Banker the Blogger Says Bye Bye
Hey there. Those of you on my Epic India group, or in touch with me directly, will know I have a lot of irons in the fire right now.
Multiple projects, at various stages of development, research, planning, and in some cases, nearing completion.
There’s a limit to how much one person can handle. And I operate entirely alone, with no associates, assistants, or help of any sort. Hell, I even make my own chai, breakfast, lunch, etc and manage the house while I work.
So I’ve got to make some hard choices.
Naturally, I’m a story teller first, best, and last.
And I’m sure that even those of you who claim to enjoy my blog posts (and I’ll pretend that they’re somewhat worth enjoying!), would surely prefer that I don’t compromise on my novel writing.
So I’m going to trim down on other activities, hobbies and pastimes, to focus for a while completely and solely on my novels.
That could mean months, or even years. (My projects tend to be pretty big and ambitious–the last one turned out to be just over one million words in length, the next one is threatening to exceed five times that length!)
Perhaps someday, I’ll find myself hankering to comment on a book I’ve read, or just voice a few thoughts aloud.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
(There aren’t likely to be many films now, as that’s another thing I’ve cut back on drastically. For instance, I haven’t seen a single film for over two weeks, which is a life-record for me.)
I’ll soon be revamping my official website (see my profile on the top right) and when I do, I’ll archive this blog, and perhaps retitle it slightly–something along the lines of The Best Of Indian English might be more appropriate.
But I definitely won’t be continuing to blog as regularly as I did these past ten months (I started in Feb 2005).
It’s been a great experience and I really loved it.
But I love writing novels MUCH more. And there comes a time in life when you have to make choices.
I’ve made mine.
See you in the pages of my books, if you read them. If not, then thanks for reading this far, and I’m sure you’ll find other great blogs to keep you occupied–there’s a lot of good ones out there.
It’s been a pleasure knowing you and hearing from you. Feel free to continue to comment on any of the posts archived here. I’ll try and reply if and when I can.
And in case you didn’t know already, the only way to keep in touch directly with me now, is by joining my Epic India group. (Again, see my profile at the top right corner of this page.)
Bye, bye, blogosphere. Fiction, here I come!
It takes bollocks…: Book Review of On Beauty by Zadie Smith
It takes bollocks to model oneself on an acknowledged master of the English novel of manners, that too no less a personage than E.M. Forster, whose mastery of craft was equalled only by his erudition on the craft of literary masterpieces. It takes even bigger bollocks to then take Forster’s most accomplished masterpiece, Howard’s End, raze it to the ground, strip its materials to brick, mortar, plank and panelling, relocate every item in the manner of a self-titled Lord of New England moving his just-purchased Scottish castle across the Atlantic, and rebuild it painstakingly into a literary edifice that seems perfectly at home in its new location and time.
But having taken on that challenge, it then takes bollocks the size of cannonballs to go ahead and title the book in question On Beauty and then make it beautiful in every sense: prose, structure, characterization, dialogue, metaphor, even the artful references to art woven into the narrative. An astonishing literary act of genius, that actually manages to out-Forster Forster and out-Zadie Zadie Smith. And yet, that is Zadie Smith’s third novel, the Booker-nominated On Beauty.
Pause here for applause. A long pause.
Smith might have lost the Booker, but not by much. In any case, the whopping success of On Beauty guarantees her much fatter royalty cheques than the long-deserving John Banville whose superlative The Sea neatly kippered the coveted prize from under her polished fingernails. She won’t be left grasping: already laden with her share of trophies, she can be sure to fetch more for the groaning mantlepiece in the months and years to come. One of Britain’s youngest novelists, she has not stopped manufacturing brilliance ever since she burst onto the literary scene with White Teeth, and while her sophomore effort The Autograph Man disappointed a few, she more than makes up for it with this elegant, poised, and almost perfect third submission.
That On Beauty is a masterpiece of modern fiction, you need not doubt. Lay it out bold and clear in 22 pt. sans serif font for the literary headlines. This is not simply a very good book, it’s a great book. Granted, it’s subject and content may not warrant such adulation, this being a simple comedy of manners rather than the epic saga of an entire nation beset by war, civil strife or some more heart-rendingly important crisis. But it’s not so much the book itself or the material therein, as what Smith achieves with it. Like stale clay grown hard in desert winds, she pours wet talent and breathes warm life to create a flesh and blood being with pink cheeks, hot breath and a figure that Salome would die for.
The plot is nothing to write home about–or waste much of a review on. Like Forster’s classic Howard’s End, this is a novel about family, the connections between its members, and the lack or loss of those connections. The Kipps, a racially mixed (and very mixed-up) family living in New England, USA, form the core of the story. A failed, embittered Rembrandt scholar, the white English father Howard (of course) is struggling after an extramarital indiscretion to woe his African-American wife Kiki, while fighting a losing battle to keep the filial links to his two sons and daughter. The novel starts with a crisis as Howard flies to London to try to rescue his younger son Jerome from a hasty marriage to the daughter of a rival intellectual, who seems to acquire the success Howard craves so easily and plentifully. Later, when the Belseys come to stay in the USA, becoming virtual neighbours to the Kipps, the bitter long-running rivalry, lingering heartache, smouldering sexual attractions, class envy, all simmer to a boil.
There are times when On Beauty seems poised to slip into Tom Wolfe territories of racial-class conflict, but almost at once slips quicksilver-swift into a variety of homages: apart from the intrepid Wolfe-ish play on the human politics of race differences in contemporary America and England, there’s also a vivacious post-Dickensian dissection of social politics, constantly running, incisive intellectual debate-in-dialogues that would have made the late Robertson Davies proud, the uneasy explorations of self and mood that strongly recall the best of Beattie, those wonderfully rambling artistic descriptive digressions of Updike…there are too many minds at work here at times to seem plausible even in a pastiche, yet Smith writes masterfully in all these many hands, drawing them all together like a coach-master wrangling a 16-horse team, to make the whole entirely her creation. Not once in this ambitious, building, resonant novel does she falter, there are no weak passages or clumsy rifts. Every marvellous sentence, every metaphor, every finely observed nuance of action, profane slang, class mannerism, is pitched forth with perfect effect. What does one do with a book this well crafted except acknowledge it for what it is: a masterpiece in its own right.
This is the first Zadie Smith novel I’ve read. I voted it down, unread, when picking my preferred Booker winner, and by a remarkable coincidence (or very fine judgement) my choice won. But having read On Beauty now, long after the hue and cry and hype has died down, I can’t but wish that she wins many other prizes, to add to the already chart-topping sales she’s currently enjoying on both sides of the big salty Atlantic. This is one new writer who can’t be hyped enough, and whose talent is too big to be contained in any one book, however brilliant. Zadie Smith has big bollocks, massive ones, and it looks like she’s going to put them to great use in a great number of books. And we’re the better for it.
Grumbles in Goa: Book Review of Guardian of the Dawn by Richard Zimler
Guardian of the Dawn
Richard Zimler
Constable & Robinson Ltd; 372 pgs; L 5.95
Guardian of the Dawn hasn’t really raised any hue and cry anywhere. It’s not even made any major ripples in literary circles, let alone irked the overlords of organized religion. In contrast, other works that dealt strongly with the Jewish-Christian divide have traditionally attracted great media attention. Palestine, Joe Sacco’s brilliant work of journalism in graphic novel form, was simultaneously hailed as an important expose of Israeli occupation of the West Bank as well as derided for its allegedly one-sided view. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci’s Cold–achoo! achoo! excuse me, I mean The Da Vinci Code, of course–was famously the subject of much furious debate in the Vatican and various Christian forums, even as it broke publishing records and sold some 26 million copies (and still counting).
But I sincerely doubt you’ll see Guardian of the Dawn embroiled in any such media controversy, even though, by his own admission, the author would like the world to take his book as seriously as any work of journalism or historical expose. Why, you wonder? Well, a bit more about the book itself: Guardians is a work of historical fiction, the third in a trilogy by Portugese-Jewish author Zimler (his description of himself, not mine) about a Portugese-Jewish family (of course) in various time-periods. The previous two books, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, and Hunting Midnight were set in the 16th and 19th centuries, and dealt with various branches and generations of the Zarco family in several continents. This third book (but not last, it would seem) is set in 16th century Goa, during the period of Portugese colonialism.
The main characters are the first-person narrator Ti (short for Tiago) and his sister Sofia, and their father. The three of them live simple, idyllic lives on a plantation just on the outskirts of the colony of Goa, hewing to their Portugese-Goan faith, while dabbling freely in the Hindu festivals and rituals of their friends, neighbours–and later, lovers. On one hand, it’s a more or less typical coming-of-age story about adolescent lust and love, youthful adventures and friendships, and the warm yet sadness-tinged relationship between father and son. The prose is simple and the narrative pleasant without any overly dramatic highs or lows, and there’s a great emphasis on emotional states and sometimes oddly nuanced feelings that a Freudian psychiatrist could probably have a field day interpreting.
But then comes the event that turns this deceptively simple historical family saga into something more sinister: First the father, then the son, are arrested and imprisoned by the Inquisition. And then begins a tale of torture and suffering, misery and betrayal that would make the Count of Monte Cristo cringe (but without the adventure and high drama of Dumas’s classic). The Catholic priests who have been ‘informed’ of the heresy committed by the Zarcos in intermingling with their Hindu friends–and by simply being Jewish to begin with–are painted as utterly evil sadists, with only a few human characteristics. And the Catholic priest at the helm of this campaign of torture and ethnic cleansing of sorts is none other than Francis Xavier, who was later sainted largely for his achievements during this very campaign.
In an Afterword, author Zimler sets forth his outrage and shock at researching this period of Portugese-Jewish history (and Indian history too, of course) and learning of the “tens of thousands” of innocent Hindus and Jews who were tortured and slaughtered by the “fanatical” priest Xavier. And he even dedicates the book itself “To the many thousands of men, women, and children who were imprisoned by the Inquisition in India.”
This is all very well, and had Zimler authored a scholarly study of the period and events, we might be able to share his outrage and horror as he unfolded research proving said events and acts. But as a work of historical fiction, and by a Jewish author at that, it’s difficult to know how seriously to take him, or the book. As a historical novel, it’s not really something you’ll enjoy much, take it from me, unless reading sadomasochism is high on your literary priorities. It certainly doesn’t live up to Zimler’s own goal of reinterpreting Othello in the tradition of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres or Jean Rhys’ The Wide Saragossa Sea.
And as a religious-social polemic, attempting to expose so-called Catholic “fanaticism” and sadistic excesses against non-believers in 16th century Goa, even if it has its facts right, it still has its heart in the wrong place. But as a novel of outrage over a mini ‘holocaust’ of sorts, it fails completely. I’d rather reread Schindler’s Ark again, or go see the brilliant but harrowing Hotel Rwanda once more, or even just read a good aga-saga than waste time over this mediocre pseudo-historical. At least Da Vinci’s Cold (achoo! Bless you, my son) had some entertainment value while also educating us a bit. Guardian of the Dawn, on the other hand, is less readable than the Mitrokhin Archives and as unworthy of a controversy.
Sold out on pre-order! 
Available only from me directly. 
Available only from me directly. 
Available only from me directly. 