, has a missing key that could perhaps (though sometimes it couldn't, however much budging) unlock the book's architecture. There is a "manual" embedded in the book that could at least approach the gate, if it can't be entered. How to push through the darkness, if one can't see the way. Read on or drop dead. The manual is what often comes in the form of digression. But the keys were also reported to be as inconspicuous as a harmless paragraph, a bent passage, sentence, or phrase. Each book has a purported key that may or may not fit the lock. Each book is probably a key. Only, the keyhole is blocked.

* * *

I’m reading The Hare, my third book of Aira this month, my fifth this year. It's set in the Argentine pampas sometime in the 19th century, after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, starring an English naturalist and several Mapuche Indians. I can't say I'm prepared for this. I can't say I was ever prepared for an Aira. The senses are trying to be vigilant for telltale triggers. Is it the obvious hare in the title? Will it build upon a wonky premise and progress into a psychedelic trip? As in How I Became a Nun, where a young child was poisoned by strawberry ice cream, an experience that marked her/him forever. As in An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, where the artist was stranded by the force of nature and never recovered from the episode. As in Ghosts, where nude male ghosts frolic around a condominium building and never demanded for anything except for the one crucial thing. Or as in The Literary Conference, where a novelist-slash-Mad Scientist attempted a cloning experiment that resulted in something akin to a war of the worlds.

There's something autistic in all these encounters. They induce a kind of epiphanic panic. Like the adjective "epiphanic," they attract attention to themselves. Much more so when the author self-identifies with the main protagonist, as the young girl César Aira in How I Became a Nun, or as César the novelist-slash-Mad Scientist in The Literary Conference. Authorial presence is another aspect of Aira's fiction. A madcap presence.

* * *

The Hare is translated by Nick Caistor, published by Serpent’s Tail in 1995, and is out of print. Emblazoned on the front cover is the blurb "The Borges of the Pampas." Uh, okay. Labyrinths, mirrors, dreams, puzzles: check. The comparison is perhaps more pronounced in terms of the two writers' blind adherence to innovation and form. Aira's acknowledged masters, however, are the "anti-literary" set of Manuel Puig, Osvaldo Lamborghini, and Copi (Santos 2006). Not to mention Marcel Duchamp.

The Hare is about an English naturalist/geographer Clarke who entered Mapuche Indian territory in Argentina to search for an elusive species of mammal, the Legibrerian Hare. Clarke is brother-in-law of a genius named Darwin (yes, the one). The story begins with Clarke consulting Rosas, the "Restorer of the Laws" in the Argentine pampas, to inform him of his scientific expedition. Rosas lent Clarke a good horse and assisted him in finding a guide to the area. He was also asked to bring a young watercolor painter with him. Earlier, he also consulted another talented painter who refused to go with him. There are obviously shades of the artistes and their art here as in An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter.

When Clarke eventually arrived at the camps of the Mapuche, he had a guarded conversation with its chief, Cafulcurá. The kind of conversation that skirted the specifics and was more like a battle of wills. While fluent in the tribe's language, Clarke was aware that certain words have double meanings and he was cautious in what he says lest he offend the natives. He was sure that his mission to find the hare was suspect in the eyes of the Mapuche. Is that the reason why Cafulcurá spoke to him seemingly in circles? Suddenly, there was a commotion from outside the tent. Loud cries of a hare sighting were heard and Clarke went to investigate. A "white" hare was presumably spotted but it escaped and took flight in the air. The Indians, young and old, were still craning their necks looking at the sky. Clarke, like the reader of an Aira book, was gradually feeling that he was being had. We know it's hard to shake that feeling.

The following is a striking passage early in the book. Cafulcurá, the chief of the Mapuche, was talking to Clarke (p. 26):

   "I was just thinking," Cafulcurá said all of a sudden, "of what you were telling me. Your brother-in-law is a genius, there's no doubt of that. When I met him, I thought he was simply a likeable young man; but after what you've said, I'll have to change my judgement. Nothing unusual in that. But I should say: he's a genius in his own field. I myself have sought to convey similar ideas, but – and look what a strange case of transformation this is – I always did it by means of poetry. In matters like these, it's important to win people's belief. But in this particular case, it so happens that we Mapuche have no need to believe in anything, because we've always known that changes of this kind occur. It is sufficient for a breeze to blow a thousand leagues away for one species to be transformed into another. You may ask how. We explain it, or at least I explain it ..."
   He paused for a while to consider how he did explain it.

The Butterfly Effect

It is sufficient for a breeze to blow a thousand leagues away for one species to be transformed into another. The passage can be a clue to the novel's appropriation of scientific concepts: the "butterfly effect", evolution, and ecological connectivity.

In the 1960s, meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered that very slight differences in initial atmospheric conditions can produce very different weather forecast. This principle has been compared to a butterfly flapping its wings in one place (say, Buenos Aires) which can alter the subsequent weather pattern in a distant place (say, a tornado in Texas). This is a debated concept in the science of meteorology, though lately it has been adopted in the modeling of uncertainties in climate change scenarios. Cafulcurá continued (pp. 26-27):

   " ... it's simply a matter of seeing everything that is visible, without exception. And then if, as is obvious, everything is connected to everything else, how could the homogeneous and the heterogeneous not also be linked?"
   In the Huilliche tongue, these last two nouns had several meanings. Clarke could not immediately decide how they were being used on this occasion, and asked for an explanation. He knew what he was letting himself in for, because the Indians could be especially labyrinthine in these delicate issues of semantics: their idea of the continuum prevented them from giving clear and precise definitions. On this occasion, however, his sacrifice has not been unrewarded, because Cafulcurá's digression, starting from the sense of "right" and "left" that the two words also had, ended thus:

Connectivity, the butterfly effect, and consequent change support the view of Aira's narrative continuum in the space-time. In terms of the theory of evolution, the initial conditions of the environment and other externalities determine the variation of species. The butterfly effect is a fitting model for Aira's texts. The initial conditions of the story are subtle determinants of next conditions, which themselves are the bases of the final conditions. Cafulcurá's digression ended thus:

   "We have a word for 'government' which signifies, in addition to a whole range of other things, a 'path', but not just an ordinary path – the path that certain animals take when they leap in a zigzag fashion, if you follow me; although at the same time we ignore their deviations to the right and left, which due to a secondary effect of the trajectory end up of course not being deviations at all, but a particular kind of straight line."

Aira describes a certain kind of perturbation wherein the patterns within a chaotic system are not at first evident but later the alignment begins to show when the trajectory of the "secondary effect" is plotted. (The zigzag line of the animals' path makes me think of an unusual pictorial poem. Bolaño, perturbation. I am reminded of Césarea Tinajero's poem, "Sión," in The Savage Detectives.) The idea of continuity/discontinuity was continued again when Clarke spoke to Cafulcurá's son, Reymarcurá, who spoke to him in more candid fashion than his father, but no less contradictory.

The "irregular path" was referred to again when Clarke got lost while trying to locate the stream where the young painter under his care was bathing (p. 56):

   Getting there proved no easy matter. Apart from the fact that all the emotions and riding had left him with his head spinning and feeling drowsy with exhaustion (he had got used to a siesta, and it was exactly that time of day), he had no idea where this oasis was. The previous afternoon he had simply followed Gauna [his guide]. Now, on his own, every direction looked the same. Of course, in the absolute flatness of the salt pans, all he had to do was discover which direction to take – then the shortest route was obvious. But, as happens with every line, there were tiny deviations, and these inevitably produced far-reaching effects. In reality, on this plain, any one point was always elusive. [...]

At the center of the concept of the butterfly effect is chaos theory which deals with how infinitesimal changes in certain variables can cause random effects in complex systems. As with similar insinuations in his short books, Aira may as well be describing his process of writing. The "storyline" usually plunges from one direction into another, abruptly taking a sideways route. Tiny shifts in the plot affect the overall emphasis of the story. The connect-the-dots approach teases out an overall pattern from the various images. The dots, however disparate, are transparently there, plotted as a course toward a certain destination, dotted as with i's. Only connect.

I'm on page 70 of the book, and the question insists itself: What does the elusive hare signify? An unattainable treasure, or insight? Or simply the story's closure?

This early in the book, certain motifs were already piling up. The double meaning of words in the Mapuche language reflect the delicate relations between the native and the outsider. Where 'government' also means 'path' and where 'right' and 'left' are signified by other words, the communication gap is asking for things to fall apart. The Mapuche word for 'law' itself (p. 25) could mean many things, more than six things in fact, that the difficulty of establishing a common law must be evident. The squinting eyes of the Mapuche (i.e., double vision), which had been mentioned several times so far and also caricatured in the cover of the book, could also be correlated to the double meaning of words. The characters were seeing double, not deigning to separate one image from the other, the real thing from its shadow or artifice or ghost.


The Airaesque

Aira's four brief books are very open to critical analysis, which makes them slippery and at the same time challenging reads. Aira is an open interpretation and and an open-ended phenomenon. He himself is discovering the limits of narrative stability where realistic representations don't bleed too much on surrealism and whose footing in the fantastic is sure and confident. It's hard to dismiss Aira's unpolished philosophical ideas, not least because they are bound in words of poetry and they are theories-in-progress. There is a searching tone to his character's odysseys.

The long book at hand is already replete with double-edged words and double vision that arise out of the characters' voluntary choice to say or see things the way they want to. In other words, out of a writer's resistance to conform to simple narrative itineraries. I was waiting for the moment when the apparently sideways story align itself and open up to many-worlds interpretations. Or the other way around: when a linear story begins to branch out and go haywire. I put down the book at the moment when a kidnapping incident took place in the middle of a hunting expedition. It looked like just the ticket to story's self-destruction.

"The Borges of the Pampas" may be better classified as its own genetic species, as The Aira of the Pampas. Let us call Aira's butterfly effect, for simplicity and in homage to another fictive insect – the metamorphosed bug or beetle – as the Airaesque. The Airaesque is characterized by an apparent disjuncture of the narrative, where events are disrupted to give way to quasi-philosophical digressions. The Airaesque is the deliberate and conscious flouting of logic and literary conventions. It is a representation of a literary search for meaning, without due regard for whatever methodical means are used to justify the obscene ends. Where the act of disruptive writing is a reflection of chaotic reading. The Airaesque is artistic gestation nipped at the precise point when the story is just about to escape absurdity, in order to re-enter absurdity. The Airaesque is the climax and ending that resist further epiphanies. The Airaesque is the obsessive-compulsive order.

For which we read in delightful anguish. As Mallén, the Mapuche shaman, warns Clarke before telling him an apocryphal story: "By now we're in the realm of pure fiction, for which I apologise."

Marilynne Robinson and FQ

Am I allowed to say I might have fallen a tad in love with Marilynne Robinson? Love as not the nimbly, half-romantic love as in the case of Zadie Smith or the secure warmth of revering love as in with Margaret Atwood. Love, as an awed yet grudgingly disaffected love one reserves to people one wants to love but somewhat is not sure yet. 

Gilead was read in haste; it took too much of time to have any true memorable dent on consciousness. As refreshing the prose was, it was the ‘Other’ book in many ways – it was set too far away in America, too long back in time and dealt with a topic of little personal interest  – religion. Moreover the story was intensely intimate – the letter from a father to his son with geo-religious subtexts. Marilynne Robinson who had won the Pulitzer for the book, which in fact had prompted the reading, was just a name.  

Reading the Believer conversation between Cornelia Nixon and Marilynne Robinson has been a great revelation specifically to shed more light on the person behind the writer of Gilead. Cornelia Nixon engages Marilynne Robinson in a variety of subjects within the context of her books. I had mentioned about abolitionists before. They move on to religion, evolution, feminism, writing, environmental activism etc, dealing with different books that Marilynne Robinson has written. Talking about them she comes across sound in her arguments and reasonable in conviction unlike some such believers who can be extremely entrenched.

The talk is genial, a sense of warm rapport between the two is easily palpable on the pages. I later learnt that in all the interviews in the book the interviewing writer was asked to choose their own interviewee writers. They were approached by Believer with a slip ,  I would like to interview the writer ......... I  suppose having such a choice creates a certain sense of bonding during the interview as the interviewer often choose writers whose works they are well acquainted with or have a pressing question to raise.  I enjoyed the discussion about fictional books - Housekeeping, Gilead,  the various themes running in the stories, and esp. of water in Gilead that was so distinctly etched  in my consciousness. In fact the discussion in the group encouraged me to read out a passage on water that I had written. You do remember of the other great water passage in English literature, don't you?  Ironically for all the religious theme within  the book Marilrynne implied the irony that she had drawn the passage from Freurbach a noted atheist. 

The other curious segment of the discussion was her non-fiction, esp. Mother Country which apparently has anti-British sentiments. I hadn’t known she lived in UK before, apparently she did, during when she wrote the book. She reflects  on the controversial Sellafield Unit in Cumbria ( Lake district)  and the release of nuclear waste into Irish sea, that had been huge controversy a few decades back. 

But the impressive bit is her knowledge of details. You could easily figure that she isn’t one of those fancy activists who is voicing her views for an audience or to meet a deadline. Though one might not agree with all her views one can still appreciate and in many times respect her views. 

Here’s a good example of her arguments -

Europe has dabbled with that stuff and so as Japan, using British technology. They have made these reactors that are graphite moderated like those reactors at Hanford that make bomb grade material, and they consider them 'Dual use', they produce electricity and then they also produce plutonium and  uranium which Britain sales, ships into Germany and into Japan by sea. And now the Irish sea is the most radioactive body water in the world. All this talk about media proliferation and people talking about Russia, but Britain is much older and more important source of nuclear proliferation difficulties.

She goes on to talk about another important thing that has been on my mind lately - this sense of 'displaced patriotism' amongst left-winged intellectuals in America. In their sense of appreciation of the history and culture somehow they condone Britain more than America in its wrongdoings.  A recent example would be the war on Iraq - how many articles would you find by left-winged intellectuals that blames or if not blames holds Britain equally responsible for the wrongs done in Iraq? There is a pervading feeling of guilt which makes Americans resist attacking Britain.

Further in the discussion about the same book I found another curious nugget - that  Greenpeace had sued her for hurting their reputation (under British libel law) and won!

Here’s the story in her own words :

One of the things that was very disturbing was that while Greenpeace was active about all this in Britain, there was no information about it in the United States. Or to extent that there was any, it tended, as it does tend to be, very misleading. For example, they had a brochure that said that Greenpeace claimed that they had helped to create a ban on ocean dumping of radioactive material. But there still is an ocean dumping of radioactive material all the time, a great deal of it done by Britain. They not only put this stuff down the pipeline into the ocean, but the dump radioactive waste of the coast of Spain. So this rouses one’s curiosity  about what Greenpeace understands its role to be. They collect an enormous percentage of money that is doanted to environmental causes in the world.

There was one particularly ridiculous episode in which Greenpeace figure, and I couldn’t get any satisfaction about what they were doing. So in the book itself I raise questions about why did this happen and what were they doing. I made it joking around a little bit and basically they have this pipeline that since 1957 has been dumping radioactive waste into the sea, right? And according to Greenpeace they had taken divers out and lowered them to block the thing. in the first place it’s been putting out corrosive material since 1957. How are you going to make a  cover that  fits the thing? Isn’t that a little bit hard to imagine? Then they have lowered the divers to the mouth of what is a source of the most intense radioactive contamination in the world, pulled them back again. There happened to be a Geiger counter in the boat which pinned.

Now what’s wrong with the story? You’re going to  block something because it disgorges radioactive waste,  and you don’t take a geiger counter? you only have one there? it only accidentally goes off when the divers come up? Who are these divers that you’re going to put them into this intense radiacive environment? it’s all craziness. i simply ask in the book, what can this mean? so i got sued. and amongst the things greenpeace sued me for were hurt feelings.

As an aside I have my very own experience of Sellafield: We were roaming all about Lake district. At Barrow, we read about Sellafield especially that the drive towards (Sellafield) being magnificient ( the road is between the mountains on one side and sea on the other). Having been that far it only seemed the natural thing to do, even though the visitor centre wasn’t answering the calls. But a few yards abouts there, when we started clicking a couple of snaps off the zoom we were surrounded by  police ( a car and an van) who, after confirming our identity and the purpose of the visit informed us that the place was closed for visitors and firmly requested to leave. There was an edge of paranoia in the episode.

Anyway,  I found the discussion between Marilynne Robinson and Cornelia Nixon very insightful, it helped me appreciate a very different perspective. I recommend this book for anyone interested in writers, writing and world in general.

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Have started with Haruki Murakami talking to Sean Wilsey. The interview is rather peculiar, in that they exchange emails which are translated to and fro. Personally I think this would allow a lot of answering time, especially for people like Murakami who fiercely, consciously, do not wish to engage in live media. So, in a sense the real person behind the writer is not out in the open, exposed. Incidentally, as I was thinking, the interview has stemmed onto this territory with Wilsey asking why Murakami who doesn't routinely talk to media chose to talk to NYT after 9/11 The answer is cleverly wrapped in two pages. Ah Murakami, you bugger!

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Have also started The Finkler Question. It is interesting to say the least. The theme is that of three friends , two of whom have been recently widowed. Lot of looking-back-prose akin The Sea (Banville) that is refined but a bit obscure and requires concentration. It has a saddening sense of humor; I've taken a liking to the character Treslove.

Strait is the Gate

Time and again I revert to reading the Classics. For the simple reason that they play no mind games, you can easily settle into them, take their words at face value and indulge in beautiful countrysides. Sometimes, that assurance of simplicity is required after a few involving reads.

But if simplicity was my motivation to pick up Andre Gide's Strait is the Gate, I may have been misinformed. This little novel is going into a mysterious loop that I am unable to fully grasp.

The story is of young Jerome, who falls in love with his cousin Alissa, a deathly serious young woman who seems to be in constant agony and repentance over something. What this something is constitutes most of the mystery of the book.

To begin with, it seemed that the misery was repugnance over her mother's lewd behavior. But that passed, and she continued to be melancholy.

The love story is being described in an idyll - I think these love stories are adorable for their romantic settings of a summer home. How I have longed for such simple delights, of long walks on shaded boulevards!

Then until today morning, I placed the source of Alissa's misery to her sister Juliette's love for Jerome. The younger one is equally animated and beset with love's glow, enjoying her own dreamy walks with the narrator. Both sisters, in a bid to outdo each other, try to sacrifice themselves. For sometime, I felt the tension of an impending death and tragedy.

But having progressed through some more pages, it seems even Juliette's love is not the cause. She moves on, but Alissa continues to be miserable, unable to meet Jerome in person, only showering him with long, indulgent letters. Their love blooms through these letters. The letters are sometimes beautiful. They are of course the out-pours of an emotional girl, but they are written as if to self, as if in a journal, and thus remarkable in their unabashed expression.

There is a beautiful part in the book, where I am now, when Jerome and Alissa meet after two years of ardent letters, and cannot find anything to say to each other. It seems so heart-breaking, yet you cannot imagine any other kind of meeting between people who have become close in imagination. Alissa very perceptively realizes then the 'mirage' of this distant connection.

Here's where I come to the difficult part - Alissa insists on giving herself up to God. And I am completely unable to relate to this need. The way I was not able to understand the black shades in which Alissa's mother was painted, or in the way two sisters fought to sacrifice. I am unable, completely to sympathize with this loftiness, which is slightly annoying. Is this a natural possibility at all? Or is this work a religious text?

I can understand better Tolstoy's ardent arguments for God and religion, but this simple acceptance of God as a way of life seems an exaggeration.

I will have to think more.

Flitting with Geoff Dyer

It is fair to say that the better part of my reading life in 2010 has been spent in the company of Geoff Dyer's words. I've read Anglo- English Attitudes, But Beautiful, Out of Sheer Rage, Paris Trance, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and am currently reading The Ongoing Moment. Also throw in the Selected Essays of John Berger, edited by Dyer, which is the first Dyer sample that I had.

The experience has not been mind-blowing. Instead it has been thoroughly enjoyable, illuminating, funny, reassuring, and in the case of But Beautiful filled with admiration at the utter beauty of his presentation. When you hear of Geoff Dyer, you also hear of genre-defying. Where do you put him? How do you classify? Dyer flits across subjects with alarming consistency. Every successive book is so clearly unlike its predecessor that you must be willing to catch his flight and go on his fancy ride. It helps that he does not expect you to come equipped with too many skills other than perhaps some open-mindedness. Like he admits in his essay collection Anglo-English Attitudes, he writes to learn about his current curiosity. And writes himself out of his curiosity. D H Lawrence, Jazz, Photography, Buddhism, Eastern Classical Music (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ramamani are particular favourites), Varanasi, Venice have all captured his curiosity and have all been written about with the enthusiasm and diligence and fresh insight of a learner.

I am reading The Ongoing Moment, a compilation of the works of many mostly American photographers through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Dyer choices of photos and subjects are subjective and the reader is encouraged to read the book like she would rummage in a box of photos. He starts with the famous Paul Strand photograph of the Blind Woman and goes on to explore the fascination that photographers have had with a blind subject including Diane Arbus's photograph of Borges in Central Park and of Richard Avedon's experience of trying to photograph Borges at his home in Buenos Aires. Dyer's next subject is hands and I am intrigued by his explanation of Dorothea Lange's photograph of a Migratory Cotton Picker (more on that when I've thought about it a little more.) The other subjects are hats, benches, stairs and so on.

In all of Dyer's books that I have read so far there are patterns. He likes D H Lawrence, Albert Camus, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Berger (his hero), and these gentlemen appear in quotes in most books. Dyer also likes to quote a lot. While this should be an irritating tic to endure, what makes it appealing is the subterfuge he employs. Quotes get worked into sentences as paraphrases, thematic nods, straight lifts of unusual word pairings etc. As a reader, it is a delight when you become suspicious of a sentence only to look at his always extensive notes and sources section to see that he tells you, 'but of course I used it cleverly, good for you that you are curious...' His sex scenes in Paris Trance and Jeff in Venice are remarkably similar, something that I would not have noticed if I hadn't read them in the same month. And unlike metaphorical sex that a lot of authors resort to, Dyer prefers the frank. What a relief to not read symbolism. In that sense the frankness of the sex becomes a symbol for something else.

But Beautiful is extraordinary in its lyrical invocation of the lives of the jazz musicians in the golden age of American jazz. I can close my eyes and still see Thelonious Monk sitting at his white piano wedged close to the kitchen slab, lost to the difficulty of his daily existence and tuned in to some free flowing abstraction that would become his music. I can feel Duke Ellington's spirit as he hops through all of America, to gig after gig after gig, in a battered car, sleeping in the front seat. Dyer's writing is so evocative of the rich, conflicted and tormented inner lives of these genius black musicians who created music from the very depths of their angst.

More on The Ongoing Moment as I read further.

Dork - Adventures between trauma and travesty

Dork: The Incredible adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese, Sidin Vadukut.

I tried my best, I tried even using strategic breaks in between to finish it off but I couldn’t bring myself to read any further than about 100 odd pages. For all practical purposes I have abandoned it. Yes, it is really that bad.

First of I don’t think you could call it a book even if you stretch your imagination by a light year. It doesn’t fall into any known definition of a fictional book: There is no narrative trail, no plot, no characterization or for that matter not even a purpose for this book. The writing is traumatizing when not unbearable. For instance the word nonchalantly is peppered throughout the paragraphs; it makes you feel like you are reading a junior school essay written by a student who has been strongly impressed by the MS word synonym suggestion for the word cool. Personally, I've never come across an Indian or a non Indian for that matter who uses nonchalantly so casually.

The protagonist Robin Varghese is perhaps the most dumb, egotistical, misogynistic, distasteful, character I have ever encountered in a book. I can’t even imagine that such a person exists, forget relating to him. From a watchman who for some reason shooes him away to his colleague who dislikes him everyone is a Bastard to him. In the meantime, he rejoices stealing hotel towels and quietly wanks off (literally!) at who appears to be, according to his admission - the love of his life. God save her really! Frankly, I would like to meet someone who has made an entry in their diary saying they wanked off at their love interest,  or perhaps a writer who would deem it fit to use for one of his characters. Utterly disgusting!

The rest of characters, if one can really call them that are vague cardboard sketches that only exist inside the narrator’s mind. There is nothing to suggest that they are or even could be real. Horrible characterization is one thing, being hopeless at research is another. The book doesn’t even get the facts right. Check this: 

Uzbekistan isn’t a part of European Union. Neither would European Union bother about industries operating elsewhere nor does EU have a common labour immigration policy! That's basic general knowledge if you expect yourself to use Uzbekistan in your fiction. Further point of interest that we all know here is Uzbekistan is one of the countries where emigration is more of the problem than immigration. It has not yet signed all the conventions  of the UN charter on labour immigration . It was famously forced to ratify minimum age of labour last year or the year before. The point being no one gives a damn about labour or immigration in Uzbekistan.  (Someone should send a card to the writer and the Penguin editing team). What I continually fail to understand with Indian writers  (and bloggers) is why do they try to write about something that they don't know?

Anyway, half way through, I can't think of single thing that is good in it. Clearly it’s been big mistake I picked it up. I’m embarrassed to have read it till wherever I did but I don’t see any other way but to abort it. Sidin Vadukut joins the esteemed Shoba De as my abandoned authors.

Finally, I'm not aware how it's been received in India. I can’t believe one would find it funny by any measure. It’s not my book, I suppose it’s the sort of the book for someone down the street or even down the timezone where people might want to read it and sit around talking how funny they had found it.

As for me, I would like to forget this book, forget I’ve ever tried reading it, so please let’s not talk about it anymore than we already have.

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More about Believer conversations and Masque in the next post. Dork left me a bit embittered and I had to pen down something to take it off my chest.

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Amongst other things , it’s a bit embarrassing to find out that you haven’t read any books by a booker winner at all, one who had been shortlisted at least four times before. Thought of ordering the ‘Finkler Question’ online then thought I’ll just pick it up myself soon.

Atlantic Ocean - Nigeria, Addendum

A quick addendum log to the last extract of Naipaul arriving in Nigeria. In that example I had found two things funny : First, the idea of a hotel employee introducing a big ocean to a guest ! I have had similar experiences - It’s funny in a quintessential third world way. Second, Naipaul’s cheeky prose, in a sense he is dead serious that he couldn’t see the ocean yet he is teasing by saying he had to take it on trust.

Today found out more about the importance of Atlantic Ocean in a Nigerian psyche. ( As I said, there’s been lot of Nigeria in the air, also October is the Black History month in UK ) Apparently, Atlantic Ocean is a symbol for many things in a Nigerian mind. For anyone growing up in Nigeria, it represents freedom from so many things that plague Nigeria. Also, as the main portal for slave trade, ( West African end of the triangle ) it symbolizes bondage. Further many Nigerians regard it as the means to reach across to their long lost brothers in the West Indies. With so many connotations, one can also easily imagine lot of myths and folklores about the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria.

In short, Atlantic Ocean has a significant influence on a Nigerian consciousness.

To me this information in many ways explains why a hotel attendant had to announce the ocean by its name to a guest. Limited worldview but pride.

Further reads:
Atlantic by Simon Winchester released last week.

Dork, Masque etc

Autumn entry 2, midnight 5th October

1. Still havent been able to finish the Conversation between Cornelia Nixon and Marilynne Robinson. It requires a lot of concentration and as they keep on discussing about important issues, I find myself going through references on the net. The talk has moved from abolitionists to individual books. House Keeping and Gilead are being compared about for their themes, characters etc. Quite interesting, really. I will finish it this time but have slotted a revisit sometime next year.

2. Started with Dork: The Incredible adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese, Sidin Vadukut. Perhaps the book with the longest title I've read (ing) this year. Apart from White Tiger I haven’t read any modern Indian fiction at all; I picked this up in an over-crowded Chennai bookstore earlier in the year. I haven’t known or read of Sidin Vadukut, (his name quite bizarrely reminds me Vidkun Quisling; phonetics I suppose, yes, temporal bloody lobe has its own ways of working).

Anyway, I gather he has a satire-slapstick type of a blog, which I must read sometime. I have added him on my twitter list. I was looking for a Anjum Hasan book in the Indian writers section but as I saw his name on the book-jacket, I recalled N mentioning him long back during a chat. Picked it up on a whim really.

But P who was waiting at the till, upon finding it in the purchases glinted at me and said ‘ Actually I would love to see you reading that’. Also, L upon finding it on my reading list had replied - ‘Dork? well, good luck with that’. I couldn’t quite figure these remarks then, but fifty odd pages into the book I do now.

First the story - the book is in the form of diary entries of the protagonist ( shades of White Tiger). It’s about a young Indian business graduate Robin Varghese nicknamed Einstein who has just graduated and is hoping to start a ? career as a consultant in a MNC. So far he has managed to get a job and has just about started work.

There is nothing that is even remotely interesting in the book. I haven’t read Sidin’s blogs so I can’t comment on him being a writer but the writing here in the book is utterly awful. ( Oh! my fingertips tingle in earnestness).

The main reason I was attracted to read Dork was to get an idea of a life of a young Indian graduate at this moment in India. But, the book is as though an average wannabe stand-up has collected all the poor business school jokes and has weaved a story around them. It seems as a combination of 3 idiots and White Tiger with good doses of contemporary references thrown in for background ( Jet Airways, Kajra Re etc..). Sidin at times comes across as sharp but is hardly sensible. As a reader I thought the book (so far) was incredibly patronizing - as if it’s been deliberately written down because the reader wouldn’t get it otherwise.

I think the main character is meant to be funny, but he is more of a fool really, which may be, I don't know, the new funny amongst young Indians? In fact if you are strict about it Robin is more of a caricature than a character. There is a forceful attempt to normalise his exaggerations as humour. For the reader, he doesn't evoke anything - so far he has only evoked confusion and cynicism within me. As I haven't completed the book, this might be a bit premature to say but I don’t see it changing, so , do yourself a favour and avoid this one. This book reflects neither world experience nor has any imagination; It’s been published because it can be. In India. It's a tribute to having poor, ill advised/ing literary sphere around you and a is glaring testament of scratching backs - evidently mediocre backs, Oh! how my fingertips tingle in earnestnessness! Actually, If not the editor who passed that line, I would at least like to meet an Indian who uses earnestness in a routine conversation.

To my shock I learnt that this is just the first segment; that, there is a trilogy planned. Someone should stop him.

3. Masque of Africa

Uganda ended rather abruptly. I couldn’t piece it all into any tangible conclusion, it seemed as if Vidia was in a hurry. Incomplete, terribly incomplete! Nothing like Vidia at all. Only bits and pieces of continuity and very superficial. I think either Vidia’s contacts in Uganda have fiercely protected him from any original experience or more likely, Uganda is difficult to be placed in the context of the book. Not happy.

Anyway, the book has moved on to Nigeria. I know Nigeria better because of it’s economy and many acquaintances and friends hailing from there. It was crazy last week - Nigeria all around - meeting people from Nigeria, both at work and otherwise, Nigerian 50th birthday, bomb blasts and reading about Nigeria when on my own etc. I have moved up to 120 odd pages, the segment is insightful. Confirms some of my own conclusions about Nigeria. And Vidia I must say rediscovers the beauty of his prose in this segment ( what a relief it is! ). It’s too late now and I prefer doing the entry after I complete the whole segment, so I'll just stop here.

However, not before I share this - Naipaul has been picked up from Lagos Airport to his hotel (Actually we learn later that it is a scam). The bloody Vidia humour -

All kinds of doubt came to me, but then, miraculously, there was the hotel tower.

The man who took me up to the room drew the curtains dramatically and said, like an impresario, ‘The Atlantic Ocean!’

I had to take it on trust, it was too dark to see clearly.

Things of Interest : Origin of Mumbo Jumbo, Boda Boda Motorcycle.

Masque of Africa and Conversation between Cornelia Nixon and Marilynne Robinson

1. Conversation between Cornelia Nixon and Marilynne Robinson, in the Believer writers book. Haven't been able to complete the whole conversation yet. It is lovely to read two intelligent talented writers talk. Cornelia started off describing Robinson's sentences to have a rare kind of beauty, which is so true. Robinson reminds me a lot of Banville.

Anyway, the focus so far has been on Robinson's books Housekeeping and Gilead especially the religious, racist (counter-racist) themes in the novels. I had read most of, but couldn't manage to finish Gilead (2004 Pulitzer) in a reading group; However, I have enough idea of the book and it's characters to pick up the threads in conversation. Robinson has been explaining the idealists American northerners and their unsung social efforts to integrate the races in America. I am , I must say slightly embarrassed about how little details I know of Civil War in America.

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2. Masque of Africa

Sir Vidia is back in Africa, trying to explore what the book calls the – African Belief. This immediately makes me slightly antagonistic towards the book, for, I have no expertise in African beliefs, rituals and to be frank, the topic is not something that I find terribly exciting. Anyway, it is a Naipaul book and would have wonderful prose if not anything.

Naipaul has returned to Africa, arriving at Uganda that he had left in the 1960s; naturally much of the opening pages of the book is descriptive- often using the – entering the river twice - type of narrative consciousness. Uganda has changed and seems unfamiliar including his previous site of his residence which he struggles to locate to the capital and it's landscape.

The progression is slow, and I must say to my surprise, slightly haphazard. I expected to start off with encountering African beliefs right away. But Vidia is using broad strokes to paint the canvas – the first chapter is brilliant in a typical Naipaul tradition of the Bend: gathering all the information and arranging it into a pastiche, he introduces the arrival of external faith to indigenous populations, the political and the religious reasons for its acceptance etc.

The narration then moves into a parallel exploration of extant architecture, landscape, flora, fauna religion and most importantly history. Everything is just touched upon but not gone into, in a sense. There is a drawing back to history especially the predecessors of Amin and Obote – as he visits couple of tombs of Kabakas (Kasubi) and a waterfall. He often goes back to Stanley and Speke for historical references. There is a vivid description of one war between Sunna and the people of Busoga, which I quite enjoyed. Some touches about human sacrifices – which people seem to avoid / forget to tell him.

Prose is simple, effective and brilliant as you would expect from Naipaul (How does he continue to do that?) e.g there is one sublime sentence which has about a dozen simple words yet is truly profound in a post-modern sense. Visiting the Kasubi Tombs which is a UNESCO heritage site he writes – We picked up a guide there, or perhaps, we were picked up by him. Perfect.

Have done about 8 chapters, 50 odd pages ; the narration has started to unravel – he was arranged to visit a witch-doctor, the visit in itself was unremarkable, but he has been tricked by the local contact to pay him pounds instead of dollars as it was agreed...

New words learnt – Nil

Words reinforced – Moraine ( lovely, after a long time I had almost forgotten !)

Things of Interest, To Be Researched (TBR) – History of Raffia mat, Lives of John Speke and Henry Stanley

Trivia - Sunna had a pet dog; it was him who gave Uganda the heraldic device woman, spear and dog. ( I couldn’t find it online)

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The Middle Passage

Naipaul's Middle Passage begins with the description of his ship journey to his birthplace- Trinidad. This was probably the first travelogue that Naipaul wrote, and perhaps that's why the book is written in the way of a typical travel account - a journey starts and then gets to the destination. Funny incidents, people, anecdotes line it along.

The description of the ship journey is mildly tedious. There are many people on the ship who appear boring. What is interesting is the ship on which he is traveling - an immigrant ship Francisco Bobadilla (named after, I learned, a Spanish administrator who was Columbus' successor as the Governor of Indies and had been responsible for Columbus being sent back to Spain on charges of mis-management) , which carries immigrants from West Indies and takes them to UK. A few interesting moments of this journey occur when the immigrants come on-board - the reaction of the remaining passengers is that of superiority and disgust - at best of passivity and feigned disinterest. The holiday is over. Wild cows are here.

I have started enjoying the book after Naipaul's observations on the West Indian culture begin taking shape. The very first appear on the dilemma of West Indian historian:

How can the history of this West Indian futility be written? What tone shall the historian adopt? Shall he be as academic as Sir Alan Burns, protesting from time to time at some brutality, and setting West Indian brutality in the context of European brutality….Shall he, like the West Indian historians, who can only now begin to face their history, be icily detached and tell the story of the slave trade as if it were just another aspect of mercantilism? The history of the islands can never be satisfactorily told. Brutality is not the only difficulty. History is built around achievement and creation; and nothing was created in the West Indies.

I am now in the pages where Naipaul is roaming around the streets of Trinidad, trying to come to terms with returning to a place which he apparently always saw as a prison while growing up. He still resents its limits, the 'second-rate' nature of everything - from radio to cinema to journalism. More than a travelogue, it seems like the grudges of a childhood finding a lovely articulate voice, and a space to vent those grudges.