A House For Mr. Biswas
Author: V.S. Naipaul 1961 531 pp
My rating: 5*
Started October 18 2008, Finished October 26 2008.
Delights on almost every page. Of all the books I’ve read since I started blogging, this was the first one that I felt a tinge a sadness upon finishing -- I wanted more of Mehun Biswas and his family. A fair comparison to this book is the complete Rabbit quartet, as both works completely realize their protagonists, though Biswas achieves similar impact much more economically and Naipaul reveals his characters more from exterior traits and interactions than Updike does. The plot, the bulk of which runs from about the mid 1920s to the mid 1950s, takes Biswas, a Trinidadian Hindu of Indian extraction all the way from his inauspicious birth to his premature death at 46, thoroughly chronicling his lifelong struggle to assert himself as a unique and noteworthy individual, a quest symbolized by his attempts to acquire a livable house from himself, his wife and his children. Biswas undertakes many careers ranging from sign painter for which he has a natural aptitude, to shop-keeper for which he has little, to plantation-manager for which he has none before he finally finds his calling as a sensationalistic journalist. While Biswas’ life has at least as many valleys as peaks, the prevailing tone is comedic, though Naipaul’s skill in depicting the full range of emotions Biswas experiences can occasionally whipsaw the reader, as during the vertigo inducing change of tone from the desperation of Biswas’ nervous breakdown at the end of his time as the plantation overseer which is immediately followed the comedy of his days as a an intern reporter, endlessly recycling phrases from the old newspapers that had constituted the wall paper in his plantation hut. I also tip my hat to Naipaul for rendering a character as frequently unsympathetic as Biswas -- he his not above hitting his wife and his feelings for his children rarely extend beyond how their actions reflect upon him -- so completely and fairly that we come to understand and forgive his shortcomings and, in the end, have a fair amount of affection for him.
… as a journalist he found himself among people with money and sometimes with graces; with them his manner was unforcedly easy and he could summon up luxurious instincts; but always, at the end, he returned to his crowded, shabby room. (45)
Living in a wife-beating society, he couldn’t understand why women were even allowed to nag or how nagging could have any effect … [Susila] talked with pride of the beatings she had received from her short-lived husband. She regarded them as a necessary part of her training and often attributed the decay of Hindu society in Trinidad to the rise of the timorous, weak, non-beating class of husband. (133)
Biswas, the novice reporter described by interviewee as an ‘incompetent, aggrieved and fanatical young report who distastefully noted my guarded replies a laborious longhand.” (295)
[Exam day] Altogether it was a dreadful day, a day of reckoning, with Daddies exposed to scrutiny on every side, and the examination to follow. (425)
So later, and very slowly, in securer times of different stresses, when the memories had lost the power to hurt, with pain or joy, they would fall into place and give back the past. (524)
Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Indignation
Indignation
Author: Phillip Roth 2008 231 pp
My rating: 4*
Started October 15 2008, Finished October 16 2008.
Seductively readable, this novella length work crosses the somewhat hopeful early Roth of the “Goodbye Columbus” era with the later fatalist of American Pastoral and The Plot Against America. Indignation begins as a Jewish family drama with local college commuter Marcus Messner’s attempts to get out from under the thumb of his overbearingly protective father in Newark, NJ then turns into a fish out of water tale as Marcus transfers to an insular, WASP school in Winesburg Ohio. The book’s tone seems comedic but gradually turns to darkness. The Roth protagonists of 30 and 40 years ago, about the same age as Marcus, were primarily concerned with having sex while Marchus is primarily concerned with maintaining a high enough GPA to avoid being drafted and having to fight in the Korean War. If this were a full novel length, it might get five stars. As it is it has a couple of weaknesses: characters tend to speak in perfectly formed paragraph or longer speeches and the Sonny Cottler character does not make much sense except as a plot mechanism.
What girl found a bay “desirable” at Winesburg College? I for one had never heard of such feelings existing among the girls of Winesburg or Newark or anywhere else. (58)
I couldn’t even get my first blowjob without wondering while I was getting it what had gone wrong to allow me to get it. Why wasn’t that good enough for everybody? (91)
Work -- certain people yearn for work, any work, harsh or unsavory as it may be, to drain the harshness from their lives and drive from their minds the killing thoughts. (165)
… the incomprehensible way one’s most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result. (231)
Author: Phillip Roth 2008 231 pp
My rating: 4*
Started October 15 2008, Finished October 16 2008.
Seductively readable, this novella length work crosses the somewhat hopeful early Roth of the “Goodbye Columbus” era with the later fatalist of American Pastoral and The Plot Against America. Indignation begins as a Jewish family drama with local college commuter Marcus Messner’s attempts to get out from under the thumb of his overbearingly protective father in Newark, NJ then turns into a fish out of water tale as Marcus transfers to an insular, WASP school in Winesburg Ohio. The book’s tone seems comedic but gradually turns to darkness. The Roth protagonists of 30 and 40 years ago, about the same age as Marcus, were primarily concerned with having sex while Marchus is primarily concerned with maintaining a high enough GPA to avoid being drafted and having to fight in the Korean War. If this were a full novel length, it might get five stars. As it is it has a couple of weaknesses: characters tend to speak in perfectly formed paragraph or longer speeches and the Sonny Cottler character does not make much sense except as a plot mechanism.
What girl found a bay “desirable” at Winesburg College? I for one had never heard of such feelings existing among the girls of Winesburg or Newark or anywhere else. (58)
I couldn’t even get my first blowjob without wondering while I was getting it what had gone wrong to allow me to get it. Why wasn’t that good enough for everybody? (91)
Work -- certain people yearn for work, any work, harsh or unsavory as it may be, to drain the harshness from their lives and drive from their minds the killing thoughts. (165)
… the incomprehensible way one’s most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result. (231)
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Midnight’s Children
Author: Salman Rushdie 1980 533 pp
My rating: 4*
Started September 30 2008, Finished October 12 2008.
Serious, rich and challenging literature of the highest of aspirations, which a reader can enjoy without fully comprehending though a study guide and/or multiple readings would undoubtedly deepen ones enjoyment, understanding and satisfaction. Midnight’s Children scores top marks for authorial vision, ambition and sense of mission. So why don’t I give it five stars? In short readability -- most importantly, the plot does not generate a lot of momentum, a shortcoming that is not helped by the profusion of Indian, Hindu and Muslim names (Wikipedia lists 41 major characters) and terms which, however necessary to the tale being told, are completely unfamiliar to the western reader and thus tend to break reading concentration and flow on a regular basis; for example, while writing this, I randomly turned to page 151 and noted the following names, most of which are not present elsewhere in the book: Zohra, Narlikar, Warden Road, Mahalaxmi Temple, Willingdon Club, Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium, Bano Dev the Invincible Woman, Dara Singh, Haji Ali, Vellard, Worli, Mahim, Salsette, Maunga, Colaba and Mazagaon.
The novel, essentially the life story of its narrator, Saleem Sinai, is a parable of the partition birth of India and Pakistan and the subsequent first thirty years of those countries. Saleem was born exactly at midnight on 15 August 1947, making his own growth symbolic of India’s. He comes to discover that he and the other 1001 Indian children born during that hour each have a unique superhuman property and that the closer to midnight one was born, the more potent the power. Saleem’s power is telepathy, the ability to enter other people’s minds and know their thoughts and feelings. The other of the midnight children born at that first instant and thus possessing a comparable power is Saleem’s nemesis, the ominous Shiva whose power, as in Hindu myth, is destruction. Saleem’s family is Muslim, but chooses not relocate to Pakistan after the partition, although eventually circumstances force them to move there during Saleem’s teenage years. For Saleem, India past, present and future, is a country brimming with life and possibility while Pakistan is a still-born trouble spot dominated by a “we are the state” military, “ … a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case; and maybe this was the difference between my Indian childhood and Pakistani adolescence -- that in the first I was beset by an infinity of alternative realities, while in the second I was adrift, disorientated, amid an equally infinite number of falsenesses, unrealities and lies.” (373)
The book is a pillar of the magic realism style, along with such postwar classics as 100 Years of Solitude and The Tin Drum. From what I’ve read of India, life there is fairly surreal in the first place, so a more realistic depiction may have served the author better, at least with the western reader, by grounding it to a more plausible reality. The lack of believable human continuity from one chapter to the next prevented me from becoming fully engrossed in the work -- since Saleem is much more a symbol than a an attempt to depict a relatable person, it is hard to really connect with him.
Near the end, the author provides a critique of his own work: “The process of revision should be constant and endless; don’t think I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.” (530) He then enumerates plot points, characters and scenes which do not sit quite right with him.
Saleem ends up as a pickler in a chutney factory, the preserving of scents and tastes as a metaphor for history. In fact, to Saleem, each chapter in the book represents a jar of pickles. And this reader was puzzled by the transcendently moving final two pages, are they Saleem’s post-mortem dream and an attempt to see the future?
What does Saleem’s cracking symbolize?
Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence. (14)
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems -- but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. (189)
Author: Salman Rushdie 1980 533 pp
My rating: 4*
Started September 30 2008, Finished October 12 2008.
Serious, rich and challenging literature of the highest of aspirations, which a reader can enjoy without fully comprehending though a study guide and/or multiple readings would undoubtedly deepen ones enjoyment, understanding and satisfaction. Midnight’s Children scores top marks for authorial vision, ambition and sense of mission. So why don’t I give it five stars? In short readability -- most importantly, the plot does not generate a lot of momentum, a shortcoming that is not helped by the profusion of Indian, Hindu and Muslim names (Wikipedia lists 41 major characters) and terms which, however necessary to the tale being told, are completely unfamiliar to the western reader and thus tend to break reading concentration and flow on a regular basis; for example, while writing this, I randomly turned to page 151 and noted the following names, most of which are not present elsewhere in the book: Zohra, Narlikar, Warden Road, Mahalaxmi Temple, Willingdon Club, Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium, Bano Dev the Invincible Woman, Dara Singh, Haji Ali, Vellard, Worli, Mahim, Salsette, Maunga, Colaba and Mazagaon.
The novel, essentially the life story of its narrator, Saleem Sinai, is a parable of the partition birth of India and Pakistan and the subsequent first thirty years of those countries. Saleem was born exactly at midnight on 15 August 1947, making his own growth symbolic of India’s. He comes to discover that he and the other 1001 Indian children born during that hour each have a unique superhuman property and that the closer to midnight one was born, the more potent the power. Saleem’s power is telepathy, the ability to enter other people’s minds and know their thoughts and feelings. The other of the midnight children born at that first instant and thus possessing a comparable power is Saleem’s nemesis, the ominous Shiva whose power, as in Hindu myth, is destruction. Saleem’s family is Muslim, but chooses not relocate to Pakistan after the partition, although eventually circumstances force them to move there during Saleem’s teenage years. For Saleem, India past, present and future, is a country brimming with life and possibility while Pakistan is a still-born trouble spot dominated by a “we are the state” military, “ … a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case; and maybe this was the difference between my Indian childhood and Pakistani adolescence -- that in the first I was beset by an infinity of alternative realities, while in the second I was adrift, disorientated, amid an equally infinite number of falsenesses, unrealities and lies.” (373)
The book is a pillar of the magic realism style, along with such postwar classics as 100 Years of Solitude and The Tin Drum. From what I’ve read of India, life there is fairly surreal in the first place, so a more realistic depiction may have served the author better, at least with the western reader, by grounding it to a more plausible reality. The lack of believable human continuity from one chapter to the next prevented me from becoming fully engrossed in the work -- since Saleem is much more a symbol than a an attempt to depict a relatable person, it is hard to really connect with him.
Near the end, the author provides a critique of his own work: “The process of revision should be constant and endless; don’t think I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.” (530) He then enumerates plot points, characters and scenes which do not sit quite right with him.
Saleem ends up as a pickler in a chutney factory, the preserving of scents and tastes as a metaphor for history. In fact, to Saleem, each chapter in the book represents a jar of pickles. And this reader was puzzled by the transcendently moving final two pages, are they Saleem’s post-mortem dream and an attempt to see the future?
What does Saleem’s cracking symbolize?
Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence. (14)
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems -- but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. (189)
Exit Music
Exit Music
Author: Ian Rankin 2007 421 pp
My rating: 2.5*
Started September 25 2008, Finished September 30 2008.
This novel, the last in a series of about 20 (none of the others of which I’ve read), features the police inspector John Rebus of Edinburgh ,struck me as a Scottish version of the Arkady Renko books and my ho-hum reaction to this book made me question my attachment to that other series.
This book featured, as does the Renko series, a world weary protagonist/anti-hero at odds with his bosses but with a preternatural aptitude for and visceral commitment to solving unusual murders. As with Renko books, this one spends some time detailing the political and economic backdrop of the place and time (Scotland in the mid 2000’s, a time of rising nationalist/separatist impulses). Perhaps as with the Renko books, much of the pleasure of new volume comes from allusions to those which preceded it and if so, I missed out starting on the final edition. That said, I didn’t find the central mysteries particularly compelling, the resolution of one being somewhat arbitrary and unengaging and the other quite obvious.
For a while now, he’d know the truth -- that it wasn’t so much the underworld you had to fear as the overworld. (208)
Author: Ian Rankin 2007 421 pp
My rating: 2.5*
Started September 25 2008, Finished September 30 2008.
This novel, the last in a series of about 20 (none of the others of which I’ve read), features the police inspector John Rebus of Edinburgh ,struck me as a Scottish version of the Arkady Renko books and my ho-hum reaction to this book made me question my attachment to that other series.
This book featured, as does the Renko series, a world weary protagonist/anti-hero at odds with his bosses but with a preternatural aptitude for and visceral commitment to solving unusual murders. As with Renko books, this one spends some time detailing the political and economic backdrop of the place and time (Scotland in the mid 2000’s, a time of rising nationalist/separatist impulses). Perhaps as with the Renko books, much of the pleasure of new volume comes from allusions to those which preceded it and if so, I missed out starting on the final edition. That said, I didn’t find the central mysteries particularly compelling, the resolution of one being somewhat arbitrary and unengaging and the other quite obvious.
For a while now, he’d know the truth -- that it wasn’t so much the underworld you had to fear as the overworld. (208)
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