Land and Sea of Blood

“Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red”

888,246 red ceramic poppies are displayed in Britain on 100th anniversary of World War I. Reminding us of lives lost for peace. But peace we have not achieved.

Since then we have managed a Second World War. Battles and killings still rage all around us. Governments pushed by greed for power to occupy and control thrive on more and more powerful weaponry and send out able-bodied men and women to kill fellow humans.

We have come across epic battles of bloodshed and horror in verses of the Hindu Ramayana and Mahabharata and the poetry Homer’s Iliad.

We did not learn.

We are incapable of learning it would seem.

And here the magnificent and dramatic display poppies showing blood shed – Gannon Burgett

Poppies Tower of London

http://petapixel.com/2014/08/02/breathtaking-photos-tower-london-adorned-888246-ceramic-poppies-commemorate-wwi/

The poppy as a symbol of the fallen soldiers of World War I comes from

In Flanders Fields and Other Poems from John McCrae’s collection of 1919

‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,’

About 10 million soldiers and seven million civilians were killed in World War I. Writers; and poets like Thomas Hardy, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, William Butler Yeats, Robert Graves, and Wilfred Owen responded writing about the great tragedy, the loss, the horror and the brutalities.

From one of my favourite poets: Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

“This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War.”

And the poem he wrote just months before his death in 1918.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

[it is sweet and right to die for your country]

THE PIGEON

The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind

‘How quickly the apparently solidly laid foundation of one’s existence could crumble.’

The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind (1988) translated by John E. Woods

The Pigeon, a novella, by the author of well-known the novel Perfume, The Story of a Murder, follows a simple plot but is packed with suspense.

It is the story of a man who has had a disappointing childhood and later a disappointing marriage. Jonathan Noel has spent 20 years contented without connection with people. He is a security guard in a bank in Paris. He lives alone and frugally, enjoys his independence. Having achieved invisibility he loves the daily ‘sameness’ of his life and work. He knows the only person he can depend on is himself.

His home is a one room flat, which he has set up with all the comfort he requires. He has to share a bathroom with other residents but he makes sure he meets no one. He listens by the door and opens a crack and checks no one is about before leaving his home.

‘He could interpret every crack, every click, every soft ripple or rustle, the very silence itself.’

One day disaster strikes, after listening by the door, he opens it just a little and looks out only to be confronted by a ‘beady eyed, diabolical’ pigeon in the hallway, outside his threshold. Jonathan spins out of control. His ordered life descends into anarchy all due to a bird ‘with red taloned feet on oxblood tiles…in sleek, blue-grey plumage’ and the eyes dreadful to behold’.

From then on many emotions come into play. Fear, paranoia, insecurity, anger, envy.
All the events that happen take place in a single day. But the long day eventually ends in a happy transformation.

‘He splashed diligently through the puddles, he splashed right through the middle of them, walked in a zigzag from puddle to puddle, sometimes he even crossed the street because he saw an especially lovely, wide puddle on the far pavement, and stomped through it with flat, splashing soles, sending spray up …it was delightful.’

Suskind weaves a disturbing tale, a tale of depth and tension. He writes sparingly and crisply. The seemingly boring daily details of this reclusive man are complex.

I found this psychological thriller warranted a second reading. I read The Pigeon the first time many years ago and re-read it a couple of weeks ago.

I am certain many of us would love to diligently splash through puddles. Then why don’t we you may ask?

Mmm…we don’t because we can’t find puddles?

“A Story Like A House”

Short Stories

Years ago I started on a new career as a writer. I started writing, and then I started reading about writing. Recently a short excerpt on writing from Alice Walker “a story is like a house” brought to mind something I read when first began writing:

The king died and then the queen died…is not a story.

I went back to my stories and re-read them and they were all ‘the king died and the queen died’ stories. I re-wrote them again and again, proof-read them, some fifteen times and more, until my stories came close to being stories worth telling, and I hope worth reading.

‘The king died and then the queen died of grief…is a story’

I wrote about what happened in the in-between years, in those years of the grieving queen, in those years she outlived the king. Much happened in the time between the king’s death and the queen’s. I linked subplots and characters, still keeping the story simple and characters few. Simplicity is easy for me. I am able to tell simple stories.

From time to time I go back to my stories, make house visits, like the house Alice Walker mentions, and linger, wander about, visit the various rooms, meet the characters, renew friendships, pick up little things here and there, think on how I’ll word them now and put them back, enjoy the layout, the style, the ease. I like what I have written and give myself assurance to continue writing.

Alice Walker:

“A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

Soon to release

Short Stories, 3rd Collection

Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy left us on !st October 2013, not a red October for his fans, and at a very productive young age of 66. His engrossing military thrillers are well known throughout the English reading world. Brilliant research, brilliant detail and accuracy. Novels: Shadow One, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, The Hunt for Red October and many more. Besides many of them being made into movies his novels were also inspiration for blockbuster videos games: Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six.

Our Ganeshas

The Family Scribes

The guys in the garden had submerged themselves the evening before.

Family Scribes

The next night, the others, the tall guys and the little guys from around the home, agreed to assemble on the green Chinese table. Umbrella Ganesh leading, tall skinny Ganesh taking up the rear, and the little ones carrying the large apple-scented candle. A clear moonlit night and there’d been no mention of rain.

They marched with much intensity. Went along the right bank of the village stream, strewn and tangled with plastic bags and MacDonald’s cutlery, discarded polystyrene lunch boxes and rusty old fridges, doors flung open. When they got to the pebbled beach they dropped off their paraphernalia and took a leisurely dip. After the swim they sat for a bit chatting about this and that. Sea calmly reflecting the clouded moon.

On their return, single-file and humming, they followed the left bank of underfoot mulch. They were amazed to find the nearby swamp filled in for construction. Trucks and cranes abounded. Gone the perfumed ginger lilies and the croaking giant frogs. From a chempak tree on the hillslope, a diminutive wide-eyed owl hooted a hello. Not far below the owl, two wild boars snuggled and snorted in sleep.

High overhead, landing lights flashing, a jet droned, arriving in Hong Kong in the early hours, leaving cities our Ganeshas knew too well — Mumbai, Trivandrum, Chennai, Kolkata.

Ganeshas arrived back, dawn dewy, before birds awakened. They got home just as Spooks walked in from his prowl, complaining of the lack of animals to hunt and kill. The party asked him a favour. Drag out the Canon PowerShot and take a photo of us they said. Spooks obliged before he went to sleep on the forbidden best sofa in the house.
Ganeshas scattered about the home and settled before Don and I awoke.

PS
__________________
Lord Ganesha symbolises wisdom and intelligence and is a friend of writers.

Ganesh Chaturthi is an annual festival honouring him. It falls within August/September of the lunar month of Bhadrapada of the Hindu Calendar. The auspicies festival is observed by Hindus all over the world, and in India celebrated over eleven days. Spectacular statues and images of Lord Ganesha are honoured and on the final day paraded along streets to the accompaniment of music, dancing and singing before being submerged in the sea or waterways.

Book Review THE DARK ROAD by MA JIAN

The Dark Road by Ma Jian

Aristotle used ‘catharsis’ to mean cleaning ourselves of repressed emotions by experiencing unpleasant emotions – by experiencing pity and fear in a fictional tragedy we can get rid of our own fears.

The Dark Road by Ma Jian, translated from Chinese to English by his wife Flora Drew, is a socio-political novel, one of fear and pain.

The author, a photographer and painter, was one of the early members of the Wuming Group of dissident artists and poets of 1979, and in 1983, he was placed under detention for his art and poems. In 2008 and 2009, he travelled extensively in the interior of China before writing this book, which was published in early 2013.

The Dark Road is not a novel one reads for entertainment, and it’s not for the squeamish. Ma Jian uses the same familiar crisp style of writing he used in Stick Out Your Tongue, his collection of short stories about the Han Chinese occupation of Tibet. And in The Dark Road the author has done an excellent job of writing from the point of view of Meili, the book’s hero who is a country girl of great strength and hope.

The novel is a long dark road of unending misery that revolves around hardships caused by China’s one-child policy and its violent and atrocious punishments meted out to parents and parents-to-be and their families that break the law.

One keeps going until one reaches a cliff where one has to decide to jump or not, knowing there is no turning back. It is raw and distressing but generously spiced with humour.

Meili observes: “A Chinese sturgeon is part of a protected species and Chinese citizen is not protected.
If a Panda gets pregnant the entire national celebrates. But if a woman she gets pregnant she’s treated like a criminal.”

It is the story of Kongzi, his wife Meili and their three-year-old daughter Nannan. Kongzi, as the 76th-generation descendant of Confucius, has a desperate need to produce a son to carry on his line.

The family, fearing the wife will be forcibly sterilized or made to abort her foetus by toxic injection, leave their home and relatives. Escaping the tyrannical laws, they take to the backwaters, literally the toxic sludge of Yangtze tributaries, and live in leaky boats and on filthy mudflats. The schoolteacher husband and his wife eke out a living and manage to educate their daughter while moving from town to town, not staying anywhere too long to avoid being found by the family planning authorities.

Kongzi is ready to accept the fate of a second child born illegally. The child will have no residence permit, no school, no university, no citizenship and no job. In short, the child and later the adult will not exist.

Besides stressing the cultural problems of not having a son, Ma Jian skilfully deals with the various concerns of modern China: polluted waterways, toxic air and food. He brings to prominence corruption, kidnapping, prostitution and pornography – and China’s culture of pirating designer goods. And he touches on some of the side effects created by the Three Gorges Dam.

Reading this book is like travelling on a road parallel to your own. A road of horror, of grisly and graphic happenings with no chance of leaping back into your own sane and comfortable life. For me it was a compulsive read, a poignant, disagreeable one, but one that I wanted to experience.

There is a touch of magical realism, too. The spirit of Meili’s unborn child sometimes takes over the narration as an onlooker.

The Dark Road left me exhausted but thinking deeply about life, about fate, and how fortunate most of us are to live in free countries.

OPENING SENTENCES

Opening sentences – Novels and Short Stories

Recently I received a link from my friend Melody. The article from The Atlantic talked about time Stephen King spends on “opening sentences”. It is interesting how different methods writers use to hone their craft, and how hard famous writers work at their craft.

I am a great admirer of Stephen King. Though his genre does not appeal to me I enjoy his craft. His “On Writing” a candid part-memoir, part-tool book is an excellent guidebook for all writers. He gives writers the basic skills of the craft beginner writers ought to be aware of. Every writer has his personal method. I read “On Writing” twice and I am sure I shall find reading it a third time just as illuminating. The tools he discusses in this book are invaluable to writers but he did not mention opening sentences.

King says an intriguing context is important, and so is style. But when starting a book he composes the starting sentences first, usually in bed before going to sleep. He could spend hours, weeks, months and even years perfecting his opening. It is his opening that later writes his book for him. “I’ll try to write a paragraph. An opening paragraph. And over a period of weeks and months and even years, I’ll word and reword it until I’m happy with what I’ve got. If I can get that first paragraph right, I’ll know I can do the book.”

One of my favourite first paragraphs come from the powerfully written “God of Small Things” by Arundathi Roy. The first page gives us a clue to the whole story.

The first lines: “May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month…
The nights are clear but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation.”

And soon paragraphs quietly sum up the entire novel.
‘It sets you in time. It sets you in place.’ We’re intrigued by the promise.
And the flow does not fail to keep that promise going, making the reader wanting to read and at the same time not wanting the book to end.

For me, as a writer, first lines are not a problem, it’s the endings I cannot come up with. I mull over them, write and rewrite and feel I can never get them just perfect.

First lines from some of my short stories from Floating Petals:

Running Away: “I am ten and my friends smell of fish.”

The Shadow: “It is still dark at predawn. I panic, I look around, can’t find myself. I see her.”

My Gods: “Gods, they were many in our household. We were a pan religious family.”

The Floating Petals: “When did they break your toes?”

The Couple: ““Let’s go check on our pigs,” Swee Lee said.
“Our?”
“Well, they were ours for a time.”
She and Tan floated smoothly side by side.”

Some writers in order to engage readers throw in good opening paragraphs, a dramatic scene from deep inside the story. I find this often poses a problem. It quite often leads to the unfolding of a plodding back-story or gives rise to too long an introduction. Many a book with a great hook has ended up unread in a book cemetery somewhere.

I agree with the comment from a reader:
“In my opinion, if an author needs a catchy first sentence to draw his reader in, he’s missing something much more important. (Similarly, if a reader judges a book by its first sentence, that reader must be so lacking in understanding of writing that why the heck would anyone write for him anyway?)
A good book is a good book. A catchy first sentence is the pretty parsley on top.”

The art of writing needs deep study, deep thought, and deep, deep hard work.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/why-stephen-king-spends-months-and-even-years-writing-opening-sentences/278043/

Announcement Man Booker Prize

Interesting development that this year Man Booker Prize has picked up The Kills by Richard House originally published in digital form.

And a small independent publisher also makes its mark for the 2nd.time.

Announcement form Man Booker

“The 2013 Man Booker Prize Longlist was announced on 23rd July. Having read a staggering 151 submitted works of fiction the five members of our judging panel, chaired by Robert Macfarlane, pronounced the following 13 novels as this year’s ‘Man Booker dozen’:

This year the announcement of the Man Booker dozen was picked up widely by the international press. Amongst coverage in the UK, The Daily Telegraph focussed on Richard House’s The Kills having being originally published in digital form whilst The Independent congratulated small independent Scottish publisher Sandstone Press for being long-listed for the prize for a second time (the first was in 2011 for Jane Rogers’ The Testament of Jessie Lamb). The London Evening Standard discussed how women ‘dominated’ the longlist by being in the majority of the authors whereas The Guardian picked up on ‘unfamiliar voices’ being in the majority, and the Irish press of course ran with the three Irish authors being longlisted.

Internationally, the Man Booker Prize was discussed at length in America with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times and TIME Magazine all covering the announcement. Articles also appeared in the Hong Kong Standard, Reuters India, MSN New Zealand and Elle magazine online, to name just a few.

Following on from the announcement and the global attention it attracted, a number of publishers have decided to bring forward the publication dates of as-yet-unreleased longlisted books. On the list of 13, five novels are currently unreleased. Publishers Hamish Hamilton have said that Alison Mcleod’s Unexploded, scheduled for September, will now have an ‘immediate’ release, while Sandstone Press have brought The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris forward to the start of August. Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson was due on 15th August but Mantle have confirmed it will be in bookshops early while Granta will publish The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton on 1st August rather than its originally scheduled release date of 5th September. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri is planned for 26th September but Bloomsbury is considering an early publication date.

The Long List:

Five Star Billionaire Tash Aw (Fourth Estate)
We Need New Names NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)
The Luminaries Eleanor Catton (Granta)
Harvest Jim Crace (Picador)
The Marrying of Chani Kaufman Eve Harris (Sandstone Press)
The Kills Richard House (Picador)
The Lowland Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)
Unexploded Alison MacLeod ( Hamish Hamilton)
TransAtlantic Colum McCann (Bloomsbury)
Almost English Charlotte Mendelson (Mantle)
A Tale for the Time Being Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
The Spinning Heart Donal Ryan (Doubleday Ireland)
The Testament of Mary Colm Tóibín (Viking)

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams – a poet of great distinction.

The Hurricane here topical and succinct

The Hurricane
by William Carlos Williams

The tree lay down
on the garage roof
and stretched, You
have your heaven,
it said, go to it.

William Carlos Williams, (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was a family doctor and had a successful literary career as a poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer and an essayist. I most appreciate his economy of words, and the clarity and freshness of his work. He is a modernist and his works portray imagism, subtle and strong.

Kunal Basu, author, poet.

KUNAL BASU
AUTHOR POET

Kunal Basu is the Indian author of The Opium Clerk (2001), The Miniaturist (2003), Racists (2006) and The Yellow Emperor’s Cure (2011). The title story of his short story collection ‘The Japanese Wife’ (2008) has been made into a film by Aparna Sen, the Indian filmmaker of great repute.

TAKING QUESTIONS

Born in Kolkatato, he grew up in Bengal. He was brought up in a family steeped in writing, publishing and acting, a literary family that enjoyed books and the arts. He now lives in England and teaches at Oxford University.

KUNAL BASU
ENJOYING HIS FANS

His writing has taken him into a vast variety of subjects and deep research, from the study of opium to the Mogul miniature artists, from Africa to China and from a small village in Bengal to Tokyo. All his works are rich and deeply engrossing.

DOUGLAS KERR
AUTHOR WRITER

Recently at the HK International Literary Festival (5th to 14th October 2012) Kunal Basu gave several readings to eager crowds of Hong Kong writers and readers and was in conversation with Douglas Kerr, Director HK International Literary Festival Ltd.

In Conversation with Jeet Thayil

The 12th Hong Kong International Literary Festival
Jeet Thayil

The 12th Hong Kong Literary Festival
6th October 2012

In conversation with Jeet Thayil, novelist, poet and musician

Jeet Thayil and Hugh Chiverton, RTHK Radio 3

Image 2821 Inconversation
Jeet Thayil and Hugh Chiverton

Jeet , born in India, educated in Hong Kong, Mumbai and New York, and talked about Bombay and Mumbai, the changed city, his experiences and writing of his first novel Narcopolis, short listed for the 2012 Booker prize.

The Crowd

Book Signing
Vicki and Nirmala

Another Nirmala, Nirmala Thomas

“Shuklaji Street in the bowels of Foras Road, Bombay’s squalid red-light district of reeking brothels and drug-dens, provides the setting for Narcopolis, Jeet Thayil’s debut novel.” Read on:

Vernon Ram’s review at The Asian Review of Books
http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/new/?ID=1291#!

See my review:

NARCOPOLIS by Jeet Thayil

The Hong Kong Internation Literary Festival 2012

Opening Ceremony
An energetic cocktail of champagne and books

The festival from 5th October to the 14th October started with the opening party at the British Consulate Reception Hall on the evening of Thursday the 4th October. Hong Kong writers and readers, cosmopolitan and vibrant, welcomed writers from overseas.

Opening
Christine Van, co-chair

Packed Hall

JEET THAYIL
“Narcopolis” shortlisted for Booker Prize 2012

Lindiwe Mabuza
Poet and short story writer

Ambassador Lindiwe Mabuza has worked as a teacher, radio journalist and editor and was involved in abolishing Apartheid in S. Africa.

Tembi Tambo
Consulate General SA

Rapt Capture

Reflection

At hand was Dymocks with complete array of books from visiting authors.

Become a Friend of the Festival www.festival.org.hk

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

NEW CONCEPT – WRITE WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW

Write What You Don’t Know

The last eleven years of learning to write and writing while learning I have been told over and over again ‘WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW’.
Today I made a momentous discovery.
Toni Morrison says: ‘WRITE TO FIND OUT WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW’.
Now that is a new concept. She goes on to say stimulate the imagination. Explore unusual characters who become involved in unusual events.

You might call me a Toni Morrison fan. Have read eleven T.M.books in all and several I have read twice:

The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song of Solomon
Beloved
Paradise
Jazz
Love
A Mercy
Home
… all portray unusual characters in unusual situations except for
Conversations which is a book of interviews, and Remember, the Journey to School Integration, a book of photos that captures the pain and joy of integration between blacks and whites.

She also says don’t base characters on real people. Using real people make writers literary vampires.

BOOKS INTO MOVIES

CLOUD ATLAS

I became a David Mitchell fan years ago when I met him and since then started a collection of his books. Recently while chatting about books Indra mentioned reading Cloud Atlas and rekindled my interest and I am now reading Cloud Atlas again, on my Kindle.

Books being turned into movies. A short list below.

“Cloud Atlas,” by David Mitchell

Trailer on Youtube

Plot Summary: The book follows six separate stories, going from the far past to a future postapocalyptic world, in which each story is suddenly cut off to follow the next character who somehow connects to the previous one: an unenthusiastic voyageur crossing the Pacific in 1850, a poor composer living in Belgium, a journalist from California, a publisher trying to escape his creditors, a genetically altered “dinery server” on death row, a young Islander watching the death of science and civilization.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, and Halle Berry have all taken roles in this movie.
Release date: October 26, 2012.

“On the Road,” by Jack Kerouac

Plot summary: Kerouac’s classic novel captures America and the Beat Generation as he tells the story of his years spent traveling America with friend, Neal Cassady. The two wander through the country searching for self-knowledge and life experience. This classic novel about the yearning for freedom and longing for something more has long defined what it means to be “Beat” and has been an inspiration for many generations since.
Starring: Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, and Kristen Stewart.
Release date: 2012, yet to be announced.

“The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Plot summary: The novel is set on Long Island during the roaring 1920s. Nick, just returned from the war, rents a house in West Egg where he is invited to the extravagant parties hosted by his guarded and mysterious neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Nick eventually learns Gatsby’s story – the tale of a young man who corrupts himself in seeking to attain the American Dream and gain the love of the idealized, and unattainable woman, Daisy.
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio is starring as Gatsby, and Carey Mulligan is playing his ex, Daisy.
Release date: December 25, 2012.

“Life of Pi,” by Yann Martel
Plot summary: The novel follows young Pi Patel, a 16-year-old whose family moves from India to North America on board a Japanese cargo ship, along with a number of his father’s zoo animals. When the ship sinks, Pi is left alone in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a Bengal tiger.
Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, and Tobey Maguire.
Release date: November 21, 2012.

Author MAEVE BINCHY

Maeve Binchy the well-known Irish writer has died at 72 (30 July 2012) Most of her works were set in Ireland. A prolific writer of novels and short stories, her work has been translated into 37 languages.

I have not read any of her books though a friend had given me Circle of Friends many years ago. I would like to read Tara Road.

MAEVE BINCHY

Though I have not met the author I saw her at an interview – she had a beautiful personality, was down to earth and quite jolly.
Novels:
Light a Penny Candle (1982)
Echoes (1985)
Firefly Summer (1987)
Silver Wedding (1988)
Circle of Friends (1990)
The Copper Beech (1992)
The Glass Lake (1994)
Evening Class (1996)
Tara Road (1998)
Scarlet Feather (2000)
Quentins (2002)
Nights of Rain and Stars (2004)
Whitethorn Woods (2006)
Heart and Soul (2008)
Minding Frankie (2010)

LETTER BY LETTER

Silent work behind the monument

Dear Shobha, this is in appreciation of the tremendous hard work that I know went into your thriller. Three hundred and three pages of letters made words, led to ideas that made one novel. A big cast of characters remembered and developed, a story line that did not lose its way. Plucked from imagination ‘The Silent Monument’.

This is a big achievement for any writer and my friend did it. Thank you for an interesting read. More success with your writing…
Happy Birthday, Shobha!

The Silent Monument by Shobha Nihalini

STEINBECK

“In 1933, thirty-one year old author John Steinbeck newly famous and living near Monterrey, California, with its unmatched views of the Pacific Ocean, began to notice the strange appearance of rundown vehicles from Oklahoma. By 1938, he was watching destitute fathers cooking rats, dogs and cats as food for their children while working on what would become The Grapes of Wrath. Though it became a best-seller, and was almost immediately recognized as an American classic, it was also reviled, accused of being “a lie, a black infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind” by Oklahoma’s Congressman Lyle Boren, and banned by school boards in New York, Illinois, California, and elsewhere”
Jay Parini

Steinbeck titles read twice each:

Grapes of Wrath is set in the Great Depression of the 1930’s is the story of a family of sharecroppers who had to leave their land now a ‘dust bowl’ seek to live elsewhere and still suffer extreme hardship. Winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction (novels)

Of Mice and Men – This tragic play written in 1937 is about George and Lennie, two traveling ranch workers and their desire to save enough money to buy their own farm. A story also set in the times of The Great Depression it portrays much hardship and the struggle against racism and prejudice, and against the mentally ill.

East of Eden – In this novel set in the Salinas Valley Steinbeck deals with the nature of good and evil. The story the Hamiltons and the Trasks is partly based in his own family background, published in 1952.

Waiting to read: Steinbeck’s
Travels with Charley and In Dubious Battle

The Fear Index by Robert Harris

The Fear Index

From Dickens of two hundred years ago I jumped straight into a future thriller ‘The Fear Index’ by Robert Harris on Kindle e-reader. I also listened to the unabridged audio book version, narrated by Christian Rodska.

What I admire most about Robert Harris is the extensive research he does for each one of his books, whether set in the past historical Pompeii or in the port city Archangel in Russia or into the computer world.

The Fear Index reminded me Bill Gates’ talk of 1999 ‘Business at Speed of Thought’.
‘As I was considering these issues…a new concept came into my head: The digital nervous system. A digital nervous system consists of the digital process that enable a company to perceive and react to its environment, to sense competitive challenges and customer need and organize timely responses.’

The Fear Index: Dr. Alex Hoffman and Hugo Quarry are partners in an investment company in Geneva – Hoffman Investment Technologies. Alex, the physicist is the brains of the operation. He programs his smart computers to generate huge financial returns for their clients. Hugo Quarry, an Englishman, is the financier who takes care of the business side. The success of the company is due to the vast sums the investors are able to reap due to the company’s digitized programme, VIXAL-4’s calculations of the money market.

The operation moves along well allowing both men the means to enjoy expensive life styles. Alex pursues his hobby acquiring Antiquarian books. Being a paperless advocate he insists on a totally paperless office and so he keeps his antique book collection a secret. Alex’s wife is well provided for and is a high-powered artist who converts body scans into glass sculpture. Hugo follows an expensive decadent life-style with yachts, fast women, and faster cars.

Soon fear on fear mounts. The super computer develops a personality of its own. The artificial intelligence evolves its own algorithm and starts to work for itself. It begins to virtually stalk the creator. It rearranges Alex’s life dangerously. Alex receives the first edition of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, with the bookmark on the page about fear. It appears he purchased and paid for it. The super computer takes over his life and his business. It begins to work on the financial market. The out-of-control computer disseminates information in nanoseconds and sends out ‘buy and sell’ messages. It creates price shifts that cause volatility and fear in the financial market. Neither Alex nor his team of computer experts is able to control the output of the VIXAL-4’s “brain”. Considerable tension builds up. The rest thrilling and nail-biting, and I am not revealing more.

The plot is riveting. One does not need knowledge of high technology or of hedge funds and stock markets to enjoy this thriller which is part sci-fi and part mystery. Yes, there is murder too. The ending leaves one imagining a sequel.

‘The Fear Index’ had me contemplating on our super technology assisted lives. Artificial intelligence has already taken over the many tasks we did for ourselves and much is now taken for granted. I am thinking about my own electronic future. Will computers move beyond my control?

CHARLES DICKENS

Great Expectations By Charles Dickens

Each time I read and reread Dickens I find his writing more interesting, more humorous, and revealing more layers.

In February on Charles Dickens’ 200th anniversary Don and I read ‘Great Expectations’ at the same time on our kindles. It is the second reading for me having read it the first time many years ago. Our reading took us a little longer than most modern books do, but it was much fun. Most nights we compared what we had read during the day and came up with humorous incidents that had us laughing again. We were filled too with much appreciation for this 200-year-old author.

Dickens is satirical of his times, looks deeply and critically into the foibles of his society but 200 years later we find the same foibles in our society. Great Expectations at first seems simple but it is a complex novel of love and cheer, loyalty and betrayal, guilt and innocence, and sympathy, sentimentality, and much wry wit.

The story is full of forebodings and dark too from time to time, but keeps the reader engaged throughout. We get great insight into the lives of the ordinary people and high society, into the lives of the poor and rich. The language is a little archaic but does not slow the reader. Much of the text is beautiful.

Expectations are several. We follow Pip’s character as he grows from a village boy to a young man lost to a man sensible and cultured and with good values.

A very strict and nasty older sister and her husband, Joe, bring up the orphan Pip. Joe, a kind mild mannered blacksmith, is a good influence in Pip’s life. His first expectation is to get a good education. But he is soon contracted by Miss Haversham to serve his apprenticeship with Joe with a view to becoming a blacksmith. Becoming a blacksmith is not part of the Pip’s ambition. His expectation is to be part of high society. The young boy wants to be well educated and move away from the village, move up to high society. Soon a mystery benefactor arranges through a prominent London lawyer to buy him out. Circumstances change immediately and Pip is sent to London on his way to becoming a gentleman. That comes at a cost. He is in Iove with a highly placed young lady in Miss Haversham’s care. And he knows nothing of money management and gets into debt squandering his quota of money from his benefactor in high living. Due to even more higher expectations he’s deeply disappointed when he finds out his benefactor is no nobleman. His fierce anger towards the man who is a criminal, whom he at first found not up to be to his expectations turns into kindness and love. This love for the stranger nearly costs his own life.

Towards the end he realizes that many of his expectations were merely superficial. He sheds his false values and looking for deeper meaning in life finds happiness and love.
Humour in the first chapter: Pip as a young boy is in the churchyard on a foggy evening and walks about looking at inscriptions on the tombstones, one of them is his parents’, both his father and mother buried in the same plot.

‘At the time I stood in the churchyard reading the family tombstones. I had just enough learning to be able to spell them out. My construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct for I read “Wife of the Above” was a complementary reference to my father’s exaltation to a better world.’

And Dickens has such witty and clever way of saying things. When Pip is a young man of means he says of his housekeeper and her niece:

‘They both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed to their chronically looking in at keyholes, and they were always at hand when not wanted, indeed that was their only reliable quality besides larceny.’

Love it.

My Collin’s Classics

Note: About Collins

In 1819, Millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set p a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymnbooks and prayer book. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperColins Publishers as we know it today.

THE MASQUE OF AFRICA

The Masque of Africa
Sir V. S. Naipaul

‘Masque’ comes from 16th/17th century Italian musical theatre. This masque is neither courtly nor festive. It is no entertainment, no pageant.

Sir V. S. Naipaul is one of my favourite authors. I am an avid reader of his writings and have a good collection of the author’s books. But with ‘The Masque of Africa’ he has sorely disappointed me.

In ‘Finding the Center’, V. S. Naipaul says “Half a writer’s work . . . is the discovery of his subject”. The Nobel Laureate has chosen to travel through six African countries to get to know his subject. Beginning with Uganda, the centre of the African continent, he travels through Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Gabon and completes his journey in the southern part the continent, South Africa. He sets out to study subversion of old Africa by an outside world. It was to be a cultural one and the author succeeds in keeping it to just that in all the countries but when gets to S. Africa he plunges headlong into politics.

He has attempted to capture the mystique of some of the traditional and indigenous beliefs of the countries he visits, no single cultural unit. He touches on Animism, Islam and Christianity. It is too challenging and vast an attempt on African culture and in trying to cover too much the writing becomes sketchy and superficial. The author fails to come up with a passionate study. There is no enticement for a would-be traveller. It is not a book on African beliefs either.

As a knighted author of much fame he is, without doubt, a vip traveller in these countries he would have been given special treatment in places he went to. He is accompanied by citizens well placed – politicians, bankers and writers but throughout the book the author sounds like he is a budget traveller and often alludes to petty finance. He has no money to give for offerings to witch doctors; fails to observe the custom of taking gifts. At times he implies he’s afraid of the witch doctors in spite of his highly placed entourage. Burial places of kings, shrines, witch doctors have been randomly selected but much of the interpretations of tribal customs, the cult and invocation of spirits seems to have been covered halfheartedly.

The keen observation often shown by Naipaul as a writer comes through from time to time but not enough to redeem this book. Sad to say there is much oversight. It could be fault lies with the editor(s), agents and publisher.
The word ‘perhaps’ is used too often, once it is used four times in eight lines.
A blanket, meaningless statements occur, one example: “Near Lagos it has two wide lanes; and just as in India” – India is a continent, where in India?

The author’s love of animals is seen when he makes observations about cats and kittens but at times it is like something out of a child’s book and come as a distraction.
“In the second gateway a small white kitten with a patch of colour on its back was crying. It was like the kitten I had seen in…It was possibly the last of its litter, surviving heaven knows how. I had to leave the dainty little creature opening its mouth and crying, still remarkably whole, still nourished by the milk of its mother, now perhaps persecuted and killed.”

In “A Way in the World” Naipaul’s abhorrence to cruelty is mentioned and here too he talks about cruelty, cruelty to animals – the cruelty of eating animals like horses, elephants, cats, dogs, bats. So wherein comes the ‘un-cruelty’ of eating cows, chickens and fish I wonder.

I thought a certain amount of arrogance is displayed when visiting a Babalawo magician:
“in the corner something lavatorial and disagreeable were three shrines the oracles…”

Naipaul’s uncluttered prose is evident in all his writings. Quote: I wish my prose to be transparent—I don’t want the reader to stumble over me.
But here his unclutter borders on simplistic.
“I went to the lavatory. I saw the family dogs in two big paved cages at the back of the yard. One cage had small dogs. The other cage had big dogs, a Dalmatian and various hounds, all fine and well exercised and happy. While I watched I saw them fed by a servant who entered the cages with their food. I could have looked at the feeding scene for a long time.”

Sir Naipaul did not achieve his purpose:
“To reach that beginning was the purpose of my book”.
But he left me happy with this lovely piece of Bantu wisdom –

“YOU ARE A PERSON BECAUSE OF ANOTHER PERSON”

Dreams from my Father

Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

Great men become greater.

Dreams From My Father is an autobiography written with a beauty of language that could easily be mistaken for fiction of a literary stature. Throughout the three sections — his origins in Hawaii, his life in Chicago and his visit to Kenya — Barack Obama’s reflections shape the book with much intelligence. Dreams from his father… not quite his own dreams and not his father’s dreams either.

It is a book about divisions and parts and exposures to cultures: Hawaiian, American (black and white), African and Asian. And being closely knit with each. It is an understandable whole, a rich personal history.

Barack Obama is born to a white American mother from Kansas and a black Kenyan father. His parents part company soon after the birth of the child. His father returns to Kenya and Barack hardly has him in his life after that. He is brought up by his mother and grandparents in Hawaii. When his mother remarries, mother and son go to live in Indonesia where he is brought up by his Indonesian stepfather. Living and attending school in Indonesia exposes him to a totally different culture and experiences. His mother sends him to America to complete high school.

Soon after, he travels to Kenya, where he gets to know his father and meets his ‘brothers and sisters’ and a horde of aunties and uncles and other relatives. On his return to America, he continues his studies and, after graduating, he goes to Chicago to work in underprivileged black communities before deciding to go to law school at Harvard.

Hawaii, Indonesia, America, and Kenya give texture to his life. His exploration of his identity and understanding, his taste of a varied life of weaknesses and strengths, is written with honesty, sensitivity and openness.

Barack Obama is a great writer and it is not surprising that his oratory reflects a man of conviction, and a man who is comfortable with himself.

We are indeed fortunate to have such a man live amongst us and for us to be in an era where we get to read him, see him, hear him, and experience the changes he hopes to bring about.