Reader Alert: Open Library

I am still navigating Open Library but here is what is exciting:

• Over a million free e-books
• Books can be read or read-to (there is a nice audio integration) - Gutenberg + Librivox say
• Signing up is free; it gives you the ability to add or edit stuff
• You can create lists (woo hoo! though I wonder why I need another listing service for)
• A small but growing lending library

Signing up already? That's what I thought...

The Captive Mind

I started reading this book somewhere in April last year, then abandoned it due to travel schedules, and have been reading it amidst different books since last month. A long drawn read sometimes hampers a reading experience, but not when the book has been written with as much clarity as Czeslaw Milosz has accorded the Captive Mind.

Milosz, a Polish writer, lived through the Warsaw uprising of 1944 and the Russian rule in Poland, and initially lent his cooperation to the Communist government by becoming the Government's Literary attache to Paris. These were the initial times, when the Red Army was trying to win Intellectuals over by giving them some literary freedom, as long as they did not criticize Russia or its theories in their writing. Neutrality then, was acceptable. But soon, the noose tightened to swerve these intellectuals into praising the regime, and it was no longer possible to be a writer without contributing to the party's agenda. Milosz struggled with this acceptance for a while, until his ideas of literary freedom won and he seeked political asylum in Paris. Captive Mind was completed during this phase, even though the seed had begun during his years of cooperation.
This background is essential to a book in which Milosz explains his initial cooperation and the cooperation of several Polish intellectuals. He does this through a couple of concepts, followed by 4 biographies of such writers. The concepts are interesting. Take for example the pill of Murti Bing. In a fantasy written by Witkievicz, an Eastern Invader Murti Bing defeats Poland, and offers a pill of happiness to its exhausted people. People take it willingly, because everyone inherently wants to move to a harmonious state. Milosz likens the pill to Communism - which offers a harmonious existence to all men, dissolving divides. People exhausted from the Nazi rule willingly accept it.
What takes the center-stage in the book are the four biographies of Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. All of these are Polish writers, and for different reasons are drawn to the idea of Communism. Alpha is drawn to purity and monumental tragedy, which a war-torn country gives him aplenty. Beta is a disappointed lover, a nihilist who has witnessed first hand the society that builds up in a concentration camp, and is a brutal narrator of it. The realism of Marxist regime appealed to his love for brutal truth, as did its materialism.
Gamma, a slave of history was a non-entity in the literary world before the war, but was elevated to a position of prominence & power with his embrace of the socialist regime.Lastly Delta, the troubadour was a jocose storyteller, who liked the regime because it paid him for his popular writing.
These portraits are tremendous, and each presents a different logic for embrace of a tyrannical regime. These writers, including Milosz are making some compromises, but considering the alternative - of not being able to write, or of exile to a nation where no can read your writing, their compromise does not warrant a harsh judgment. I would really like to know who these authors are that Milosz represents, and if possible read something from them - at least from Beta, whose writing seems a harsh portrayal of human nature under duress.
Milosz' language is a little poetic, he is not a debater and he sometimes digresses from the argument into memory lanes, which makes the book a little charming,and melancholy despite the ideological theme.
Once the portraits have ended, the book has become a bit monotonous. Perhaps Milosz should have ended sooner.
An interesting term in the book: Ketman. Act of paying lip service to the authority while holding personal opposition. Wonder why it has not come up in my earlier Totalitarian reads.

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?