Notes on David Lodge's Thinks...

In a novel of ideas, David Lodge explores the literary implications when talking about the notion of Self in relation to consciousness - or the fundamental and inostensible quality that differentiates the homo sapien from other living entities. In Thinks... the theme and dialogue unfolds as a polemic debate between a narrative, literary approach, represented by writer-in-residence, Helen Reed and a scientific one represented by notorious womanizer and Professor and Director of Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive Science, Ralph Messenger.

The text is an intelligent exploration of narratives, which is apt, given that the central motif of Thinks... is the idea of the self and the different ways to access it. Written in a first-person, stream-of-consciousness style are Messenger's verbal narrations into a recorder, first, and later a voice-detection software. No doubt his ambitious techy gadgets are a direct reflection of his high opinion of science. His entries are associative, disorganized and circulatory in nature, and he rambles mostly about sex and women. Interestingly, Messenger steers easily from lewd and personal observations (which are quite humourous) to high-brow subjects with dense vocabulary and jargon.

Helen Reed's thoughts are recorded in a traditional diary-entry format. Her neat, concise, coherent style questions Messenger's mess. She is much less associative than thematic, and behind her control over her words one senses a chaotic turbulence of emotions - a result of her husband's recent death. Reed is more concerned with recording events than any real analysis of the people she meets. Sometimes, we catch an elaboration of an episode fleetingly mentioned in Ralph's recording, and vice versa. The journal entries are playful and illuminating in this way, often playing ball with the reader.

The many polemic debates about the issue of Self center around conversations between Ralph and Helen. For Helen, the Self is unrepeatable, inherent and intrinsic; it is an almost mystical element that is tied to the idea of the soul. Ralph's rejection of these terms is unsurprising. The mystery is reduced to a network of neurons reacting with chemicals, brain activity that can be replicated in a robot, who can be taught to feel, think, cry, experience grief, etc. Textually, the two opinions cross paths with a clever twist. Reed uses conversations with Ralph as creative writing exercises for her students. Thus, a scientific, jargon-laden academic paper on 'What Is It Like To Be A Bat?' transforms into a series of witty first-person accounts of bats. As though to add insult to injury, they are written in imitation of famous authors (Rushdie, Welsh, Amis, Beckett).

For a small window, linguistics lecturer Dr. Robyn Penrose, protagonist of Lodge's Nice Work, makes a guest appearance at as a guest lecturer. Reed comments about Penrose in her diary, "...found her much more sympathetic than I expected. I don't think this was because she had read some of my novels and spoke intelligently about them. She has a daughter aged four whose father doesn't seem to be in the picture and is much preoccupied with the logistic problems of being a single parent and the head of Communictions and Cultural Studies at Walsall". So here the problem of "I wonder what happened to Robyn Penrose..." is solved, once and for all. The level of self-consciousness in the text, I suppose, is not a coincidence, given the subject matter. But it certainly enriches the reading experience.

It is in voyeuristic ways like these that the text explores the processes of consciousness and the self. Spontaneous and shifting, it occasionally recedes into a memory, which in turn elicits further recounts of the past. In a sense, Messenger's stream-of-consciousness entries could be said to be a more accurate depiction of the natural thought process; they are uncensored and uninhibited, unlike Helen's control over her form and subject. At the same time, it is unfair to punish Helen simply because her recordings are not as chaotic as Messenger's. Is it not presumption when we legitimize one method of identification over another? The self as chaotic, uncensored, unorganized is guilty of being classified as a stereotype which makes it an inaccurate representation. Thinks..., I think, can be considered a metaconscious text. This is how title of the novel is important. It alludes to the thinking bubbles floating over characters in comics. Neither character can know with any certainty what the other is thinking but the reader sees all and knows all. It is a smart text that uses its own subject matter as art. An exploration of the exploration of consciousness? Messenger and Reed explore their own minds, we explore theirs. Trust Lodge to come up with something like that.

Tolkien's The Hobbit: Story of a Fairytale

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is often overlooked in the light of his mammoth achievement, Lord of The Rings. The later may be more epic in its approach but it would be unfair to deny the small but magnificent achievement of The Hobbit its right place in fantasy literature. The return of Bilbo Baggins from his journey to the Lonely Mountains marks the conclusion of a little person's adventure. Yet only when seen in a historical chronology does it gather real significance. The accidental discovery of the Ring in Gollum's cave occurs as early in the text as its fifth chapter, putting the Baggins name on the trajectory of revolutionary events and inspires the creation of possibility of a new world.

On to the text itself: the story has the quality of a quaint fairytale more than that of a legend or an epic. Instrumental to this effect is the use of language. Language in The Hobbit is lighter and more buoyant than its sequel in which one assumes Tolkien could afford the luxury to contemplate on natural geography and sombre subjects. Here, perhaps due to the comparative smallness of events - though not inconsequential - Tolkien's treatment of his subject matter is sprightly and humorous, giving the story an air of an adventurous fairytale. The fate of the world is not contingent upon Bilbo and the dwarves, although they do temporarily defeat evil in the finale. The company that set out from Bag End had wealth in their mind, treasures of precious jewels and gold and mithril. A fairytale would not do to talk about catastrophes such as the end of the world or the ultimate defeat of evil through a slow and torturous path to Mordor. The Hobbit reflects optimism and lacks an inner darkness and grimness that is integral to the plot of Lord of the Rings.

How is this optimism manifested? Through humour. The dwarves suffer in the hands of the goblins but their suffering is far from agonizing, and is treated comically: "...[A]nd more than one of the dwarves were already yammering and bleating like anything, when they stumbled into a big cavern". When the dwarves' ponies are eaten by the goblins, the murderous act is described with a passing touch of humour. Thorin and the Great Goblin have time, even, to engage in civil conversation. The villains here are comic trolls and stumbling goblins rather than Orcs, and Sauron is simply a distant "Necromancer". Adventures and events that had the likelihood of putting a permanent stop to their quest are solved by the very stuff fairytales are made of: wit and magic.

Tolkien's characterization of dwarves is not forgiving. They are depicted as money-hoarding, ungrateful, loud, foolish and greedy people (if not for Gimli, I would've taken an instant dislike towards them). "...dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much". They set out to recover treasures stolen from their families, now hidden in the Lonely Mountains, and guarded by one terrorizing and dangerous Smaug. Occasionally they land into trouble with elves, goblins and a host of carnivorous spides, and who else but Bilbo Baggins, who was employed in their service only as a burglar, fishes them out. When the dwarves finally reach the goal of their quest, again it is Bilbo who is sent to the task of exploring the dark cave and has to parley with a dragon who is not even his enemy!

Yet, it is through such encounters that the titular hobbit evolves from timid and hesitant to the brave leader - and occasional saviour - of the group. Bilbo defeats the many masks of death and battles with its manifestations to emerge alive though not unchanged. Therein lies the structural importance of the text's subtitle. Between 'there' and 'back again' is a world of change, a character's growth and transformation; a three-foot tall Bilbo Baggins' heroic adventure that has altered the course of Middle Earth's history.

And even if Bilbo is not tempted by Smaug's treasure under the mountain, although it is he who has recovered the stolen gold, it does not mean that he remains untempted by power and wealth. Perhaps it is poetic irony that while Bilbo gives away the Arkenstone jewel in The Hobbit, we learn in its sequel of the devastating effects that a simple ring has on him. It seems what was unnamed and unknown had a more malignant and poisonous ramification on the little hobbit than all the treasures had on the dwarves.

Passion for perversion: Sasayaki / Moonlight Whispers (1999)

My first impression of Akihiko Shiota's Moonlight Whispers was that it was going to be a sweet, coming-of-age love story between two high school friends. (But of course, I wouldn't take the time to write this if it were simply that.) Their romance quickly turns sour once the female lead, Satsuki, played by Tsugami, opens a drawer in Hidaka's (Kenji Mizuhashi) room to discover it filled with personal paraphernalia belonging to herself: soiled underwear, discarded tissue paper, socks and a tape recording of her taking a piss. Shocked, she calls him a 'hentai' (i.e. pervert) and calls it quits.


We quickly realize that timid Hidaka is happier loving her from afar, although he is still far from happy and repeatedly confuses love, worship and suffering. At one point, he quietly confesses to her, "I am your dog" - and Satsuki takes up the challenge of being his master. Thus begins an intensily sadomasochistic and erotic relationship between the two exlovers. Hidaka is motivated the pleasure he derives from simply being near her while Satsuki is spurned on by her shock at discovering his true nature.

She begins subjecting him to intense emotional and physical torture, including kicking his genitals repeatedly, forcing him to watch her making love to another man and lick her dirty feet and sweat, and crushing his fingers under her heeled shoes. She finally makes a test of his love with his life. Satsuki realizes that she enjoys the power she has over his psyche and behaviour even if it means exercising that power to the point of hurting everyone around her. As much as Satsuki brands Hidaka a pervert, she, too, is one insofar as we consider her unablility to stop her participation in his perversity. In fact, she propels it to greater heights by giving him mini exercises in sadomasochism and in doing so encourages his idolatry for her.

On the whole, the film is mostly quiet. Kenji Mizuhashi and Tsugami deliver stunning performances but manage to do this, somehow, without raising their voices. The surface is hushed and never betrays the deep intensity of emotions that lies frothing just beyond the periphery of dialogue. The final scene is a testimony to the ambiguity of tension. As she sits on an open field, Hidaka limps over in crutches and a broken leg to deliver her requested can of ginger ale (and she flippantly rejects it for the second time). Touching, poignant and deeply aware of the many contradictions that riddle the human condition, these are the films cinema is made for.

Naked Lunch (1991)

"Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to".

A few days ago, I landed a copy of The Criterion Collection edition of David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. I've been an admirer of the director since his work on eXistenZ and The Fly. He is my other Terry Gilliam. Great concepts, great execution and lots of visual flair. As for William Burroughs, I've tried (unsuccessfully) many times to get a copy of The Naked Lunch. For four years, I looked and looked. The library of the university I used to go to has a most impressive collection of fiction. The book is listed in the library catalogue but for some reason, it has mysteriously disappeared from the shelves. I did, however, find Junky, and ever since developed an appreciation for drug-themed literature.

Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (1991) is a metaphoric comment on the mysterious writing experience. William Lee (Peter Weller) is an ex-junkie who has come clean and found his profession as a bug exterminator. That is, only until he sees his wife, Joan (Judy Davis), shooting up a syringe full of bug powder or pyrethrum. "A Kafka high", she tells him, "You feel like a bug". It is safe to say that after this scene, only the third in the film, nothing on screen and in Cronenberg's world can be considered as happening in "reality" any longer. The disjuncture is faintly obvious at first. At the police station, for example, where Bill is brought after being arrested for possession of narcotics, we meet the first product of his imagination. It is a gigantic talking bug with a pouty pink anus for a mouth and the impossibility of its existence allows us to dismiss it as a hallucination.

But is it? Reality rapidly spirals out of control once the Interzone, Inc. conspiracy is unveiled. Bill is convinced that his wife is an agent sent to kill him and murders her in a William Tell routine (i.e, a whisky glass on her head, a pistol in his hand, shot fired, glass unbroken). Due to overwhelming guilt, he falls back into his old habit and into an arabesque world from which he emerges only once, when his friends discover him wondering in the streets with a pillowcase full of a candy shop of drugs.

I mentioned earlier that this is a film involved with the writing experience. In this one moment of semi-sobriety, Bill is read a few lines of a novel he has apparently been writing in his apartment throughout his drug-induced hallucinations. It is significant that Bill fails to recognize the words as his own. This raises some important questions about the issue of ownership in relation to content. In his case, writing under the influence made him forget what he was doing, his writing was not a conscious act even though it has the clarity and linearity of a conscious act. Who owns it? Bill, of course, disclaims ownership of this New Jersey story. His brain is fried and his wires are reconfigured into Interzonal laws.

On one hand is a beautiful piece of writing and on the other, the weak, addicted mind that produced it. The dichotomy between the two is such a sublime comment on literature and their authors. Writing is assumed to be a noble profession because it is judged by its output (Ulysses, Homer, The Divine Comedy). Literature is instrumental in creating and recording culture and history. It is assumed that the mind that writes it, that gives birth to it, is equally as noble and refined. Yet Cronenberg's adaptation shows us another truth: that it is capable of living in and thinking of the greatest filth as well, that it can be a polluted gutter teeming with all variety of insects.

The bug references are not only a symbol of mental decay and degredation, they are also one of the many elements in the film that are a tribute to Kafka. After shooting a load of insecticide into her breast, Joan tells her husband that it's "a Kafka high. You feel like a bug", a clear reference to The Metamorphosis where Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a gigantic insect. There are a plentitude of Kafkaesque sequences as well. Bill is arrested for a crime but when he escapes the prison, no one makes any inquiries into his disappearance. Moreover, we are never told exactly why he was arrested and there are no official proceedings. Additionally, if we accept his murder of Joan as a real event, which it likely was because there was a witness, and not another product of his hallucinatory voyages into the unknown recesses of his mind, then the fact that we do not see any lawful consequences is extremely bizzare. This is the complete opposite of Kafka's approach although it has a similar disconcerting effect on the audience/reader. Kafka's trick is to produce dire consequences but he always remains elusive on the cause. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is transformed into a bug but we never know why. In The Trial, Josef K. is hunted and killed for an unexplained crime that he did not commit. In The Castle, the main protagonist never reaches the castle and dies trying to manoeuver through bureaucratic labyrinths. In Cronenberg's universe, a law-transgressive crime has been committed but it has no lawful consequence. We know Bill has not been caught because the Interzone still exists, its story is ongoing.

The film is packed within three bubbles. In the inner bubble are the pyrethrum-inspired visions of giant centipedes and bugs, squirting typewriters, doppelgangers, homosexuals, uninhibited sexual activity, a conspiracy about an illegal drug market and Bill's tangled involvement in this outlandish, alien world. The middle bubble is more subtle, characterized by the sort of reality one observes of in the first five scenes. Of this world, of New York City but with pink elephants and flying pigs. In the outermost layer is a world that runs on a complete breakdown of the laws of cause and effect. Even outside the drug experience, Cronenberg's world spins on some disconcerting, disorienting point of reference which is always unrecognizable, unseeable.

Currently the deep blue skies soar above me and the winter weather chills my bones, local cuisines vary at a rate of about 5 times a month, once in a while my back hurts because my position is right-angled in a back corner of a car that has achieved a mileage of at least 4000km; currently I have been trying to dodge near-fatal accidents that, mostly, appear to have been directly related to the lack of knowledge about local road rules and signs and, in what is starting to become a large handicap, speaking only English. Nevertheless, the general color of things and that peculiar shade of air manage to be different in almost every country and community so that a brick building in Rotterdam and a brick building in Italy look entirely, worldly different from each other. As such, whenever I predict that my eyes shall tire soon, there will be at least a few days of recuperation, rest and privacy, then, finally, I will not be tempted to roam the area in ever-expanding circles that would gradually lead me out, camera in hand, further and further away from the accommodation, and at such an opportune and blessed moment, I will sit and attempt the tedious task of sorting through mail. And after that, if there is some time, compose a short note on all literary exploits I have so far had.

And so - In Greece, I discovered Mick Jackson in a beautiful wooden home walled with rows and rows of science fiction books, bought mostly at sales and second-hand shops and filled with the long, aged aura of history. In a Zurich squat, I found in a toilet on the third floor, above the soup kitchen, a five-page zine in which was an exposition written by a graphic designer sick of bureaucracy and eager to begin a project that avoids, for once, the itchy tape of rules and law and relies, instead, on initiative and trust. (It worked.)  In Bulgaria, I finally found De Profundis by Oscar Wilde, complete with an introduction; I no longer need to stare at a computer screen if and when I am in the mood for a most bitter, reproachful and yet elegant letter. My delight exceeded me because it was a text that I had always wanted to read and own in a book and to celebrate, we went to the Falafel King. In Belluno, in a bed-and-breakfast tucked away on one of the many rolling green hills of northern Italy, I found a bookshelf in the room under the window, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. In Belgium, I was introduced for the first time to one of the most enigmatic figures in history I have ever come across - Athanasus Kircher. In Vienna, I scoured the shops in the streets surrounding a university, got lost and took the wrong turn enough times to allow the sun to set so that when I finally found a bookshop, I was happy to buy even a text printed for students by the university press. City of Glass by Paul Auster, a small red book that fit easily into whatever little space I had on my backpack, was my happy companion in train rides across Holland and Germany (whenever I was not sleeping or admiring the view with an envious eye). Right now, in Czech, I have discovered a wonderful gem - The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl. I am only at the third chapter but I need to race back and start reading it!

Re-reading "Wuthering Heights"

A week or so ago, I sickened of purchasing new books long enough for me to pick up Wuthering Heights again, after two years of having first read it. As the first time, I was blown away by Emily Bronte's lyrical style and her exquisite eye for detail. The whispering, mourning moors beyond the Heights, the fiercely defiant Joseph, who makes for such an odd servant, and the destructive and consuming love between a savage Heathcliff and a selfish Catherine - yes, they all blew me away in equal proportions. Since I was reading it for a class in Romantic Literature, I had little leisure to pursue my own meandering thoughts. (Which reminds me how the phrase "unreliable narrator", in my four years' worth of lit tutorials, came up more times than I cared to count (and with almost the same frequency as "postmodernism"). It seems to be an obsession with undergraduates to keep pointing out that narrators are unreliable (and how almost everything can be explained away because it is postmodern). Unfortunately, few showed how and why.)

English novels of the 18th and 19th century had a tendency to contain frame narratives. Frankenstein is a popular example; each of its multiple narratives delving deeper and deeper into the monster's story. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine are other examples. The purpose of a story-within-a-story technique is to offer multiple perspectives on an event, opening up the possibility of multiple meanings within and without the scope of a text. It is a conscious effort to call attention to the fact that what is being told is a story, and this self-consciousness raises questions about how narratives tell themselves. One of the interesting things I found about using the frame conceit is that while it distances the reader from the space, time and locale of the story, it inevitably draws him deeper into the narrator's psyche. In other words, a certain sense of extreme subjectivity is heightened and an odd tango between distance and nearness is negotiated. In the case of Wuthering Heights, such a dramatic degree of subjectivity is achieved that meaning-making is problematized. More on this later.

The novel begins with Lockwood's introduction to the Heights but it is Ellen (Nelly) Dean's narrative that takes up a large chunk of the text. Her voice is that of the novel's and we, the readers, are in Lockwood's position, locked into the role of listeners. Just as Lockwood is paralysed as Nelly's tale unfolds, asking no questions and making no interruptions - notice it is always she who signals the end of an episode, while he grudgingly obliges - so we, the readers, are seated silently listening.

Nelly Dean's narrative takes on the quality of the extremely subjective: her defends and excuses are woven into the fabric of her narrative. Lockwood does not question it since it is the only account he has. The reader, fortunately less passive than Lockwood, has a duty to churn through this mismash of events/opinions/justifications/prejudices, etc and filter out as close a representation of events-as-they-occured. Of course, we remember Saleem Sinai saying memory has its own truth and realize that any attempt to uncover some sort of objective reality quite impossible. Bronte, it seems, comments on the impossibility of accurate representation, much less on one true representation.

Ellen's power over the narrative as well as the mute Lockwood-as-reader places her in an extremely advantageous and powerful position and I think she is aware of this. Many times in the text, her voice rises with indignation at the accusations levelled against her, yet one gets the sense that she cannot disguise the pleasure in her voice at being the only person coherent and "objective" enough to pass on the tale. I think she is also pleased at being given the opportunity to validate her actions that had gotten her into trouble with Edgar Linton just before Catherine's second illness; plus it gives her a reason to go on a power trip by affording her a role and purpose greater than that of mere maid - she is now the beholder and dispenser of knowledge.

In contrast to Ellen's masculinity is a feminized Mr. Lockwood. First overcome by the daunting and dramatic appearance of Wuthering Heights, he is treated with less cordiality than expected from his host; he is scolded and dismissed by Heathcliff's servant, Joseph, then attacked by a pack of dogs, and, to cap it off, is afflicted for a few weeks by an illness. When we observe his apparent inability to comprehend the strange set of rules governing Wuthering Heights, he is reduced to a comical position. His earnest attempts to observe social decorum are utter failures in a house where such values are meaningless. This misplaced propriety gives us a sense of Lockwood-as-female at his first ball in proper society, introduced to gentry and stumbling quite successfully all over the place. Pitiful, yes but funny also.

In subtle ways, Nelly Dean admits to being an untrustworthy servant to her master and mistress, which foreshadows her incredible unreliability as a narrator too. "I remembered Mr. Edgar's stern rebuke of my carrying tales; and I tried to smooth away all disquietude on the subject, by affirming, with frequent iteration, that that betrayal of trust, if it merited so harsh an appellation, should be the last." A bit of context is necessary: the incident in question here is regarding Heathcliff's visit to Thrushcross Grange and the fight it provoked between Linton and Heathcliff. Ellen had a significant role to play in the confrontation by "carrying tales" to Linton, although she wasn't exactly lying but she wasn't minding her business either. She then failed to inform Linton of Catherine's three-day fast/starvation because she felt Mrs. Linton was putting on airs (there is sufficient evidence to indicate this but let us not forget she also dies a short while later), but Nelly's self-granted independence of action maximized the potential disaster the situation had to offer. On day three, when she half-truthfully tells Catherine that Mr. Edgar did not inquire about her absence about the house because he had been reading his books all along, she precipitates an illness that sends Catherine Linton to her grave. Nelly's role and actions, at this point, takes on shades of cunning and manipulation.

Although it is a rather unkind reading, I think there is a case to be made of Ellen Dean's many attempts to usurp power that is otherwise denied to her in the position of maid. These, of course, are well-justified and covered up in her narrative to Lockwood; she appears only as one most concerned of everyone else's wellfare. Yet it is not entirely fair to say Nelly is only a power-hungry, devious, Machiavellian old maid although that would fall very nicely under a Gothic reading. It could entirely be possible that she unconsciously imbibes these traits under the guise of a kind, well-meaning caretaker. She has, after all, seen to the care of Heathcliff, Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw since their birth, as well as their children. More than once, she helped Heathcliff escape from Hindley's murderous and envious grasp. Moreover, that Catherine Earnshaw is a selfish woman was mentioned by Heathcliff, too, which makes Nelly's reaction to her mistress's fast not unusual. And if we can believe her on these accounts, we can also believe that her narrative is an intensely subjective one, colored by her own insecurities and neuroses.

Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985)

The hiatus was not completely unwarranted; it is (fingers crossed) my last semester at university and loose ends galore. Thankfully, the mad rush for essay deadlines, short assignments and presentations officially saw its end a little over a few hours ago. Fueled by a can of well deserved beer, I wax lyrical about a brilliant film I've just only seen: Brazil.

When asked 'What is Brazil?', Tom Stoppard, one of its writers, said it was about "the myth of the free man in an unfree society". Terry Gilliam said it was more than anything about "the impossibility of escaping from reality". Deeply allegorical and brilliantly told, Brazil (1985) is a story about a nightmarish, dystopian past/present/(imagined) "future" where Franz Kafka's The Trial meets David Lynch's Dune (1984) or, more famously, George Orwell's 1984 meets A Clockwork Orange. At the crux of the matter is a man, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), whose adventures in an unknown place and an unknown time ("Somewhere in the 20th Century", is all we are told) reveal the workings of a society unnaturally dependent on redundant technology and bureaucratic red tapes and headed by an absurd government that describes a 13-year-old campaign against terrorism as a "sporting game" and flippantly dismisses terrorist bombings as "bad sportsmanship". Nightmarish yet impressive images - think Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (a good write-up about dystopian cities in film here), only all the dirt and grime in Scott's urban city is hidden underneath a clean, polished surface in Gilliam's; a verisimilitude a truth and the world of filth it hides.

The perfect symmetry is part of why this movie works so well: the film opens with the subtitle "Somewhere in the 20th Century" and ends with "Someday soon...". Within this arched perimeter, confusion emerges. For several reasons, it becomes impossible to differentiate between Brazil-location and Brazil-time, leaving us with little or no frame of reference. Of course, we know it is somewhere in the 20th century, but when exactly? There seems to be a conflation of past and "future". The architectural look of the film is simultaneously 80's noir and futuristic mixed with the desperation for bigger-and-better associated with an insecure past. Technology is messy, infantile and ineffective but also wildly extravagant, even dramatic. Massive buildings, commanding architecture and long, imposing corridors house malfunctioning lifts and tiny cubicles separated by thin walls (the Ministry of Information Retrieval). Architecture evokes neither past nor present. Because the world looks as though the entire 20th century were condensed into a single, continuous moment, a new sort of aesthetics is created by the superimposition of one atop the other making it simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. (As a side note, I think a Freudian reading with regards to his ideas in 'The Uncanny' might make an interesting analysis of Gilliam's surreal artistic vision in this film.)

Technology in Brazil doesn't appear to move in a logical forward-looking direction; its application is haphazard but that hardly bothers anyone. And even if they realize it, no one says anything. The microcosmic world of the film holds a mirror up to the macrocosm of thiz world - incidentally, the 'real' reality - and reminds us of its inherent existential crisis, as if saying, "Now, so what?" Now that we've got bazookas and batteries and bombs that go BOOM, which are some indications of progress - what's next? Brazil's answer to this is 'more'. Pessimistic modernity does not stop to reflect and ruminate upon its progress or think of its end. Like Sisyphus, we push that rock of an idea up the hill, down, and back up again. In an effort to keep moving, concepts like 'progression', 'regression', 'restrategize' or 'Plan B' lose meaning. The end is no longer a point in the horizon: the purpose, it seems, is to keep chugging on - it is useless to think whether one is heading forward or backward or for what purpose as long as there is constant movement towards an idea of progress, and, by extension, an idea of a "future". Perhaps it is because of this self-reflexive quality that in the end, due to the the indistinguishable past-future-present conflation, that "Somewhere" becomes "Everywhere" and "Someday soon" becomes "never". An ominous warning? Gilliam did say Brazil was his "message in a bottle" to America.

Occupying a position irreconcilable with the philosophy of corporate fascism, Sam Lowry's dreams take him far above and away from endless paper trails into the clouds. Totalitarianism, terrorists and death on one hand, fantasy, love and hope on the other. I thought it pertinent that Gilliam chose to employ elements of fantasy in Lowry's dream sequences to forward the film's inescapable critique of modernity. It is significant and ironic in equal parts given that it is within the innerspace of fantasy that places very opposite from reality can be reached and yet, with regard to Brazil, it is also within the realm of fantasy that fantasy is thwarted and reality (or modernity) re-exerted.

Sam Lowry is a deeply unhappy man who escapes from his garish reality into a world of flight where he is a winged hero flying towards a blond haired angelic heroine. His dreams are simple wish fulfillments, directly reflecting his desire to break free from the tiresome and tedious world he comes from. His dreams are in open, free environments but soon enough become virtually indistinguishable from his waking reality where everything is a nightmare. In one scene, a ringing sound in his dream which gradually increases in frequency turns out to be someone's phone call from work informing him that he is late. Reality and fantasy, in Brazil - or at least in Lowry's psychology - feed off of each other, mutually informing and influencing the other's "reality". The system - that is, the bureaucracy - extends its omnipresence into every aspect of life. Gilliam's mise-en-scene is quite brilliant at communicating volumes of information within a single frame: next to the telephone is an oversized, highly complicated alarm clock with wires running this way and that, looking quite important and large - incidentally, it failed to work.

To escape reality and the grinding down of oppressive, official forces taking the form of evil creatures such as the Steel Samurai (fully comprised of computer parts), Lowry dreamily takes flight from technology into the arms of his lady love. But these flights are, in reality (if you'd pardon the pun), doomed. A condition that Brazil analyzes through architecture - and by extension, technology - as a form of oppressive authority is that of imprisonment and entrapment. The film is saturated with references to this but it is particularly interesting that they infiltrate the realm of fantasy as well. Lowry's dreams are constantly interrupted by manifestations of malevolent, imposing architecture. In one dream, he is cut off from Jill by a cluster of brick monoliths that appear to emerge out of the ground. In another, Jill is trapped in a cage and pulled though a dark city. As soon as Sam remembers his heroic duty, a brick figure rises out of the ground and grabs him around the ankles. If I were to go on a psychoanalytic bend here, I'd think this becomes especially relevant when we remember Sam's character in his waking life is a rather hesitant, nervous sort who wins Jill over much later and only after he is forced to question and prioritize what he values most. That his attempts to assert his self, even his masculinity, are thwarted by that very thing that keeps him from Jill in reality is symbolic not only of an oppressive authority but the innate inability to break the bonds of the mundane and transcend to a loftier, freer existence.

This is the no-escape clause that Gilliam and Stoppard talked about, that maddening march of modernity to nowhere, ending no time soon. It is an existential cry, a chillingly accurate reflection of the absurd modern obsession with technology, an allegorical tale, a nightmare, a truth in genius proportions and a movie I am going to watch again after I fetch the other can of beer sitting in the fridge.

Barton Fink

"I'm a writer, you monsters! I CREATE!"- Barton Fink

What a bizarre film. A hellish hotel and its resident fallen angel, bigshot Hollywood tycoons, bourgeois dreams masked poorly as proletariat sentiments. I cannot decide whether or not I liked Fink's character but that could well be the genius of the acting. Everyone is a caricature of a caricacture of themselves. How do I mean this? Everyone is larger than life, over-the-top, exaggerated: the good-cop-bad-cop routine is collapsed into an only-bad-cop routine; Chet, the hotel bellboy-cum-receptionist, is alarmingly friendly while the old elevator man is alarmingly silent; Fink is earnest and awkward but also pretentious, morally uptight and "does not listen"; Lipnick is a boisterous, bossy movie mogul typically more interested in the classical hollywood narrative (he kisses Fink's feet as a sign of his deep regret for offending him) than any sort of artistic value; Charlie is the madman next door with a conscience - he could've been bad but he turns out good and then becomes very very bad. There is certainly an element of stageishness here, the whole movie moves about like a dreamish nightmare, thick with symbolism, nudging the audience every few minutes about some underhand remark you've got to be quick enough to catch. German nazis and the Dutch ("Heil Hitler", Charlie says before putting a bullet between a cop's eyes; the Coens show how one man's madness can become another's political rally), World War II, artistic integrity and the large, looming discrepancy between Fink's idea of the common man's struggles and the reality of the backstage curtain-puller who'd rather read his newspaper than take audience with highbrow art.

Yup, it certainly is quite brilliant. Moody and dark, it moves at an almost sluggish pace. Scenes, objects and sequences that are at first disconnected eventually take on an evocative form of a larger, looming idea (but what kind of idea is this elusive and shadowy?). Part-fantasy, part-ghoulish, part-satire - I can't believe it took me this long to get around to Barton Fink.

movieing along

50 greatest fictional villains according to the UK Telegraph. So it seems, unsurprisingly, that a good handful of memorable fictional characters are villains. Iago, Patrick Bateman, O'Brien, The Joker, Mr. Hyde, Hannibal Lecter, Milton's Satan - I've had obsessive crushes on the everyone except O'Brien. Also, notice there are no females. Again, unsurprising.

I'm on some kind of crazy movie frenzy. I've finally seen Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights. Norah Jones is not bad an actress; she's awfully photogenic and incredibly cute. Natalie Portman does a great job although she balances on a precarious line between honestly selling her character and becoming a caricature of it. I thought the plot was terribly boring and the only reason I kept though it was because the entire movie was visually stunning.

Also Frank Oz's Death at a Funeral was a bag of laughs. Kris Marshall is one of my favourite faces to see in a British film so no complaints. It's one of those comedies that starts with one small disaster - in this case, a bottle of suspect Valium - and avalanches into a crazy fucking funeral.

The Coen Brothers' Fargo, which was long long overdue but was well worth the wait. They're one of those unbeatable combinations. I haven't seen many movies but I can safely say that they are one of the few people who can take a movie about a bunch of incompetent idiots trying to stage a kidnapping and make it rich with nuances. I love the way it starts with 'Based on a true story' and ends with 'All characters and events are fictional'.

Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone is another visually stunning gothic horror movie. I've got a huge soft spot for directors with an aesthetic eye. But unlike My Blueberry Nights, this one has some great substance and symbolically rich characters/scenes. The movie is set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War; the orphanage becomes a nice microcosm for the horror unfolding in the rest of Spain. del Toro said, also, that Pan's Labyrinth is the "spiritual sequel" to The Devil's Backbone. It's fanatstic, the idea of a sequel in spirit.

I like The Darjeeling Limited mostly because India is one of those places that's so easy to film in. The colors come out great, it's a land of such rich character and almost always ends up getting romanticized in most works of fiction (literary and filmic). To Anderson's credit, he exploited the country, so to speak, very minimally; he had a great script and actors to work with and the location did nothing more than to compliment the movie. Three estranged brothers meet a year after their father's funeral in a train that will take them to the foot of the Himalayas. Very self-consciously, this movie showed exactly what's so wrong and so funny about the West's approach of Eastern spiritualism. The only problem I had was regarding one of the reviews I'd read, which said (and I'm paraphrasing) "Anderson does not engage in Orientalism. Even the waitress in the train speaks in an American accent and smokes a cigarette." This comment kept me up until indecent hours of the morning. In the wake of the world post Edward Said, is it ever possible to accurately represent a culture without necessarily Orientalizing it? Is an Indian speaking in a local accent guilty of exoticizing the culture? Why is Asianness immediately put under the Oriental microscope when it comes out of Hollywood? Very bothersome. But Adrien Brody looked so hot in his pink boxers and 80's sunglasses that I eventually couldn't help but forget about the whole Said jazz.

Oh, and The Man From Earth was such a fucking mind trip! I absolutely have to watch it again. The dialogue starts awfully but eventually works up to great brilliance!

Also, first two seasons of Sex in the City made me feel terribly nauseous, what with the countless tongues down countless throats and massive amounts of sex and tits and ass. But it's great time pass.

Patrick Bateman is one of the most attractive characters I've encountered. I'd be lying through my teeth if I said his psychopath tendencies have nothing to do with it. Despite the fact that if he were a real person he would probably murder me with one of his many ingenious methods of torture (or probably because of that), I still wonder what we'd talk about if we had dinner at a posh Manhattan restaurant. At a good table. Would he include snippets of his psycho-killer desires between ordering entree and dessert? Would I hear him? What would he say about my obviously brand-unconscious clothes, the mismatches, the casual slippers and lack of faux pearl earrings, and the fact that I really don't mind nonvintage champagne? Would it make him want to kill me faster? How would he do it? Am I starting to sound a little obsessive?

Is there a job that pays to read and get excited about buying new books?

Today I bought Junichiro Tanizaki's The Reed Cutter & Captain Shigemoto's Mother. After I'm done with Camus' The Plague (yes, finally) I shall pick it up. Not unless my sister's colleague who is visiting Goa this week comes back with any of the four books (I had to really narrow it down for the sake of courtesy) I've asked him to pick up. We're unsure what the Goa scene is like, whether there are as many bookstores there as there are in Delhi. I'm keeping my fingers, toes and other knottable parts crossed. The list is as follows: Stephen Alter's Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief; Chitrita Banerji's Eating India; Anjum Hasan's Lunatic In My Head; Vikram Chandra's Love & Longing In Bombay.

I kid you not, the anticipation is killing me.

Piers Anthony - Being A Green Mother

I've never liked juggling books because it takes the longest time to finish a single text, especially when you are an an idiosyncratic reader like me who scans well-written sentences over and over again to relish their glorious syntax. At the same time I can't help it, I am overcome with an insuppressible desire to know what the other book contains. There are problems for book jugglers, though. Having to remember where we left off, recapping the chronology of events, and sometimes even flipping back to check which character is which (if you've been on a hiatus long enough to warrant this) completely ruins the continuity and sometimes makes reading difficult to enjoy. It is unavoidable, I suppose. Some books we leave on the shelf after the first chapter and completely forget about them. Some books we find an extraordinary power to complete if it's the last thing we do - but it's not always worth the trouble.

Such as this. The last couple of days, I've been reading Piers Anthony's Being A Green Mother. I've got the whole series on loan from my friend and thought what a great idea it would be to complete another fantasy series after years. That's a great sense of accomplishment right there. But it struck me as odd that the book didn't seem to want to finish. Could it be - supernatural? Even when I was 80 pages from the end, it kept going on and on and on. That's when I realized I was reading at a snail's pace, purely for the sake of finishing it, because it was quite terrible compared to his other novels in the series. This one was pure lackluster - and it wasn't because of the idea, which was good, but rather the way Anthony chose to flesh it out that didn't resound with me.

Being A Green Mother is the story of the human who takes over the office of the Nature. Orb, our Irish protagonist, dances and sings in her search for the most powerful but elusive song, the Llano. She first joins a gypsy carnival group in India, and later travels the world with her band, made up of 3 junkies, one black girl and one succubus, inside a giant flying fish.

Dear Mr. Anthony (I want to ask him),

Where did the genius of On A Pale Horse and Bearing An Hourglass go to? In the former, you deftly tackled the morbidity of death with an admirable clear-headedness. You crafted the mysterious, intelligent, compassionate Thanatos from an irritating, self-destructive Zane. The ideas were crisp and sharp, you gave insightful, sensitive answers to the question of mortality. However, that character development and insight is completely lost in Green Mother: Orb remains the same, hesitating woman with a determined, uncompromising goal: to find the Llano, wherever it is. Her magic grows, no doubt, but she doesn't. Her righteous morality keeps getting into the way when she meets new characters, and she resolves her issues by choosing not confront them. With Bearing An Hourglass, you demonstrated your power over the language - which I fail to see in Green Mother. Orb's personality is strictly limited to dancing the tanana (the provocative gypsy dance meant to incite erotic response - great idea, by the way) or singing on her harp. When reading this, one gets the feeling that you wrote purely for the sake of it. The adjectives got overused after a while; the idea of affecting nature with song - at first interesting - soon lost its novelty. As did the entire book.

Best,
Preet

I wrote a few thoughts last month on another book in Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, which you can read here.

A Child's Garden of Verses

I must have been eleven or twelve, I imagine, when a teacher gifted me with a tiny book hardly the size of my hand. It was an enchanting little thing and I carried it around in the pocket stitched into my school uniform. It was a big pocket and I remember how during recess the girls in school walked around the canteen with their wallets bulging from below the fabric. I stole nuggets of time for nuggets of poetry, skimming through (not without guilt) the longer verses, hoping they’d finish faster. I might not be wrong to suppose that that was when I first cultivated an appreciation for poetry that could capture an entire idea in eight lines or less. A Child’s Garden of Verses BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN- (skip a line) SON, illustrated by Charles Robinson, whose black and white drawings in this collection established his reputation. He went on to contribute work to hundreds of editions, including Alice In Wonderland and The Secret Garden. Every poem, however tender and true, is accompanied by images equally tender and true. They burrowed a secret passage out of the mundane, rigid lessons in school and boring family dinners; I had repeated a few quietly to myself so many times that they were committed to memory. ‘The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings. The world is so full of a number of…’ I dare say some kids thought I was a nut but no one understood, or maybe I couldn’t explain, the magic I carried inside me. I am bigger than you, I think I might’ve said then (but I didn’t for surely that would have invited a host of criticism since I was a fairly large child). So I sank deeper and deeper into myself and into my kingdom of happy thoughts. Eventually I lost it in heaps and piles of rubbish accumulated over the years, gradually forgot about it and gave the memories free rein to recede into the gray area of time and age. Imagine my surprise and delight when today, while clearing drawers and sweeping up a decade of memorabilia, I chanced upon my childhood imaginary world, this wonderful tiny book of escape! Stevenson says it best when he writes, 'But the glory kept shinning and bright in my eyes, / And the stars going round in my head.'

Junichiro Tanizaki - The Key

Junichiro Tanizaki's The Key, published in 1956 and set in post-war Japan, is a frightening story of sexual obsession and compulsion in a twenty-year-old marriage. The husband, who remains nameless throughout the novella, is a middle-aged retired academic who finds himself unable to keep up with his wife's, Ikuko, sexual appetite. A peek into Ikuko's diary shows that she finds her husband increasingly inadequate and clumsy in bed and is often unsatisfied after their love-making. A chap named Kimura, supposedly dating the couple's daughter, soon enters this sexually fraught tableau and complicates the marriage, although the text betrays that this complication was neither unexpected nor unwanted.

Tanizaki's novella is written in the form of diary entries belonging to Ikuko and her husband. New Years' Day marks the first entry on his side and, literally, the beginning of a new chapter for Ikuko's husband.

"This year I intend to begin writing freely about a topic which, in the past, I have hesitated even to mention here. I have always avoided commenting on my sexual relations with Ikuko, for fear that she might surreptitiously read my diary and be offended... I have decided not to worry, but perhaps I really stopped worrying long ago. Secretly, I may have accepted, even hoped, that she was reading it. Then why do I lock the drawer and hide the key? Possibly to satisfy her weakness for spying."

Thus begins an enchanting but devious tale of furtive seduction. Ikuko's husband is often is a high state of unfulfilled arousal. He is still passionately in love with her but, unfortunately for him, lacks the vitality and vigour to demonstrate it. Having no lack of experience with other women, he knows she possesses a natural gift for love-making and mentions pointedly that her physical endowment is equaled by few other women. As much as this excites him, it cripples him too, for his physical stamina is "no match for hers". Ikuko's husband, I imagine, is in an uncomfortable position: he desires his wife, seeks to satisfy and please her but lacks the necessary apparatus to achieve this; the constant awareness of his lack rouses his insecurities. He writes, "If by any chance another man knew of (her natural gift), and knew that I am an unworthy partner, what would happen?"

Through the diary entries, we learn that Toshiko, the couple's daughter, is being courted by a chap by the name of Kimura, although how the courtship is developing is not very clear. Toshiko appears to be uninterested in the young man and refuses to go out alone with him unless accompanied by her mother. Indeed, later on in the novella, it will appear as though Toshiko and her father are closing the distance between Ikuko and Kimura, although what the daughter's motivations are remain ambiguous. Ikuko's husband remarks in his diary, "I wonder what he's after. Which one attracts him? ...Perhaps his real aim is to win Toshiko. Since she seems unenthusiastic, he may be trying to improve his chances by integrating himself with Ikuko..."

One thing that is inescapable is that Ikuko's husband is adamant on inspiring sexual jealousy. From an early stage, he feels jealous of Kimura but admits that he secretly enjoys it. "Such feelings have always given me an erotic stimulus...That night, stimulated by jealousy, I succeeded in satisfying Ikuko. I realize Kimura is becoming indespensible to our sexual life." We find that he feeds his sexual appetite by courting danger in the form of infidelity; his vigour rises to the occasion (no pun intended) only when it is threatened by an external stimulus. For this reason, he implicitly encourages her to incite his suspicion for "the sake of her own happiness."

A strange, illicit love affair develops, prompted by both husband and daughter. Ikuko falls into this easily, too easily, it seems, but it is not difficult to understand why. Already disgusted by her husband, his "waxy skin", his repulsive love-making and "revolting habits", his insistence on poring over every detail of her body and his unnatural attraction to her feet, she writes in her diary as an ending thought, "Are these gross, sticky, nasty caresses what you have to expect from all men?"


But even while Ikuko violently dislikes her husband, she obliges him as much as she can, especially (or conveniently?) in the matter of Kimura. One wonders, despite her "old morality" and old-fashioned Kyoto upbringing, whether she quietly enjoys the two-fold attention. On one hand is a desperate, ageing husband who gets off on the idea of jealousy. On the other is the instigated lust of her daughter's suitor, a young, handsome man who maintains only a paper-thin distance from her when she faints after too much brandy and has to be undressed in his presence; or when, asked by her husband, Kimura develops the naked pictures of Ikuko taken by her husband's camera. Ikuko claims to heed her husband's implicit/explicit promptings in the name of duty ("I was only obeying your father," she tells her daughter. "I do whatever he wants even against my will") yet doubt lingers over the text. Given that both husband and wife are unreliable communicators in that they write in their diaries thinking and knowing that the other reads it, normal laws of morality, modesty and truthfulness stop applying. This surreptitious dialogue between the two destabilizes what we assume are the normal laws of communication: Ikuko knows what her husband wants and is free to indulge herself as long as she does not admit that she reads her husband's diary. Similarly, her husband will encourage her behaviour even when he knows she is being unfaithful as long as he maintains the facade of ignorance. The art of subversion takes precedence over truthfulness in the text. Indeed, Tanizaki, without judging his characters, makes it seem as though it is a more important virtue to uphold than honesty.

Towards the end, Ikuko's husband becomes more and more aware of his single-mindedness. Rightfully, he calls himself "an animal good only for mating", an animal of the night. While his mind teems with sexual fantasies, his brain is "steadily deteriorating". At the same time that his concentrated need for sex and satisfaction takes priority, his body suffers the effects of neglect by responding to his fanatical over-doing, over-action with a paralysis of limbs, which leaves him bed-ridden for a good couple of weeks. I won't spoil the ending but I will say this: it ends on an ambiguous, amoral note that captures the very essence of the ambivalence Tanizaki employs in his language to discuss the sexual tensions in the novella..

I sold my soul

to Nintendo:
On Wednesday evening, I found myself owner of a Nintendo DS Lite. It is red and black and when it gleams in the sun, it looks like it's grinning at me. It is also the first gaming hardware that I've ever owned. Why wait till now? Until a few weeks ago, I held two assumptions about the world of digital games: one, I'm not really a gaming person - Dungeons & Dragons, Counter Strike - remember the Southpark episode, Make Love, Not Warcraft (watch a clip from the award-winning episode) - that was my idea of gaming. Besides, I am really terrible at remembering which button does what, and what to press while scanning the area with a 360 degree camera view. Most of the time my character dies, gets badly wounded or does something illegal before two minutes are up (I wish I were exaggerating). Two, I didn't think games had much to offer with regards to tickling the intellect, that they were mostly mindless shooting, uninteresting graphics and non-engaging stories. That's what I assumed.

VERY VERY WRONG

Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Elite Beat Agents, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - these are responsible for my altered perspective. I am also interested in getting Trauma Center and Hotel Dusk - the latter for the film noir style and the former because it might be the closest thing I'd get to being a doctor and killing people.

Indeed, I stand shamefully corrected. I have learnt that just as there is a book for everyone, there is also a game.

Anyway, bookshopping today: Patrick Suskind's Perfume and Junichiro Tanizaki's The Key. It was only when I was paying ($14) that I realized today's purchases had a theme: cover nudity!

Notes on Tharoor, Huxley and Anthony

And no, the Anthony mentioned above is not the same Anthony whose book I've been reading for the past two months. _Transgressions in Art_ gets a bit tedious after a while; it's one of those books that is necessary to take slow, something like dating a really beautiful woman - you don't want to fuck it up by rushing through the main course.

Anyway, I started on Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel with glee, especially after reading so much about it on lit blogs and other online reviews. Suffice to say I raced through the beginning, laughing my way through, reminded very much of Rushdie's style in _Midnight's Children_, the writer and his audience, the run-on sentences, rhetoric questions, hyperbole, the ever-running thrope of inseparability between country and self, history and self, etc. I thought it was a particularly clever idea to use the Mahabharata in re-writing the history of independent India, to go back to a mythical past in order to re-tell a country's politics: fantasy versus politic, phantasmagoria against realism, past/present and the tragedy and unites them. Even though I cannot claim to have read the epic in its entirety, Tharoor's integration is quite seamless. You really don't need to know the original to read his version. I'm losing steam towards the end though, and while I admit this probably has more to do with juggling several books at once, I cannot deny that Tharoor's version of post-independence is a lot less exciting - fictionally speaking, of course - than the pre-independence period. Needless to say, he speeds up his plot by cleverly injecting poems where he knows, I think he surely does, his narrative is threatening to sedate readers. Overall, it's a sharp text, witty and undoubtedly patriotic and slightly anti-Gandhi - but it's fiction, so it's not like you can point a finger at him and say "But you have a moral responsibility to this text!" Be prepared for an entire barrage of alliterations, though.

A few weeks ago, a good friend introduced me to Piers Anthony, who has turned out to be one of the most readable fantasy writers I've come across. Each book in his 'Incarnations of Immortality' series stands by itself and does not require one to read everything to get an idea of the continuity, unlike a lot of fantasy literature. The basic premise is thus: Death, Fate, Time, Nature, War, Evil (Satan), and Good (God) are made of a group of humans who occupy the bodies of the immortals for a certain time until they have to hand their office over to the next in-charge. Thus, the order of the universe prevails. I've read Bearing An Hourglass and completed With A Tangled Skein last night. On the whole, the latter, which focused on the trials of the three aspects of Fate - Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos - I found to be lacking when compared to Hourglass which felt like it was a greater challenge to write, and hence a greater pleasure to read, due to the complexities I assume were involved in talking about the idea of time and time travel without slipping into heavy scientific jargon. Keeping in mind that I am not a feminist, I think with Tangled Skein, Piers Anthony was attempting to presume too much about the female psychology. There's a scene where a thiry-two year old grandmother strips with her twelve-year-old daughter and grand-daughter: "We're all women, there's nothing to be ashamed of". True, but still a disconcerting image. At one point, the aspect of Atropos was given over to the care of an old black woman, which made Anthony feel, for some reason, that his character should communicate in ghetto talk. For obvious reasons, this made her entire character highly laughable and two-dimensional, especially in the scene where she bursts into a teenager's room to find her with two teenage boys. After shooing them out, Atropos lectures this (presumably) black kid in some strange mix of grandmother-ghetto talk that proceeded to throw off the entire scene for me. Would it have been too much to assume that a black woman was capable of communicating without falling into a stereotype? In trying to make his character more authentic, Anthony misjudged the situation and turned the tables on himself, instead. Moral of the story: white men should never try to talk like anything other than white men. All this aside, Tangled Skein still retains a characteristically readable quality. Actions and events are packed tightly together, forming a constantly interesting, unputdownable narrative. Heck, I'll still recommend it.

And even though I haven't finished it yet, I should admit that I'm finally reading Huxley's A Brave New World. I know someone who read this at twelve. Wow, right? At twelve I was too busy getting through Sidney Sheldon.

India: A Wounded Civilization by V. S. Naipaul - A Response

It is hard for anyone to speak conclusively of India without running into potholes and jams. The only true thing, I think, that can be said about it are the ones involving historical dates and facts (India gained political independence in August 1947, This movie was a box-office hit/flop, etc); anything slightly resembling opinion - however necessary it may be for discourse - can easily escalate into controversial status. This was my experience with Naipaul's essays. I told myself it would be wisdom beyond my years if I chose not to write about A Wounded Civilization (mostly because I don't know enough, nobody knows enough, and sometimes even while similar facts elicit vastly differing opinions, imagine what differing facts, upbringings and influences can do) but this afternoon, some sort of demonic impulse took over that begged a response to Naipaul's response to India. At least I had the good sense to place this disclaimer right here where you can read it. Clearly.



It has been 33 years since the book was published and plenty has changed, but I still had to put down Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization after a while (thirty pages from the end) because it became too much to stomach. While an argument can be made for its "stark honesty" (shouldn't it be stark misunderstanding or stark anti-Hinduism?), I think Naipaul's approach to India's post-Emergency problems are terribly myopic and negative. Granted, he is an excellent writer, which was probably the only thing that kept me reading despite the author's closed observations on Indian culture and society. The entire thing strikes me as a series of laments and wonderfully-worded complaints. 'India will go on', he keeps repeatedly quoting R.K. Narayan in a somewhat sing-song sarcastic manner, which began to grate on my nerves after a while, no thanks to the implication that India will go on partly because their religious influences make Indians simple-minded, self-contained, and blind to their own problems. He uses the analogy of Narayan's fictional town/village, Malgudi, to make a point:

"The small town he has staked out as his fictional territory was, I knew, a creation of art and therefore to some extent artificial, a simplification of reality. But the reality was cruel and overwhelming...To get down to Narayan's world, to perceive the order and continuity he saw in the dereliction and smallness of India, to enter into his ironic acceptance and relish his comedy, was to ignore too much of what could be seen, to shed too much of myself: my sense of history, and even the simplest idea of human possibility." (21)

What I first thought would have been a fair metaphor for the disparity between South Asian literature and India's reality turned out to be a fair metaphor for the disparity between South Asian literature and V.S. Naipaul's personal inability to come to terms with seeing through Narayan's eyes - only I don't think he realizes it. But that is precisely the joy of Narayan's fiction: he created, with his Malgudi, a small village emblematic of his South Indian experience; his characters are sincere and human; they are simple in the way a city-dweller comes upon a village and sees its lack of electricity as simple. According to Naipaul, it appears, to be true in fiction to India, one must not fictionalize India at all; include all the grit, dirt, disorder, mayhem and corruption. India, it seems, has to be chaotic, and anything less than that is an exercise in dishonesty. However, if his essays are a personal response to India and/or an attempt to negotiate with his ancestry, then I can understand why they turned out containing such bitter disappointment. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that this was written as an objective response to the problems India faced in the post-Emergency period.

In the midst of world change, India is unchanging, stagnating, unmoving; the stubborn cow in the middle of traffic has become emblematic of the stubborn Indian at the crossroads of change. Naipaul met a prince in Rajasthan who travelled outside of India. The prince's easy-going, bordering-on-nonchalance attitude, made Naipaul realize that "the world outside India was to be judged according to its own standards. India was not to be judged. India was only to be experienced in the Indian way". His observations are astute and sharp but I dislike the way he does not leave any room for growth or suggestion. Here is Naipaul, whose family two generations ago moved to Trinidad, who has come back to India to poke holes in the form of social inquiry on the fabric of Indian society. His anti-Hindu stance is only all too obvious; they are too involved in their myth, he says, they are hypocrites, instead of helping the poor they cripple them - I am unsure if his points hit the spot because they are true or because his sentences are craftily constructed but one thing is sure: his process of social inquiry borders on the insulting. Again, he says, 'India will go on', but it will only go on because it is removed from the forces inflicting change, because it is complacent, because the Hindu equilibrium maintains itself by absorbing itself in the past, in its mythos, by going back to the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the great epics of old. What is this karma and dharma, Naipaul asks, what is this simplicity and Gandhi's poverty? This is old-fashioned and we have to wake up, India, and move ahead!

What I do agree with (but only halfway, or even less) is one of his main concerns which is that India clings on so desperately to a past that inadvertently affects and resists its own growth, as though if they [the Indians] were to let it go, it might just disappear altogether along with whatever notions of identity that have come to be associated with it overtime. It is a notion a few decades outdated, though; the situation has changed with time; now, I think it foreign media that is more concerned with associating India with its epic past and mythology (after all, it is, to the rest of the world, still the mystical east), an attempt that has created a certain image of the Indian identity that has inevitably rubbed off on the people themselves. A large amount of identity is constructed, whether by perceptions, languages, social hierarchies, media, famous personalities, art or literature; it is hard, possibly damn near impossible, to come to a pure, unaffected and unaffecting identity; an identity without influences organically recreating itself, and then affecting the minds of hundreds of millions - something like the effect of Saleem Sinai's telepathic midnight conferences in Salman Rushdie's novel. It is an idealistic approach, and borders on - perhaps even crosses over to - magic (!), which is all very well in literature, but not otherwise.

This talk about Indian identity, about how in the Economic Times of India when a writer unconscious of irony expounded on the necessity to "develop an attitude of detachment even while remaining in the thick of terrestrial pleasures", it is summarised sarcastically by Naipaul as "but India is India" - as though everything India does can be explained self-referentially. But statements like "India is India" abound everywhere in the text, and are nothing, I think, but Naipaul's attempts at coming to understand the country on its own terms, and I wish he'd admit that instead of being mocking and flippant about it or passing it off with causticity. India gained independence in 1947; A Wounded Civilization was first published in 1975. His is a cynical response to a country that has struggled through hundreds of years of foreign rule, barely achieved self-rule, and is just beginning to regenerate itself. Give it some credit, Naipaul.

BooksActually @ Tanjong Pagar

At the behest of Shaz, I found myself, after walking hundreds of metres in Singapore's prime queer district, up and down small hills littered with small shops and their small owners, closed eateries, stopping for a smoke occasionally and a random photograph (which, I thought, would serve to remind me of the way Tanjong Pagar can hardly hardly be experienced as anything less than kitschy, quaint and a little expensive) - we finally found ourselves at the opening of BooksActually. They sell firsthand copies of many interesting titles (I wish I'd employed the camera in this function because I've forgotten most of what I saw although I do remember it was mostly nice, if not a little limited); I liked the cover designs, they were nothing I'd seen in major bookstores like Borders or Kinokuniya. Lining the top of their shelves were rows and rows of Polaroid, lomo and film cameras. I saw Mark fiddling with a musical note sheet with punctures in the paper, and when he rolled the wheel on the side, a soft, little music filled the small space we occupied around the apparatus. I wandered over to a shelf and browsed the titles but I was immediately distracted by something that looked alarmingly like Alice. My eye briefly registered the price sticker (which said in Monotype font 8 $250.00). When I picked it up to look at it closely, I saw that in the wooden box, covered by a glass sheet, were the original illustrations of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland folded in such a way as to make the characters appear 3-d. For a while, I marveled at the design and wondered if I could make it myself. When I decided that it was possible, I put down the box and strolled off to another shelf.

They had delicious (free!) cupcakes, though, and the decor was lovely.

Amit Chaudhuri - Afternoon Raag

That I have been exceptionally lazy is undeniable. I cannot even say that I've been busy with school - I wish I have - but that is exactly what makes Amit Chaudhuri's Afternoon Raag the perfect book to talk about in lieu of the recent events which have come to pass. But before I do that, I want to wax lyrical about a new secondhand bookshop introduced by Yisa, a graduate in literature from NUS, who very wisely set up a Facebook account for it. By local standards, it is a relatively large space, chockful with rows and rows of books carrying everything between American Surrealist poetry to South Asian literature to old single-issue comics to critical theory. It is actually better than the rest. Three weeks ago, I bought Amit Chaudhuri's Afternoon Raag, Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization and Dead Souls by Gogol for a total of - would you believe it - $15. I went back today not because I'm out of books to read but because the idea of purchasing good quality secondhand books from a multitudinous selection was too much to resist; I bought Amit Chaudhuri's A New World and the much acclaimed The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor for $10 altogether.

In Afternoon Raag, Chaudhuri waxes lyrical about the pivotal moment that is the college years. He writes about a young Indian from Calcutta who gains a scholarship to study Literature at the University of Oxford. His entire novel, which is pretty short at a total of 144 pages (Vintage edition), reads like a tightly-woven piece of prose-poetry (he somehow manages to merge the fleeting heaviness of poetry with the fluidity of prose). There is something so sublime, insightful and yet deeply saddening about his passages. They flow gracefully, lyrically; his descriptions of Oxford in winter, the occasional flashbacks to his character's home and family in Calcutta drips heavy with nostalgia - and, mind you, this is not nostalgia of the sickening sort. His observations are acute, sharp and lucid. He finds ways to sync history, myth and fiction in a way that will make any romantic weep with joy.

I have not yet read his A Strange And Sublime Address but this book, I think, was the perfect introduction to his writing. Reading this, as a student of Literature, was an incredible experience. Chaudhuri's story is an afternoon raag, the perfect musing between the morning of awakening and the wisdom before retirement - in between is the music of negotiation, the coming-of-age and sensitive blooming of consciousness. Chaudhari weaves beautiful, musical images on a string and knots the ends together to make a continuous flow of precise comments about being a student and coming to understand the universe in a personal and honest way. Absolutely perfect and the best book I've read in 2008 thus far.