WALKING HOME by SIMON ARMITAGE

Walking Home by Simon Armitage

Walking Home the Pennine Way is not a book of poems from this famous poet but a personal account of Simon Armitage’s experience, walking one of the toughest climbs in Britain. He undertook this task, a walk that stretched about 256 miles, in the summer of 2010. The usual pattern, and the easier one, is to walk from south to north but not the other way round. Simon did it from Edale, his home village in the Peak District, Yorkshire, to the north Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border.

Tongue in cheek, he says, ‘As a poet I am naturally contrary.’

He takes up the challenge with a rucksack his mother used when she walked the route at the age of fifty; and his dad tells him he doesn’t need a coat. His wife says if this is a midlife thing why not get a Harley and grow a ponytail. Armed with walking paraphernalia and ‘Avon Skin So Soft’ Simon sets out to take this endurance test, to face the emotional and physical challenge. He trains for the tough job with the motto ‘prepare for day two by walking on day one’.

Simon gives readings along the way at prearranged stops at villages and farms, in private homes, pubs, and churches. A modern troubadour travelling out without cash, passing a sock round for donations. At the stops his borrowed suitcase The Tombstone heavy with his volumes of poetry is delivered to him,.

The narrative is smooth, oftentimes contemplative. It flows beautifully and is filled with humour in spite of his discomfort of moors and bogs, the cold and the wet, the slush and the hard rock, and the bruising and deafening gusts. He perseveres through bleak terrain, across lonely fells towards his Yorkshire village. We see how different each of the farm villages and homes he arrives at are. Simon sees much beauty too and makes acute, detailed observations as only a poet can.

A notification of readings on his website brings him a good crowd of passionate admirers and a mix too of indifferent audiences and farm animals. And readings have ended up in the middle of dart games, or had to compete with the sound of clacking pool balls or bleating of sheep. Simon is surprised by the crowds who turn up and is surprised too by the generosity of villagers and visitors.

His rendition of happenings and his choice of words hilarious throughout the book had me laughing aloud. Often he writes with self-deprecating humour.

At one evening reading -

‘Towards the end, several people in the audience seem moved to tears, covering their eyes with their hands and bowing their heads. One woman takes a handkerchief out of her bag and lifts it to her face. But it’s just the sun, setting directly behind my back, reducing me to flames.’

As an armchair rambler I enjoy reading more than walking tough mountain trails but ‘Waling Home’ made me feel I wanted to join Simon Armitage on his walk.

Walking Home warrants a second reading. I have developed a taste for tea and cake.

Leela Reading photo by Don Ellis

JOSEPH ANTON – Book Review

JOSEPH ANTON by Salman Rushdie

On Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses. Rushdie called it his Unfunny Valentine. Twenty-three years later, in 2012, he published Joseph Anton, based on the journals he kept while in hiding.

When the fatwa was declared it did not take the Muslim world long to rise up in in favour of it – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, and Venezuela, all joined in. Muslims in India, Britain and America, too, thrust themselves into the wave of hate and violence and joined the frenzy: rioting, burning and demanding Rushdie’s death, not having read the Satanic Verses nor fully knowing what it was about. Several bounties too were placed on his head throughout the years he was in hiding.

Salman Rushdie was born in India. He grew up there before going to the UK to study. His father Anis, “a godless man who knew and thought a great deal about God” taught his son to think for himself. He passed down to him “an unwavering insistence on human reason and intellect against religious faith.”

As a student in Cambridge, Rushdie became interested in the “the rise of Islam”. He was fascinated with the culture and he treated the prophet Muhammad with much respect as a man. It is from the Qur’an he got the title for his book: The Satanic Verses. It confused him as to why he was misunderstood by so many, especially by Muslims. The Satanic Verses of the Qur’an refer to the time when Muhammad, the prophet, came down from the mountain and reported the apparition of Archangel “Gibreel” who had revealed to him three angels. This led the people of Mecca to include the angels in their religion and worship them as goddesses. Later when Muhammad realized their religion was moving to a monotheistic one he changed his story saying it was Satan who had told him about the three angels.

Joseph Anton, the name Rushdie took for himself while in hiding, is related in the third person. The journal spans ten years from the time the fatwa was issued to the time it was lifted, though not completely lifted. It is still in existence and there is still a bounty on his head. On 24 September 1998, Mohammad Khatami from the Iranian government issued a statement that he neither supported the fatwa nor would he stop anyone else carrying it out.

Rushdie writes of the fear of death, pain and loneliness and heartache of being separated from his wife and son, Zafar, and not being able to see his friends and the rest of his family. He lived in hiding and endured the constant threat of death. Much of the book reads like a thriller. His Japanese editor was murdered, his Norwegian publisher shot, his Italian translator stabbed, many died in riots protesting against the Satanic verses, and his effigy and his books were burned.

Freedom-loving people all over the world took up the cause of freedom of thought and freedom of the written word. Names of influential politicians, well-known writers, publishers, and famous film and theatre celebrities are generously interwoven into his story of life in hiding. The majority of them tried to help him and spoke of the need to uphold freedom of speech. The British Government remained on the fence, never officially denouncing the fatwa, but it gave him protection.

It hurt him that some writers he greatly admired were against him. The Guardian attacked him for not withdrawing the novel. Once, in 1990, Rushdie met with Muslim leaders, offering to proclaim his faith in Islam but he would not withdraw the paperback Satanic Verses nor apologize for writing it. The meeting solved nothing and later he was ashamed that he had even offered to meet with them. Rushdie tells us his mother, then living in Pakistan, received support and comfort and was never threatened. Neither were any members of his family or his friends in India and England.

During this time of hiding he also went through personal problems. He had “no one to fulfill his deepest needs.” His first wife Clarissa died of cancer, his second and third marriages broke up, his fourth to a model-actress and TV host fell apart. Reading about the behavior of the wives, I feel he had a capacity to attract some of the worst women.

On 16 June 2007, Rushdie was knighted by the Queen for his great contribution to English literature: Sir Salman Rushdie. Many of the Muslim countries were outraged. Al-Qaeda condemned the Rushdie honour. “An insult to Islam,” they screamed.

Rushdie tells us exactly what he was feeling and doing throughout his long banishment from normal life. But this work does not have the imagination and the wonderful style his writing is famous for, nor does it contain much humour. At times it is as if there is too much name-dropping. He is also quite annoyed with the pressure of the round-the-clock security that he found restricting. I felt this annoyance with his own safety arrangements was unreasonable, and a little lacking in gratitude. I was also not comfortable reading this book in the third person. The author, Salman Rushdie, whom I greatly admire, and for whose life I feared while reading the book, loomed up before me ever present, and I found it disconcerting and confusing each time he referred to himself with the third person “He”.

This 636-page hardcover volume of purple, with its suede-like cover, is pleasure to feel and to hold. The pages are well laid out and a good font size makes it a comfortable read.

The photo below is of an interesting incident. I was reading Joseph Anton in our garden and put the book down to go inside to get a drink of water. When I returned, I found that Spooks, our cat, had brought me a present and laid it beside my book.

Jo with a sympathetic friend

More Rushdie Novels

Grimus (1975)
Midnight’s Children (1981)
Shame (1983)
The Satanic Verses (1988)
The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
Fury (2001)
Shalimar the Clown (2005)
The Enchantress of Florence (2008)

Leela Panikar ©

MORTALITY

Book Review
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens

Mortality

It is be fitting that thoughts of mortality should crop up at the end of 2012, an eventful year that seemed to have run off too fast.

On New Year’s Day, 2013, I read Christopher Hitchens’ ‘Mortality’ that focused on the last 18 months of Christopher Hitchens’ life of cancer, a time when he lived ‘dyingly’. His father had died at the age of 79 with a similar cancer. A 61 Hitchens felt he could possibly outdo that, live longer than this father. He would live ‘to read – if indeed not to write – the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger.’

‘Mortality’ begins with an introduction by Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair Editor, and ends with a touching afterword by Carol Blue, Hitchen’s widow. This last book, written while ill with cancer, mostly during the time in the hospital, is both awe-inspiring and sad. It gives a candid insight into the anger, grief and pain of a brilliant thinker, speaker and writer. He writes graphically. Stark, frank descriptions of the evil of his illness – cancer of the esophagus. His speech was often affected and he ended up unable to read and write. This is the worst tragedy that could befall a writer, reader and debater.

He denounced and convincingly discredited Nietzsche’s famous maxim that ‘whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’.

It was while he was busy promoting his memoir Hitch22 that he learned of his illness. In Carol Blue’s words, he ‘insisted ferociously on living’ and carried on with his public-speaking engagements even when it meant vomiting ‘with an extraordinary combination of accuracy, neatness, violence, and profusion’ before going on stage’.

Hitchens writes ‘I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning in June (2010) when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse.’

‘All of life is a wager.’

Throughout his illness he remained objective, not fatalistic but recognizing the certainty. Many new treatments were tried. If they did not work on him he hoped they would be ready and available soon for future suffers.

The day 21 September 2011 was set aside as Hitchens prayer day by both well-wishers and not so well-wishers. Everyone would pray for Hitchens. People prayed for him to suffer and die as punishment for his disbelief in a god; others prayed for him to get well so he might repent, know the mercy of a good god; and yet others prayed he would convert before it was too late.

He remained true to the ideas that animated his life. He never gave up his principles, his beliefs, his honesty and convictions. He was not going to become an abject creature and throw himself before a god he knew did not exist. An ethical life is possible without religion.

When giving an interview to Anderson Cooper on CNN 360 in August 2010, he stressed his beliefs, saying he was not about to give up and find religion in the last days. When promoting his book ‘God Is Not Great’ he did not go seeking like-minded people but went to the American Bible Belt to debate.

Hitchens continued to burn the candle at both ends. He kept up book tours, speaking events and debates. He did not think it proper to cancel bookings, arrangements that involved much preparation on the part of a great number of organizers.

Skull Collection

In the first part of his memoir Hitch22, he wrote about death:
‘One always knows there is a term-limit to lifespan, just as one always knows that illness or accident or incapacity, physical and mental, are never more than a single breath away’. A premonition?

He continued to write for Vanity Fair and, as he said, it was not as parade of his illness but the narrative of his life.

Hitchens’ great sense of humour was evident at all times. Once when debating with him on ‘Freedoms of Speech’, Shashi Tharoor, in the midst of the debate, burst out laughing and declared he could debate Hitchens as he enjoyed him too much.

At the BBC Munk event in Canada, on Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 2011, a short time before his death, Hitchens debated Tony Blair on the subject of ‘Religion: a Force for Good in the World’. The debate lasted for one and a half hours of lucid and intelligent talk. His pain and discomfort, and the deteriorating effects of his illness, were clearly evident.

‘Practise staying alive but prepare for death.’ He wrote with dignity, heroically accepting his situation and refusing to let it stop him writing an inspiring book. In the last few pages of this short book he only managed to scribble notes to his editor.

Hitchens, a brilliant thinker, writer, speaker, debater and humourist remained all that to the last and then we lost him on 15 December 2011.

Many friends, writers and celebrities attended his memorial. Here is a link to Part 1 of Vanity Fair‘s memorial for Christopher Hitchens. I found the readings of his essay The Vietnam Syndrome by Sean Penn quite powerful and Salman Rushdie chose to read a humorous one ‘Porcophobia’.

Hitchens left us many messages but one stands prominent for me:

‘Think For Yourself’

Leela Panikar

Book Review THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS

The Garden of Evening Mists
by Tan Twan Eng

The Author in Penang

Tan Twan Eng is the author of two books:
The Gift of Rain -long listed for Man Booker Prize
The Garden of Evening Mists – short listed for the Man Booker Prize

Mnemosyne Greek Goddess of Remembering

The novel begins with a quote from Richard Holmes:

There is a goddess of memory, Mnemosyne; but none of Forgetting … twin sisters, twin powers. this sums up the story: Remembering and eventually Forgetting.

Tan Twan Eng has chosen a difficult and unusual relationship of hate and love between his characters. To this day an older generation of Malaysians bear a grudge towards and a deep hatred of the Japanese. This is not totally unwarranted. The Japanese army and government in the country in the name of the Imperial army carried out unwarranted cruelty towards the Malaysian civilian population during their short occupation of the country, 1941 to 1945.

The Garden of Evening Mists set in the lush and cool tea plantation of the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia is her story told by Judge Teoh Yun Ling.

‘In the shallow, a grey heron cocked its head at me, one leg poised in the air, like the hand of a pianist who had forgotten the notes to his music. It dropped its leg a second later and speared its beak into the water.’

The sad and painful story told by her when she retires early from her position as a judge. She is diagnosed dementia and eventual total forgetfulness.

‘Something seemed to detach from inside me and crumble away, leaving me less complete than before.’

Tan Twan Eng’s prose often poetic tells the story of two sisters imprisoned by the Japanese during the World War II occupation of Malaysia. Teoh Yun Ling reveals how at nineteen she escapes but her older sister Teoh Yun Hong, an artist and an admirer of Japanese gardens dies in prison. Teoh Yun Ling trains as a lawyer. She visits her parent’s tea planter friends in the Cameron Highlands where she meets Aritomo Nakamura, an imperial Japanese gardener in exile. He has made his home in seclusion in a remote part of the hills on the side of the jungle. She becomes his apprentice in the zen garden in order to eventually build a garden in memory of her sister. During her apprenticeship she comes to learn much about gardening, the art of archery and tea ceremony. She learns martial arts and about the Japanese tattoo culture. The author also gives us an insight into the Communist guerrilla warfare and the communists of Malaysia before independence from Britain.

With her learning partially done Teoh Yun Ling leaves to follow her pursuit as lawyer and eventually becomes a judge. She comes back to the old sanctuary, Yugiri, the garden that now has fallen into neglect. She begins to restore it and at the same time tries to see if she can find the map where her sister had died, a map in a secret tattoo.

The novel contains many beautiful passages and the structure of the story is complex. The author skilfully feeds in, little by little, the background story of the two sisters in the prison camp and violent behaviour of the Japanese. It is not until two-thirds into the book that we get to learn the full story of the sisters.

The idea of impermanence and memory and forgetfulness is beautifully women into the novel.

I am a great fan of Tan Twan Eng. If the reader does not savour the novel slowly much of the beauty of the passages will be lost, and attention must be given to abrupt transitions. For me Teoh Yun Ling lacked some of qualities of the softer side of a female. And I also felt some of the tea story could have been left out and the garden descriptions could be reduced. The surprise of the tattoo map, the horimono, towards the end of the story could prove a little disturbing.

I thoroughly recommend this book and for me it also warrants a second reading.

Tan Twan Eng and me, star struck.

I first met author Tan Twan Eng at Hong Kong International Literary Festival in 2008. Meeting him at the Penang Arts and Literary Festival in Nov 2012 was extra special as Penang is where we are both from.

NARCOPOLIS by Jeet Thayil

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil

Review

Narcopolis joins the array of novels bold, revealing the life below the surface of the beautiful thriving old city, Bombay. It deals with drugs and addiction, sex and love, violence and perversion, god and death. Not the type of raw book I would chose to read ten years ago. I have grown up.

A varied cast populates the unfurling opium smoke – a murderer, businessmen, pimps, prostitutes, thugs, poets, painters, all drowning in degradation, lust and crime. We are drawn into a languorous world of shocking low life in and around Rashid’s opium house on Shuklaji Street sometime in the 1970s, place of alleyways, and villages and old buidlings. We meet Dimple, the eunuch who prepares the pipes for the regular clients, the preparation an art like a sacred tea ceremony. He shows up as a beautiful lady who enjoys reading, goes to the cinema to watch lengthy Bollywood movies and listens to stories Mr Lee relates. Mr Lee, a Chinese refugee, a former soldier who fled communist China brings us a glimpse of the Mao era. Gritty Rashid, owner of the den, protects his family, especially his young son, from exposure to low life of drugs and alcohol and prostitution.

The drifting characters give the novel a historical perspective as it moves in a haze with the arrival of hippies and an international groups seeking cheap solace. Indian politics and religious uprisings and violence are touched upon.

The tale moves to the present. After an absence the narrator returns to find a very different Bombay (Mumbai) in 2004. He comes seeking his friend Rashid, and others he knew. The old place has disappeared giving way to proper roads and tall steel and glass buildings. He manages to contact his friend now old and sad and disillusioned and under the control of his educated son. His son a fervent Muslim with flexible morals sells cocaine to the infidels, associates with women, and enjoys porn magazines. If necessary he might consider becoming a suicide bomber.

Narcopolis read on the Kindle

I found the novel stark, tragic and beautiful except when the focus shifted to China and Mao. I found this section trailing into distraction.

Author Jeet Thayil

The author, Jeet Thayil, a poet, had at one time succumbed to addiction.

Man Booker prize short list

Jeet Thayil Narcoplis
Hilary Mantel Bringing Up the Bodies
Tan Twan Eng (one of my favourite writers) The Garden of Evening Mists
Deborah Levy Swimming Home
Will Self Umbrella
Alison Moore The Lighthouse