Out came a thought and then another...

Year end notes

2011-12-25T23:53:00.001+05:30

I just got back from a surprise birthday party for a cousin. It has been years since I went to an event with a surprise involved. And these days the birthday parties I go to are as an escort for my kid. So when said party was whispered to me I became quite excited and looked forward to it. Now that I am back from this successful surprise I am filled with a nice tinge of nostalgia for a year that had its share of seasons. Let me make a list out of it okay? Okay.

* Son in kindergarten

* Geoff Dyer's monthly column The Reading Life in The New York Times Book Review

* Great bubbly friend J relocates to Chennai

* Fun project: Tumblr blog to keep track of Geoff Dyer on the web

* Old pal from college goads me into working again (thanks!)

* Elizabeth Hardwick's Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature - a rich, perceptive collection of essays. Inspiring. Reassuring.

* David Foster Wallace; Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - pure genius

* 1917 circa 12" Emerson Antique Oscillating Desk Fan - son loves fans; I love this fan

* Steve Jobs's death - why did it seem so personal (for so many) for a couple of days?

* December specials: Charles Nicholl, Andrew Motion (ed.) - Interrupted Lives: in literature, Andrew Motion - Ways of Life: On Places, Painters and Poets, David Lodge - The Practice of Writing: essays, lectures, reviews and a diary - to read three delightful books back to back. What a month!

* Chennai weather this Margazhi

It is hard to predict how we will remember each year eventually: some impressions will become markers and others will fade away. These are the little glimpses that assemble for me this day.

For 2012 my reading life is simple enough to state:

* Write more

* Read discriminately

For the cousin whose birthday it is today: I hope you enjoy In a Strange Room. Thanks for that comment about the RSS feed. It made me post.

For everyone reading this, A very happy new year!

My Question For Myself

2011-11-13T15:47:00.001+05:30

In Granta 100, Tobias Wenzel writes,

'I have never been asked by a journalist what my favourite colour is,' Frank McCourt told me once, with a tinge of irony and some disappointment. His statement made a link to a problem that I have experienced for a long time as a literary journalist: the doubt that I might forget a question, a question that could be crucial to the person I was interviewing. So, two years ago, I decided to turn my anxiety into a game. At the end of each interview, I asked the writer to adopt the role of interviewer, asking him- or herself a question and then supplying the answer...

This interesting game ends up covering seventy seven writers and along with Carolin Seeliger's piercing portraits turns into a very appealing book. I'm looking forward to getting myself a copy sometime soon.

H & R

2011-11-02T10:20:00.000+05:30

Recently I have been listening to a compilation CD of the hits of Harris Jayaraj & A R Rahman. I picked it up because the tracks were all jumbled together and I was curious to see how a HJ would sound next to a Rahman. After many loops and skips I can perhaps offer only this comparison of the music: you have two friends H and R. H is a pleasant woman and you love spending time with her. She is fun, addictive and knows a lot of people. A lot of people also know her. She entertains a great deal and many people visit her home. Is R pleasant? It depends. She is certainly mysterious and intelligent. Often engaging and friendly. At times very inspiring and touching. At other times she shakes your perception and offers new resonances. A lot of people like her too but they like her differently at different times. In all the years you've known these two friends of yours, R has grown with you while H is the same person she was when you first knew her. You still like them both. But maybe you love one more?

2011-06-11T22:34:00.000+05:30

Quick thoughts on VS Naipaul finds no woman writer his literary match - not even Jane Austen and the various responses that have been cropping up on the web:

Did we try asking:

What did he say?

Why did he say it?

Does it matter?

If it matters, how?

If it doesn't matter, why are we talking about it?

Instead what we asked is:

How can he say it?

How dare he?

He is a ##$%^^&(**&^^%

He has always been a %$#^%*%

What else can you expect from him?

Does he know what he is talking about?

Perhaps, we should also ask:

Do we know what we are talking about?

Flitting with Geoff Dyer

2011-05-29T16:44:00.000+05:30

Originally posted here. Tweaked somewhat in the version below to reflect the passage of time.

It is fair to say that the better part of my reading life in 2010 has been spent in the company of Geoff Dyer's words. I've read Anglo- English Attitudes, But Beautiful, Out of Sheer Rage, Paris Trance, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, The Ongoing Moment and currently reading Working the Room. Also throw in the Selected Essays of John Berger, edited by Dyer, which is the first Dyer sample that I had.

The experience has not been mind-blowing. Instead it has been thoroughly enjoyable, illuminating, funny, reassuring, and in the case of But Beautiful filled with admiration at the utter beauty of his presentation. When you hear of Geoff Dyer, you also hear of genre-defying. Where do you put him? How do you classify? Dyer flits across subjects with alarming consistency. Every successive book is so clearly unlike its predecessor that you must be willing to catch his flight and go on his fancy ride. It helps that he does not expect you to come equipped with too many skills other than perhaps some open-mindedness. Like he admits in his essay collection Anglo-English Attitudes, he writes to learn about his current curiosity. And writes himself out of his curiosity. D H Lawrence, Jazz, Photography, Buddhism, Eastern Classical Music (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ramamani are particular favourites), Varanasi, Venice have all captured his curiosity and have all been written about with the enthusiasm and diligence and fresh insight of a learner.

In The Ongoing Moment, a compilation of the works of many mostly American photographers through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Dyer's choices of photos and subjects are subjective and the reader is encouraged to read the book like she would rummage in a box of photos. He starts with the famous Paul Strand photograph of the Blind Woman and goes on to explore the fascination that photographers have had with a blind subject including Diane Arbus's photograph of Borges in Central Park and of Richard Avedon's experience of trying to photograph Borges at his home in Buenos Aires. Dyer's next subject is hands and I was intrigued by his explanation of Dorothea Lange's photograph of a Migratory Cotton Picker. The other subjects are hats, benches, stairs and so on.

In all of Dyer's books that I have read so far there are patterns. He likes D H Lawrence, Albert Camus, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Berger (his hero), and these gentlemen appear in quotes in most books. Dyer also likes to quote a lot. While this should be an irritating tic to endure, what makes it appealing is the subterfuge he employs. Quotes get worked into sentences as paraphrases, thematic nods, straight lifts of unusual word pairings etc. As a reader, it is a delight when you become suspicious of a sentence only to look at his always extensive notes and sources section to see that he tells you, 'but of course I used it cleverly, good for you that you are curious...' His sex scenes in Paris Trance and Jeff in Venice are remarkably similar, something that I would not have noticed if I hadn't read them in the same month. And unlike metaphorical sex that a lot of authors resort to, Dyer prefers the frank. What a relief to not read symbolism. In that sense the frankness of the sex becomes a symbol for something else.

But Beautiful is extraordinary in its lyrical invocation of the lives of the jazz musicians in the golden age of American jazz. I can close my eyes and still see Thelonious Monk sitting at his white piano wedged close to the kitchen slab, lost to the difficulty of his daily existence and tuned in to some free flowing abstraction that would become his music. I can feel Duke Ellington's spirit as he hops through all of America, to gig after gig after gig, in a battered car, sleeping in the front seat. Dyer's writing is so evocative of the rich, conflicted and tormented inner lives of these genius black musicians who created music from the very depths of their angst.

Up Next in this year's flit with Dyer is Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It.

Glenn Gould

2011-04-01T18:59:00.002+05:30

Glenn Gould
photo sourced from Roger Ebert's review of
32 Short Films About Glenn Gould

Unusual Pianist - Pianist par excellence - Special Chair - Favourite Rug - Solitary Genius - Changed Classical Music Forever - Twentieth Century's Best Pianist - Sudden Death - Eccentric Life

When one tries to look up details on Glenn Gould one often finds a combination of the keywords above. When one reads the lives of several geniuses it starts to seem like 'eccentric' is the equivalent of 'normal' in geniusspeak.

So who was Glenn Gould? Some people have tried to explore this question through books and movies:

Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

The Music Itself: Glenn Gould's Contrapuntal Vision *

Glenn Gould at the Metropolitan Museum *

In the Chair * (Review of Peter Ostwald's Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and the Tragedy of Genius)

Glenn Gould, the Virtuoso as Intellectual *

There isn't much point here in going over the characteristics that made Gould the extraordinary eccentric that he was: the low bench, his humming, gesticulating, untoward grimacing and conducting as he played, the strange liberties he took with composers like Mozart whom he disliked, and indeed, the odd choice of repertory that would include the Bach that he made uniquely his, plus composers like Bizet, Wagner, Sibelius, Webern, and Richard Strauss, who were not widely known for using the keyboard as their medium. But there is no way of denying that from the moment Gould's recording of the Goldberg Variations appeared, a genuinely new phase in the history of virtuosity began: he lifted the sheer mastery of playing before the public to an elevation, or call it a side-road or deviation, of an unprecedented kind. What made his appearance a more pronouncedly original event was that he had no known precedents in the history of music.

Statue of Glenn Gould
Toronto
photo sourced from Wikipedia

Glenn Gould shot to fame in America (he was Canadian) with his rendering of Bach's Goldberg Variations in 1955. He recorded the Variations again in 1981.

As a listener, it is amazing if you can remember the exact moment when you first heard an artist play and knew that you would become a fan of his for life. Lorrie Moore captures one such moment in her book A Gate at the Stairs when the protagonist Tassie Keltjin listens to Gould the first time:

She put a CD in the car player. "Bach's first French suite. Do you know it?"

After some clicking and static, it began, stately and sad. "I think so," I said, not sure at all. My friends had already begun to lie, to bluff a sophistication they felt that at the end of the ten second bluff they would authentically possess. But I was not only less inclined this way but less skilled. "Maybe not, though," I added. Then, "Wait, it's ringing a bell."

"Oh it's the most beautiful thing," she said. "Especially with this pianist." It was someone humming along with the light dirge of the Bach. Later I would own every loopy Glenn Gould recording available, but there in the car with Sarah was the first time I'd ever heard him play. The piece was like an elegant interrogation made of tangled yarn, a query from a well-dressed man in a casket, not yet dead. It proceeded slowly, like a careful equation, and then not: if x = y, if major = minor, if death equals part of life and life part of death, then what is the sum of the infinite notes of this one phrase? It asked, answered, reasked, its moody asking a refinement of reluctance or dislike. I had never heard a melody quite like it.

Let the music speak for itself.

Notes:
Bach's Goldberg Variations

* Edward Said: Music at the Limits

Glenn Gould at Grooveshark

PostScript:
I am a relatively new listener of Gould's work. I came to them through Edward Said's writing. Gould's rendering is so alive that I dare not describe and ~~therefore~~ thereby flatten them into words on a page. Also I am still soaking them and it is hard to isolate liking at this point.

Originally posted at Notes on Tones

So

2011-03-22T15:03:00.000+05:30

the little one turned three yesterday...

and I realized that cliches are so for a reason:

time does fly
it just feels like yesterday
I cannot believe he is three already
I cannot believe how much I have changed
Life has changed
Thank God!

Reader Alert: Open Library

2011-02-23T16:03:00.000+05:30

I am still navigating Open Library but here is what is exciting:

Over a million free e-books
Books can be read or read-to (there is a nice audio integration) - Gutenberg + Librivox say
Signing up is free; it gives you the ability to add or edit stuff
You can create lists (woo hoo! though I wonder why I need another listing service for)
A small but growing lending library

Signing up already? That's what I thought...

Lore Segal - The Reverse Bug

2011-02-20T19:35:00.000+05:30

I cannot recommend this story enough. Listen to the wonderful New Yorker podcast where Deborah Treisman discusses Lore Segal's The Reverse Bug with Jennifer Egan.

Also take a look at Lore Segal's website for more information on her works.

Originally posted here.

Notes on Reading

2010-12-31T14:53:00.000+05:30

It has become a ritual: announcing the making and faring of reading lists (my planned 2010 reading.)

The exercise of making a reading list is a fruitful one. Because you have in mind the thought of a list, you pay attention to strange titles that you come across and, lest you forget, you note them. Interesting connections start cropping up when you do such notetaking for a while. Hence when I chose John Berger's About Looking and Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage for 2010, I ended up reading instead Selected Essays of John Berger edited by Geoff Dyer. Berger was on the list because I had read Ways of Seeing (by chance because a friend had gifted the book) the previous year and wanted to read his other works. Dyer came about because I was reading a lot of D H Lawrence material in 2009 and was interested in offbeat writings on his work. Out of Sheer Rage was highly recommended by many Lawrentians. How fortuitous it is then to learn that John Berger is Geoff Dyer's mentor. Not only did I read Out of Sheer Rage but, on reflection, it looks like my reading this year might well be called Year of the Dyer (regardless of how cheesy it sounds.)

Another useful purpose of a reading list, especially if you make one every year, is the bird's eye view it provides of the evolution of your reading life. To see the seeds of your current reading lodged in the base of some haphazard past reading is quite a revealing and satisfying experience. Likewise it is also revealing to see how some focus about future reading can shape seemingly haphazard choices.

I have been making the 2011 list for a while now (in fact I have a tentative 2012 list as well, no specifics but have marked Dickens so far) and what happened was I read quite a few that I was supposed to read next year! Remarkable ones include Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room and David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk (I am still reading this phenomenal book, seems like a fitting final book to my reading year. For more on the book, read Mark Sarvas's excellent coverage on The Elegant Variation.) I intend to carry over the ones I did not complete this year and also to keep the 2011 list broader than my present list. Naturally outreading the list isn't the aim but reading out (throat willing) is.

This year has been a very enjoyable year in the reading life and I look forward to a better 2011. I hope you have a great year reading.

John Banville - The Lemur

2010-11-14T19:25:00.000+05:30

I read The Lemur in a day! I can't remember the last time I read a book in a single day. Unless you count the summer when, completely jobless and all of fourteen, I read all the Colin Forbes thrillers back to back. Just don't ask my mom what she thought of that summer. Lying in bed and ignoring the parent and only answering phone calls from friends does not gain parental approval. Nor does the parent forget.

Off you go to Dogears to check out my post on the Lemur.

A quick note

2010-11-05T22:29:00.000+05:30

to let you know that I post on two other blogs as well:

Project Dogeared that aims to capture the reading experience

Notes on Tones that aims to capture the listening (music) experience

In a Strange Room

2010-11-01T15:08:00.002+05:30

Originally posted at: Project Dogeared

A week ago, on one of those impulses that make you buy shoes you don't need, I ordered Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room. Glassy-eyed, unable to tear yourself away from the window display of the shoes, hovering until you can resist no longer, I kept checking my email for the shipping information and then kept refreshing the webpage with the tracking details every hour to see if the book had landed in Chennai. Then there was the agony of waiting until it got to my doorstep. This is the point at which you have paid the bill for the shoes, the frenzy of impulse slowly replaced by the unease of post-impulse. Now the book should have been opened, flipped and delegated to one of the many to-read summits, stoking the same guilt as the unnecessary shoes.. But what happened instead was I started reading it in earnest. For the next few days, whenever I found time to read, I picked up In a Strange Room instead of foraging among the other half-reads and squandering ten minutes on the dilemma of what would be good to read now.

In my imaginings of how memory could be narrated, I always envisioned fragments that the reader would pick up and connect. What Galgut does is quite brilliant. Instead of fragments what we get is a sequence of events with fabrications, forgotten bits all admitted to. But the best part is the switching of voices from third to first person and back to third. The first time I encountered the switch it was startling. A few times into them I was able to appreciate how well the first person conveys the sense of immediacy the narrator feels with certain moments in his memory of each journey. Isn't that how it is with memory. You try to recall something that happened and at some point you can feel the breeze on your face as if you were back again at that beach. I always feel that distinct awful aftertaste of vomit when I look at the cover of Richard Bach's Curious Lives (I refer to it as THAT ferrets book) because when I was gifted that book I was in my first trimester and had just thrown up lunch. Voice switch is not the only thing Galgut does. He plays around with tense as well. The overall effect is of zooming in and out of these journeys, rewinding, forwarding, upping the volume sometimes and pressing on mute occasionally.

As I was reading In a Strange Room I kept thinking of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. I don't know why except that the latter was another 'memory' book.Their contrasts are vast and interesting but that is for another post. In all this talk about shoes and impulses I missed mentioning the flip-flops. So reasonable, so useful, so comfortable, so comforting. I also ordered Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. That arrived along with Galgut's. Since it was a book one heard about a lot and since Rilke was showing up everywhere in my readings, I sat with the Letters last night, read a couple, starred a few lines, set it aside and went back to reading Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment. Dyer was focusing on the lonely overcoated man going nowhere and how he was such a recurring theme in photographs. As is habitual with Dyer jazz found a way into the discussion about snow and photographing from windows and Eugene Smith. In the late 1950s - early 1960s, Smith holed himself in a Manhattan building and set up six cameras near windows (he went on to rig microphones as well) and obsessively photographed the street below. On the floor above his apartment, a loft, some jazz musicians met regularly to jam. Smith started photographing their sessions. Except for a solitary shot of Smith's street, Dyer included no other photographs and I found myself thinking how I would have to look them up.

In the 2009 fall issue of the Paris Review, there is a wonderful collection of prose fragments of Rilke. I like to read those fragments every now and then. This morning, given the sampling of letters last night, it seemed fitting to pull out the magazine and read parts of Rilke's Interiors. After savouring a few paragraphs I casually turned a couple of pages and stared in wonder at Eugene Smith's photos of the Jazz Loft looking back at me.

Did I mention that Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room, consisting of three different journeys, originally appeared as three separate novellas in the Paris Review?

The Finkler Question

2010-10-13T20:42:00.001+05:30

it is for the Man Booker 2010. Howard Jacobson has broken the comic novel's four minute barrier and it is fair to assume that there will be many more wits winning awards.

But, shall we admit, what a surprise!

The BBC World Book Club

2010-10-10T19:23:00.027+05:30

I was pleasantly surprised to see how beautifully organized the World Book Club web page has become.

This is one of my favourite shows, one that I catch on the podcast and listen to at unearthly waking hours. Really, when it is 2 or 3am, all the funny things seem doubly funny and humane and touching. I loved David Mitchell's asides, Kiran Desai'd tinkling voice, James Ellroy's antics (coupled with his Paris Review interview, which I happened to read, coincidentally just two days before I heard the podcast, very very amusing) - every time, when the clock runs up its 52 minutes, you can imagine how Harriet Gilbert is going to say 'that's all we have time for.' If you want a recommendation of contrasts I'd suggest Gunter Grass talking about Tin Drum and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.

The show picks up all the books that have sold very well across the world and in that sense has a good representation of authors from various parts of the world.

Shortlists and Speculations

2010-10-09T19:18:00.000+05:30

Now that we are a few days away from the announcement of the Man Booker 2010 winner I find myself making guesses - C seems to be a huge favourite with the bookies while, like them, I can't seem to make up my mind whether Donaghue or Galgut becoming a winner would please me more.

Like Kalooki Nights, the Finkler Question seems to be a long shot. But Howard Jacobson writes so well that there should be no question about reading this book. If I come across it in the library I am definitely going to pick it up (no really this happens to me a lot. I slot some book into the 'if it crosses my field of vision' category and lo behold in the next few visits, without any effort on my part, the book will stare right back at me and say, 'well, pick me up and let's go'. So there)

Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America - I found Nicholas Spice's LRB review of this book very illuminating. It also told me that appreciating the book is going to require a lot of background reading on my part.

If I were a child and choosing were an inky pinky affair (if you were an 80s child you know what I am talking about,) then I'd wish oh wish for Damon Galgut or Emma Donoghue to win. But let us try being the grandiose adult: think what C winning the Booker will do for experimental fiction (McCarthy, in one of his interviews, when asked about his experimental fiction had a wry and interesting return remark.Now if I can find that link... Also read his Believer mag interview)

So what is your guess?

Andrea Levy - The Long Song

2010-10-09T18:55:00.000+05:30

Small Island, Andrea Levy's previous book, was an enormous success sweeping awards and touching many people's hearts across the world. I've been meaning to read it ever since I listened to the World Book Club conversation about that book. Here is a taste of Small Island.

An extract of The Long Song from Levy's website.

Levy's interview from The Man Booker website. Andrea Levy is a first timer on the Man Booker short and long lists and she acknowledges that she 'absolutely thrilled' - 'what author wouldn't be?'

Damon Galgut - In a Strange Room

2010-10-08T12:06:00.001+05:30

If I were in a bookstore and browsing authors I haven't read, the chance of my picking up In a Strange Room is very high. One, because the author, Damon Galgut, switches first and third person to tell the story and I am eager to see how that works. Two, it is a journey book - naturally the protagonist is going to be somewhere completely different from where he started and I don't mean geographically. It is always interesting to see how a person responds to change and how he changes consciously or otherwise because of the change.

Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room is on my 2011 reading list. I would love to read it even earlier except that I have Banville's Infinities and Nabokov's Speak, Memory both planned for end of this year and if I were to be any serious about reading them, I'd have to save other good books for later.

Galgut speaks about In a Strange Room on the Man Booker website

Jan Morris reviews In a Strange Room for the Guardian (haven't read this article, linking on trust. Do intend to read it after I read the book)

Alan Warner - The Stars in the Bright Sky

2010-10-05T19:15:00.001+05:30

In 1998 Alan Warner published The Sopranos about a bunch of naive young girls in their teens. This book was appreciated for its perceptive portrayal of girls growing up. In 2010, Warner returns to the Sopranos girls, now young women, in The Stars in the Bright Sky, as they meet and plan to go on a cheap holiday.

I decided to skip reading reviews of this book. It is interesting to me that with such a seemingly chicklit subject (think Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants), there is literary fiction out there written by a man.

I am marking both The Sopranos and The Stars in the Bright Sky to read strictly in order.

For more on Alan Warner:

Here is a snippet of an interview he did after The Sopranos was published:

ZS: Do you think writers have a specific role in society to educate or agitate or produce art, or are they just doing a job like anyone else?

AW:

I think intelligence should be legalised, I think, as the poet Robin Robertson says, writers write for the void. I feel I make lonely cries and sometimes someone hears me, a writer can only follow the needs of the creatures of their imagination; if writers are going to write to formulas, be it the 19th century English novel or Soviet socialist realism (or Chinese) they will be doomed to artistic failure though they might flourish with royalties.

For list of works etc, here's the contemporary writers page for Alan Warner

PS: I've been repeating this but I find this year's Booker longlist pretty remarkable in its variety. I feel like reading all of them for the sheer difference in themes and styles and periods. Truly amazing.

Lisa Moore - February

2010-09-24T19:33:00.000+05:30

The first book that came to mind when I read the description about Lisa Moore's February is Anita Shreve's The Pilot's Wife. And I don't mean prose style because I have not read Moore at all. Instead what struck me was this rumination on and coming to terms with loss that both books seem to have at their heart. I was terribly queasy reading The Pilot's Wife because it set me thinking about a lot of things. I am curious how I might perceive that book now, ten years after I first read it. Back to Moore, February, according to one of my favourite readers, DGR,

is a book about the excruciating pain of grief and loss, about tragedy and its long-term impact, about family and love, solitude and loneliness, memory and so much more, yet for all its inherent sadness it's also full of moments of hope and happiness. There can be no easy way to end a book like this, in fact it could all have gone horribly wrong, but to my mind Lisa Moore achieved something quite beautiful and completely perfect in the final pages, the significance of which will not be lost on anyone who decides to read this one.

You might want to cry for Helen...well I did.

I realize, as I do all these review readings of this year's Booker longlist, that I am more inclined to read a book that deals with a personal journey of some sort: physical, psychological.The most affecting events in life are seldom the most dramatic. Therefore too much drama in a book is a big put off for me. But, to the credit of this year's judges, the listed books seem very interesting, unique and worth reading. I am glad I chose a good list to explore.

Is February on my reading list? You bet.

Christos Tsiolkas - The Slap

2010-09-21T21:17:00.001+05:30

Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap has been popular for a while, has already won a Commonwealth award, has garnered plenty of reviews. It did not make it to the Man Booker 2010 shortlist. But, here are a couple of interesting reviews of the book:

One, from the Guardian, is neutral, throwing in guarded praise, yet sharing enough of the story and its premise to let the reader decide if The Slap might be worth her time

The premise is this: an obnoxious child does something faintly threatening at a family barbecue, and the father of the threatened child smacks him. Everyone is so upset by this that the barbecue breaks up in a hurry, and within a day, the parents of the slapped child have the slapper arrested.

...

...all the characters in The Slap are touchy, and that seems to be part of Tsiolkas's point – in the Australia of the 21st century, multiculturalism has won. People of all ages, all ethnic groups and all political persuasions are interconnected and intermarried, and, at least some of the time, they just can't handle it. The Slap, which was first published in Australia in 2008 and has since won the Commonwealth prize, is a "way we live now" novel, and it is riveting from beginning to end.

...

the great thing about The Slap is that it cannot be neatly summarised. Tsiolkas uses his premise as a guy-line to stabilise his larger structure, but his real talent is for exploring the inner lives of his eight primary characters, four women and four men, ranging in age from 18 to 70. And each of these characters is a sharp observer of those around him or her, so many more lives are illuminated as well.

The other, from someone who calls himself the Common Reader, is categorical in its dislike of the book

The story is very simple. A barbecue is being held, and when two children are fighting, the father of one of them slaps the other child. The parents of the slapped child are outraged and report the matter to the police.

...

What does The Slap say about the human condition? That humans have no capability for self-awareness, that we act entirely to suit ourselves with no thought for others, that we are bound by our upbringing and our native culture and cannot conceive of ways of thinking other than our own, that we are dominated by our physicality, defined by our need for gratification whether through sex or drugs.

...

The author seems to hate his characters and has created a set of stereotypes on whom he can vent his spleen – the self-made businessman who goes home and beats up his wife, the drug-taking teenagers, the earth-mother aging hippy who breast-feeds her three-year old, the conference attenders who screw around while high on speed, the drunk neer-do-well with pretensions to be an artist. Its a world populated by cardboard characters who all act so totally predictably.

...

A boy is slapped by another kid's father. The act has repercussions. What happens around this incident in the lives of all the people involved appears to be what the novel is trying to portray. And from the Guardian review, the author uses this premise to explore the way people live if not in the world, atleast in a multicultural melting pot that could be today's Australia or somewhere similar.

Interesting? I think so. Particularly since one reading of the book is literal and another reflective. I did not read any of the other reviews and will give this book a shot.

Man Booker 2010 Shortlist

2010-09-07T19:23:00.000+05:30

Right, shortlist out, sort of disappointed that Skippy Dies didn't make it, but happy for Room and C going strong too. Thought Thousand Autumns might have a shortlist chance but I guess the experiments on language (dialogue) didn't fit parameters.

The shortlist:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Picador - Pan Macmillan)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books - Grove Atlantic)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review -
Headline Publishing Group)

Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape - Random House)

Emma Donoghue - Room

2010-09-01T15:36:00.000+05:30

Did you know that Room is about a five year old child Jack and his Ma, who live in a eleven by eleven locked room? And that Jack thinks that this Room is the world until Ma reveals to him about the one outside?

Well, I didn't until a few minutes ago, and I have no intention of knowing more until I read the book though I bet my life that I will be crying over some parts. Funny I never thought of myself as maternal until my son came along and now when I see a baby held precariously on the pillion of a motorcycle my heart takes a dive and I just want to fly out and make sure the baby is okay. Earlier I'd have made a dry remark about how careless these pillion riding moms were. So Emma Donoghue on my to read list. And no, I did not read any reviews of the Room. Those will have to wait until I finish the book.

Emma Donoghue's website has plenty on her and her works: start with the FAQ if you like.

Room at the Man Booker website.

Tom McCarthy - C

2010-08-29T16:45:00.001+05:30

Here is a book title that even my son can read. C.

Let us look at some keywords: radio, transmission, war, reception, communication (transmission + reception), metaphor, technology, analysis.

Essays always provide a good perspective about how a writer thinks and presents his thoughts. A particularly good example of Tom McCarthy at the Guardian.

The Guardian review of C:

C is a 1960s-style anti-novel that's fundamentally hostile to the notion of character and dramatises, or encodes, a set of ideas concerning subjectivity. On the face of it, though, it's a historical fantasy, sometimes witty and sometimes eerie, built around the early years of radio transmission. The central figure, Serge Carrefax, is born in 1898 on an estate named Versoie in southern England. His father, an eccentric inventor, oversees a school for deaf children; his mother, who is deaf and was once the father's pupil, manufactures silk. Serge and his older sister, Sophie, grow up surrounded by transmitters and insects; Serge gets the wireless bug, while Sophie develops an interest in natural history...

...

Though Serge holds the foreground, it's plain from early on that the novel is chiefly structured by the idea of transmission and reception, which serves as a metaphor for, among many other things, and very roughly speaking, an implied relationship between language, technology and subjectivity.

More:
Surplus Matter has plenty of Tom McCarthy related stuff for the interested.

Tom McCarthy page and C page at the Man Booker website

My Two Cents:
This isn't the kind of novel I am usually interested in. And that is precisely why I will make an attempt to read C and see if I can see what is in it.

Paul Murray - Skippy Dies

2010-08-22T17:28:00.000+05:30

The Skippy Dies page on the Man Booker website.

The Paul Murray (author) page on Wikipedia. Apparently many Paul Murrays are famous enough to have Wikipedia entires. Interestingly they are all either creatives or sportsmen.

Extracts:
From the Guardian

...'Anyone?' he repeats, looking over the class, deliberately ignoring Ruprecht Van Doren's upstretched hand, beneath which the rest of Ruprecht strains breathlessly. The rest of the boys blink back at Howard as if to reproach him for disturbing their peace. In Howard's old seat, Daniel 'Skippy' Juster stares catatonically into space, for all the world as if he's been drugged; in the back-row suntrap, Henry Lafayette has made a little nest of his arms in which to lay his head. Even the clock sounds like it's half asleep.

From Penguin

...On the chequered tiles beneath the table Skippy is writhing in silence. ‘What’s the matter?’ Ruprecht says, but gets no answer. Skippy’s eyes are bulging and a strange, sepulchral wheezing issues from his mouth; Ruprecht loosens his tie and unbuttons his collar, but that doesn’t seem to help, in fact the breathing, the writhing, the pop-eyed stare only get worse, and Ruprecht feels a prickling climb up the back of his neck. ‘What’s wrong?’ he repeats, raising his voice, as if Skippy were on the other side of a busy motorway. Everyone is looking now: the long table of Seabrook fourth-years and their girlfriends, the two St Brigid’s girls, one fat, one thin, both still in their uniforms, the trio of shelfstackers from the shopping mall up the road – they turn and watch as Skippy gasps and dry-heaves, for all the world as if he’s drowning, though how could he be drowning here, Ruprecht thinks, indoors, with the sea way over on the other side of the park? It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s all happening too quickly, without giving him time to work out what to do –

Reviews:
In the Guardian, Patrick Ness writes

Skippy's best friend is the corpulent computer genius Ruprecht, and the novel opens with Ruprecht and Skippy having a doughnut-eating race at Ed's, the local hangout for Seabrook students. To Ruprecht's baffled horror, Skippy collapses off his chair. He isn't choking, but there's nothing Ruprecht can do except watch as Skippy writes "Tell Lori" on the floor in doughnut jam before expiring.

The story then rewinds and expands, encompassing not only what Skippy meant and who Lori is, but also Howard the Coward, a history teacher returned in shame from an abortive career in the City...

...

This is only the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more sprawled across these pages, and Murray is terrific at nearly all of it. He's brilliant, for example, on the painfully poignant combination of credulity and cynicism that defines being 14 years old. Skippy's classmates will listen with complete belief as Ruprecht discloses his plans to open a door to alternate universes and then say, feelingly, "I wish I was in the 11th dimension. With some porn."

The Times review says

A brief summary can’t do justice to the variety of themes that Murray tosses about — cosmology, the first world war, role-playing computer games, prehistoric portals to fairy kingdoms etc — or the skill with which he connects them up...

The Independent review says

There's the only real problem. The book strays near some dark territory (self-harm, domestic violence, bereavement, sexual abuse), but maintains its light, utterly readable, skippy tread throughout. In this it is reminiscent of Zadie Smith's White Teeth – intricate of structure, charming of surface, adept at winding science and history into its design, it can't in the end decide how serious or funny it wants to be.

The Telegraph review calls it a dark tale of adolescence

Seabrook is from an Irish word for “house of the fairies” – who live in a parallel world to ours. Cruel and beautiful, they sometimes slide up against us, play beautiful music, enchant us and steal our children. Paul Murray intriguingly mixes this folklore with physics – “M?theory”, which states that the universe is 11-dimensional and made up of vibrating strings, allowing for an infinite number of universes.

Attempting to crack theory and enter these other worlds is Ruprecht van Doren, an obese, French horn-playing near-genius. He shares a room with the eponymous Skippy (named after the kangaroo), a sweet, thoughtful boy whose death is the catalyst for the novel. The book deals with the events leading up to it, allowing Murray to give a panoramic view of public-school life. Here are the boys whose only thoughts are about sex (“I wish I was in the 11th dimension… with some porn”); here are the lonely, loserish teachers – repressed homosexuals, City failures; the headmaster (“The Automator”), a product of the system who will do anything to keep it going; the ascetic priests whom the boys tease (the French teacher’s name, Father Green, translates, to endless delight, as Père Vert).

Author Interviews:

Paul Murray
+ talks to Claire Dudman, Keeper of the Snails. She writes about her thoughts on Skippy Dies here

+ says at theBookseller

two powerful fictions were being told in wider society (while Murray was writing Skippy Dies). The first was the build-up to the Iraq war, or "a huge institutional lie" as Murray puts it. The second is the Irish economic boom and the country's subsequent collapse. Murray says Ireland moved from a "1950s culture into a 21st century culture in a very short period of time".

He says: "I used to work in a bookshop and when customers were disappointed about something, which happened quite often, they would say 'oh, your days are numbered' and say it with a certain type of triumphalism.

"But when the internet was starting to take off, there was a huge amount of propaganda saying how everybody's lives would be completely reorganised and how we interact and communicate with one another would change. We wouldn't need to go to the shops anymore or walk down the street. There was a massive goldrush for this new business paradigm. Everyone would get rich off the back of it. But it soon disintegrated and everyone lost a lot of money."

Paul Murray's previous book was An Evening of Long Goodbyes which was shortlisted for the 2003 Whitbread prize.

My two cents:
Skippy Dies at 661 pages is a thick book. All the reviews I read seemed to suggest that the length was not a disadvantage. The themes of the book seem interesting and very relevant to the present times. The extracts make it clear that the language is not showy or off-putting. I intend to read this book though it is unlikely to be this year.

PS: yes the order is age difference ascending. Murray is the closest in age to me. And nope, no one on that list is younger

The 2010 Man Booker longlist

2010-08-15T18:19:00.000+05:30

Ever since the Man Booker 2010 longlist was announced a few weeks ago, I have been wanting to put that list up here and also commit myself to doing detailed posts on each of the longlisted books and authors. I did that once earlier, in 2006, and found it an excellent exercise in figuring out which authors to try next. Peter Carey, Howard Jacobson and David Mitchell were all in the 2006 list as well and it seems a lucky omen to have them around as I make my acquaintance with the others in the list, save Andrea Levy and Rose Tremain.

Peter Carey - Parrot and Olivier in America - Faber & Faber

Emma Donoghue - Room - Picador

Helen Dunmore - The Betrayal - Penguin

Damon Galgut - In a Strange Room - Grove Atlantic

Howard Jacobson - The Finkler Question - Bloomsbury

Andrea Levy - The Long Song - Headline Review

Tom McCarthy - C - Jonathan Cape

David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - Sceptre

Lisa Moore - February - Chatto & Windus

Paul Murray - Skippy Dies - Penguin

Rose Tremain - Trespass - Chatto & Windus

Christos Tsiolkas - The Slap - Grove Atlantic

Alan Warner - The Stars in the Bright Sky - Jonathan Cape

The list above is ordered just as in the Man Booker website but I intend to do the individual posts in a different order. The ones I am familiar with will come last. And I might start with authors who are closest to me in age and proceed in increasing order of age difference.

Hosanna

2010-07-08T16:24:00.001+05:30

* Tamil Song

* A R Rahman

* Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa (Gautham Vasudev Menon)

Yet another foot tapping crowd pleaser. There’s the characteristic rapping. And latest favourite Vijay Prakash. Fine you said. Nice to hear. Finis. Next song please.

***

Three months later…

Is it early morning yet?

One of those three am wakings that everybody has. You don’t know why but you are all anxious. Maybe a dream about dying woke you up? You stretch to pick up the iPod and you nervously scroll songs. Perhaps it was the title. You stop at Hosanna and press to play.

Nice.

Four minutes twenty six seconds later, you press again.

Repeat.

This time you notice the layered sounds: a tinkle here, a gong there.

Repeat.

Everything is rising, the notes, the darkness, the despair.

Repeat.

The beat of the heart stays throughout the song you think. Towards the end, before the pinnacle, you notice a slight dip that lasts a few seconds. The hero, carried along in the rush of his first love, is now thinking can this be real? can this be true? Must watch the movie to find out the context of the song.

Repeat.

This song does not carry any emotional baggage! Not a single note signifies pain. There is only a beautiful building towards exaltation. In the slowly lifting darkness, in the blue pink of dawn, you smile. You take a deep breath. You smile again.

Repeat.

You wonder how you will describe this song in a word. Airy. Yes airy. You are almost weightless and worriless by now and still pressing play.

Repeat.

Instrumentation is the life of this song. The voices, lovely, lovely, wonderful variations all three, are interludes. Wordless, this song would still hold its meaning in its notes. Can Zindagi from Yuvvraaj do away with Srinivas’s voice you wonder. The depths of that song are tied to the richness of the voice, your partiality for bagpipers notwithstanding.

Repeat.

Cream morning light. The walls glow. There is an ethereal touch to early morning if you are in the mood for it. Hosanna.

Mother L

2010-07-05T17:29:00.001+05:30

When the letters of Penelope Fitzgerald, So I Have Thought of You, were published a couple of years ago, one of the reviews remarked on her creation of the character ‘Daddy’ in her letters to her daughters. ‘Daddy’ referred to her husband whose employment problems, disinterest, perhaps alcoholism, all feature in her letters with a sense of humourous detachment, an impossible state of mind to imagine given that she bore the brunt of these difficulties.

When writing to friends or talking to them on the phone, in the past year or so, I have become aware of a character that I unconsciously create, that of Mother L. She is this harried woman, forever at the mercy of a demanding child, rushing to complete chores, always behind or entirely forgetful of deadlines, unable to focus, perhaps even unable to breathe at liberty. She seems so enticing that I cannot help but mention how she is when people ask me how I am. Truth is I could be her. But I am not. At least not always. In vast stretches of hours, maybe I turn into her for a few minutes. But I see myself as her when people ask me how I am. The interesting thing is that I do not see myself as her when I am meeting people in person. Then how are you extracts a more realistic answer. The character of Mother L, so easy to conjure in words, is not that easy to enact. She remains a source of amusement, a means to objectify an extreme, a creation.

In a sense, I play both Penelope Fitzgerald and her husband Desmond. And like her, in my own unconscious way, I create a character to gain a perspective of my daily life.

This and That

2010-04-11T13:36:00.000+05:30

Every once in a while I get asked about my reading. Not from friends and fellow readers but from general acquaintances and relatives. I always have trouble answering such questions because I am unsure where to start. Sometimes I say, Oh I am in a fiction phase, only to have the questioner assume that I am chasing thieves on bikes or jumping off airplanes on seeing symbols. Then the conversation meanders towards the latest in thrillerdom and have you read this yet and all I can do is shake my head from side to side rather helplessly. At other times, and this is worse, I will be questioned on how I liked Chetan Bhagat's latest just because I said I am reading fiction. Now, you'd think if I'd answered, I read non-fiction these days, I'd be safe. Far from it. Then I will be asked on what I thought of Raj Patel's views or, worse, Arindham Chaudhuri's latest.Of course if the conversation lasted a few more minutes then throw in Malcolm Gladwell and oh so famous Friedman. Nothing wrong with the names you say? Fair enough. But everything wrong with the assumption of what fiction and non-fiction mean.

One, picking out the popular representatives of a category and tossing it in conversation is naive.
Two, the general assumption that fiction is read to kill time (or put yourself to sleep) and non-fiction is read to be better informed (though I will grudgingly accept that there is some truth to this) is irritating.

What do you do with such people? Practise patience or throw the nearest object at them. When people do not know that they do not know it is a complete tragedy. I'd take admission of ignorance any day as long as there is curiosity thrown in.

Rant aside, I wanted to mention about the sidebar to this blog where I put in a recommended books section and then forgot to write about it. You are making money out of flipkart and not a word about it? Shame on you. Whatever. For a while I have been wanting to put some titles on the sidebar that I will be quick to rave about if I were ever to meet you and if you were curious enough to listen. I might have followed that with raving about flipkart my present favourite bookstore. Move aside Landmark (I can't believe you actually had a dump in the middle of your store and called it the 2010 planners section. Your giant is eating you up bit by bit). Flipkart has a glorious collection of books, wonderful customer service and prompt book delivery. Their website is slick and easy to browse. Perfect for me thank you very much. So I put my favourites together, tossed in flipkart's affiliates's code and now you have me recommending books that I love. Jean Stafford's Collected Stories is wonderful and you have heard enough about William Trevor.

G turned two in March and I ran out of my stock excuse of new mom. G is busy learning to talk and string sentences together and I love answering his questions. A while ago I was telling a friend about how I believed in answering my child's questions as honestly as possible and she said, I'll wait and watch. Yes, you there, I heard you too.

Long ago I wrote about gathering data on Osho and indicated that I will write my thoughts on the subject. I made a random remark to a friend comparing JK and Osho calling the former complex and the latter simple. As soon as I said that I realized that the comparison warranted better study. So I have been reading many books by both these gentlemen. I hope to be able to write an informed post in the next few months. Favourites? Well, I like JK's language better because it is more sophisticated. Osho, in English, sounds rather odd and naive. But the interesting bottomline is that they are both saying the same thing. More on that when I get to it.

And before you ask about the 2010 reading list, don't. One and a half and half of one. Instead of John Berger's About Looking, I am reading Selected Essays of John Berger edited by Geoff Dyer.

Love and Trevor

2010-02-25T14:03:00.002+05:30

You must know, you from the ether catching these digital blips, that I love William Trevor.

The problem is that love is a loaded, overused word. Worship did cross my mind but that is another ornament from the cliché box. Better love than worship - cliché-wise.

I was introduced to Trevor through this New Yorker fiction podcast (Jhumpa Lahiri reads 'A Day', a short story by William Trevor.) I found the story so riveting, so moving. Subsequently I have been steadily working my way through the William Trevor canon, finding, with every new story or novel of his, such brilliance, compassion and insight that I cannot but read more and read again.

Last year, after having read only a few of his short story collections, I decided I wanted to read one of his novels. I chose The Story of Lucy Gault because it was convenient, having earlier spotted it at a book sale and instantly acquiring it for my library. That the novel would be the most wrenching one I had ever read was something I did not anticipate. Trevor does something magical with his sentences - they are not ostentatious; theirs is a graceful beauty, of every word, every phrase joining hands to bring life alive. Many times, after being shaken or moved by a pivotal point in the narrative, I have gone back to read earlier passages to see how he set it up. The truth is his devices are so masterful that his narratives are seamless.

This morning, as I turned to read the last page of Love and Summer, containing the two and a half lines that would complete the book, I realized that I did not feel sad that the book was read. Instead I was filled with gratitude that such a book had been written.

Pureness of Prose.

Sheer Understated Brilliance.

A Master.

PS: I've been excited ever since The Collected Stories of William Trevor came out. Somehow I forgot to buy a copy until a friend sent me a note to say she saw the book in her library and immediately thought of me. Moments after reading her message I placed an order. The book will arrive in a week or so. I am looking forward to March and the rest of my life. There's pretty good company.

Stilettos

2010-01-08T14:05:00.001+05:30

On New Year's Day little Ki received a surprise. Mom, who had always said no to heeled footwear, conceded cheerfully when Ki asked for a miniature of Mom's stilettos. So Ki, lithe in a tomboyish way, hurried her day through to late afternoon when she might try her pointy sandals in peace.

When La visited the house at four pm, to meet Mom who was known to her as Vi, she noticed this silent figure popping in and out of the room. At first La was interested in the swish of the pony tail held by a colourful band and did not register that the prancing was caused by more than just walking barefoot on toes. Several minutes later, when she called out to Ki to ask her how she was, La looked down to see what Ki had on her feet. Black, with silver straps, tiny yet pointy heels, matching quite perfectly with her black and white dress. Before La could mention the sandals Ki did. Did you see what Mom got me? Do you want water? I'll get it.

In the mid-eighties, another seven year old girl got a gift. Not on New Year's Day or any special day. But the gift made her day special. She saw it in a small store in the market. Hundred rupees. Black, with black straps and silver dust on them and tiny yet pointy heels. Please Ma, please. Which mother would have bought footwear that might hurt heels and cost hundred rupees in the eighties for a child who might lose interest in it in a matter of hours? Ma didn't but J did. He spent hundred rupees from his intern's salary and got his little cousin the stilettos. To that seven year old girl, the gift was always special, not because she liked pointy heels but because that was her first memory of wanting something beautiful.

At what point does a girl become a woman? Is there a first sign for the mind like there is for the body?

La knew something significant had happened to Ki that New Year's Day. Ki didn't. Maybe years later Ki will see a sign that will light up her past for her. Maybe not. But that there was such a moment and that there was someone who saw it. Whose gift was it?

''When I think about little girls in the moment of turning into big girls (it is no slow timid development, but something strangely sudden), I always have to imagine an ocean behind them, or a grave eternal plain, or something else you don't actually see with your eyes but can only sense, and that only in the deep and silent hours."
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Interiors, the PARIS REVIEW, issue 190

"There are no ordinary moments."

--Dan Millman, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Year End Chatter or The 2010 Reading List

2009-12-21T14:28:00.000+05:30

December is when the whole world is doing best of lists. Each day a list or many catch my attention. But I don't read that many lists because the pleasure of a list is in making one for yourself. My must read list in 2009 helped me not miss some very good books. It provided me with the impetus to get the books I'd listed and read them because I'd put the list out in the ether and hey if you are like me that makes you really accountable to the nameless in ether.

So I made a 2010 must read list. These are works I'd like to spend time with over the year and in a way I think these books worked their way into this list without me looking for them in any determined manner. Each of these titles surfaced several times in my various reading material in the past year or so.

The 2010 Reading List:

Serendipities: Language and Lunacy - Umberto Eco
The Infinities - John Banville
Edward Burne-Jones: A Biography - Penelope Fitzgerald
The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
About Looking - John Berger
Samuel Johnson's essays in The Rambler - recommended eloquently by Andrew O'Hagan in NYRB
A Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert
Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov
Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
Out f Sheer Rage - Wrestling with D.H.Lawrence - Geoff Dyer

At the moment I am quite excited by this list. Come January and I'd choose the first of them. Rather I'd read number 1. Because who says you need to wait till January to choose.

This and That

2009-11-02T07:33:00.004+05:30

I have not written a post in three months. Was it time that passed?

Loved William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault. It is a book that got me reading fiction again. I was finding it difficult to read fiction in the past year or so because I was finding it difficult to ponder or wonder (ponder was lack of concentration I guess but wonder was because I'd exhausted it watching G do new things each day.) Trevor's sentences work so well at concealing themselves that you are well in the middle of a pang in your stomach or an urgency to see how a life would turn out before you realize that the sentences worked together to get you there. Brilliantly minimal. If you haven't read William Trevor yet, here is a good bibliography to choose from

I am reading Netherland - library copy, like it so far. This leaves Blind Assassin and White Tiger on the planned fiction list. Why White Tiger? Why not?

A friend had gifted me Animal Farm (can be read online) some years ago and I just tucked it away in the bookshelf saving it for a day when I needed to read something fictional, short, from start to finish. That day arrived a month or so ago. G's favourite rhyme then was Old MacDonald had a Farm and I was singing it (off-key, oh so off-key!) to him several times a day and I think Animal Farm couldn't help but be chosen if one were making animal sounds all day. Wonderful book and whenever I made oink sounds after that I thought not of Squealer but of Napolean. And subsequently only the Animal Farm animals made their appearance in the rhyme when I sang it!

G is learning words rapidly. A few a day. Yesterday's best was beetroot.

I am quite due to do the writing as catharsis. These blobs of words have been sitting in my head morphing and vanishing. I cannot even bring myself to write in my journal which is the best place for them - spill out, sort out. It is about a friend I lost in September.

Been enjoying the works of Renoir. How much of a person lies behind their art.

Reading Lists

2009-07-26T13:04:00.008+05:30

The problem with language is it both reveals and conceals. When one says here is my reading list, you can interpret the statement in so many ways - I'm reading only this, I'm reading them in the order I've listed them, I'm reading them all, I'm reading about them (this is a scary phenomenon because I expend a lot of energy with the background reading), I would love to read these books, etc. The interpretation may depend on what kind of a reader you are. In my case I usually assume that people who put up reading lists are parallely reading all or most of the books in that list. I also assume that it is likely that they are reading other things that they aren't listing (which is why a blogger like dovegreyreader scares me with her lists - check out her sidebar(s) and you'll know why.)

When a timeframe is not mentioned what stops one from thinking that the list has been going on forever? Something like all the books I've ever read, am reading, will ever read or want to? Oh no I did not want to go down the Babel path. Retrace: Close this para. Start another with new train of thought.

I was lying in bed last night next to a sleeping G who every now and then would put out an arm and manage to tug off the earphones of my iPod. Then, oh so carefully, I'd extricate the coveted accessory and press resume to continue listening to the World Book Club podcast with Lionel Shriver. The book being discussed was, of course, We Need to Talk About Kevin. I made a mental note to add said book to my reading list and this action led me to think about the various books I'd read and/or abandoned this year and somewhere in the consideration of The Gift or perhaps Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, I slept. It may have been a dream or a crossthought but I also thought of Chenthil's post on books, which he called long, which I call woefully short, where he had tantalisingly set up his story of how he took to reading and then abruptly put a fullstop to it. I felt like turning the page to see if someone had torn off the rest (Chenthil: part two please!) The mashup of my pre-sleep pondering led to one good idea though - that of creating another list, this time for the year 2010 and focusing on Language.

For instance this Year 2010 list - and no cliched ten books in '10 - will necessarily include Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, which I shall cheat and read this year and buy myself some time (yes the absurd is always around the corner.) I guess Bill Bryson, Noam Chomsky, Anne Fadiman, ...gosh there are plenty...So if you have any wonderful titles to recommend, I'd be grateful.

PS: I like the play on the title but I recommend you read it as reading 'lists'

PS2: the problem with language is it both expands and limits expression

Osho: Gathering the data

2009-07-14T17:50:00.002+05:30

Hey everyone: this is a quick post to ask a question. I did it a while ago on Twitter and am doing it here too. This 'a question' is going to be chopped into chunks. Many thanks for your time.

Have you read Osho?

a) If yes, do you think the label 'sex guru' holds good?

c) What would you say about the nature of his work?

d) Like? Dislike? Why?

I am going somewhere with these questions. I will have a post up once I have sufficient replies from friends.

Year of Lists - Progress Report

2009-07-07T21:56:00.002+05:30

Quick note to see where I stand on the nine books to read target at the half-year mark:

Words in Air: Got book via mail today. Started reading immediately. Love it already. Plan to read off and on throughout rest of the year
Negotiating with the Dead: One of the first books I read this year. Had lots of fun with it. Definite reread later this year or next
White Heat: Because of 1, am reconsidering this one. I do not want to be confusing correspondences. Likely to move book to next year's list (assuming there's one)
Netherland: Have not made any procurement plans yet for said book. But do intend to read it this year
The Blind Assassin: Work in progress. Been that way for a few months now. Likely to finish this year
Harvesting the Heart: Err...what was I thinking when I added this one to the list. Strike it out
Ticknor: You know I haven't seen this book in India at all. Must make plans to acquire or must push to next year
Christine Falls: Done done done. Yay
The White Tiger: Have copy. Will read when I run out of excuses to not read it

I have shown YES on four, NO on three, MAYBE on three. Not bad.

Maid Up

2009-06-17T21:34:00.005+05:30

Three related bits have been working in my head today. And before I sat down to type about them I caught a whiff of another bit, also related, from the background anchor noise on television. The three and half items are related by one word, one entity - maid. In the language of roundabout, it becomes the gender neutral domestic help.

Yesterday my mother alerted me to the TOI headline: Minimum wage mooted for domestic help in state. We did the math, we traced some history and carried on a conversation dominated by this news snippet. On the one hand I was very uneasy at the image of a harassing employer with which I must be slotted merely because I employ and on the other I was thinking of how a government wage minimum might help my maid who works in three houses and is always on the move to get work done. The thing about domestic help is that it is more a relationship than an employment. And that is where the domain gets murky.

Oh to be rid of servants, for all the emotions they breed - trust, suspicion, benevolence, gratitude, philanthropy - are necessarily bad, reads a diary entry of Viriginia Woolf in 1930. She seemed to have been perpetually in trouble over domestic help. That aside, her observation is pretty accurate. And that is why I offer the word relationship instead of employment because the latter implies a certain set of expectations and duties and hours all for a certain salary and additional benefits. The former, however, is vague, confusing; in the long run the boundary lines get invisible and control keeps moving from one end to the other. Both play their cards, usually emotional blackmail, and figure out ways to move on. How can one quantify a relationship?

When one tries to quantify, expect professionalism or even be professional, the relationship will be a super disaster. And, honestly, all the emotional tossing around is tiring even though it ensures steady state on shaky legs. You will love your maid one day, you will hate her the next. Fact. Replace 'maid' with 'friend', 'lover', 'husband' and the like and the statement will still sit pretty. Human nature.

Does being human also involve taking advantage of the weaker? You bet. The half story that the television anchor was dissecting is the presently hot Shin*y Ah*ja r*pe case. The wife came out to strongly support her husband. The question remains: who was the weaker?

A few weeks ago my cousin who was discussing her maid woes with me remarked that she did not know how to handle her maid. How do you know when to put your foot down and when to turn a blind eye? I wish there were seven steps to domestic governance that you could offer a copy of when such questions are asked. Sadly, no one knows the answer. It is as elusive as trying to figure out how to make marriages stick, how to be patient with your kids, how to be happy forever. There is no answer; rather, the answer keeps changing.

Will minimum wage help? Certainly. The question is who will be the beneficiary of such a rule.

George Orwell and First Lines

2009-05-10T16:39:00.003+05:30

Take a look at these:

The clock struck half past two

(Keep the Aspidistra Flying)

As the alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of bell metal Dorothy, wrenched from the depths of some complex, troubling dream, awoke with a start and lay on her back looking into the darkness in extreme exhaustion.

(A Clergyman's Daughter)

U Po Kyin, Sub-divisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, in Upper Burma, was sitting in his veranda. It was only half past eight, but the month was April, and there was a closeness in the air, a threat of the long, stifling midday hours.

(Burmese Days)

The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.

I remember the morning well. At about a quarter to eight I'd nipped out of bed and got into the bathroom just in time to shut the kids out. It was a beastly January morning, with a dirty yellowish-grey sky

(Coming up for Air)

The rue du Coq d'Or, Paris, seven in the morning. A succession of furious, choking yells from the street. Madame Monce, who kept the little hotel opposite mine, had come out on to the pavement to address a lodger on the third floor. Her bare feet were stuck into sabots and her grey hair was streaming down.

(Down and Out in Paris and London)

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.

(Animal Farm)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

(1984)

It is so unbelievable to note that Orwell establishes the time so definitively at the very beginning of each novel.

The Wheels on the Bus go...

2009-05-08T12:18:00.011+05:30

...round and round. In our case we've been getting rounder and rounder while little G has been getting longer and longer. Since claiming responsibility for letting my interests slip away is a difficult admission to make, I shall save myself some guilt and stick to pronoun we for a while.

We have been identifying rhymes, picking out favourites already and clapping away when such ones play. We smile a lot and we sing along in our squeaky bad-even-in-the-shower voice (one of us can only babble still.) We love books and don't you make the mistake of thinking that we just stick to baby board books that have big fat pictures on them that invite you to point and smile and say gaaaaaaaaar and go clap clap clap. Ha, instead we love big fat books that make the adult go ga ga ga and those are the books that from the shelf come one by one and toss behind when we're done done done. baby perfect flourish. Out they come and out they stay until activity-weary mom puts them back in vain. Out they come again. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Harry Potter have been subject to particularly harsh treatment since we've stacked them in the lowest shelf.

We love Margaret Atwood (an excellent collection of links on Atwood at Luminarium) and we have made up our minds that we shall read everything published. Our personal Atwoodian collection has been growing and so has our generous unasked for recommendation to friends. Negotiating with the Dead is brilliant, witty and cunning. Walk into the sentence trap and nod and nod while wondering what you are agreeing to. We have also reread Waltzing Again, a book that we so devoured last December, and loved it better if that were possible. We have been going around with a pink highlighter and furiously marking lines! The Blind Assassin is partly read and sitting there because we find non-fiction easier to assimilate than fiction. The kind of thinking that reading good fiction involves is very challenging to us at the moment.

We must also admit to discovering Penelope Fitzgerald (So I Have Thought of You, the letters collection is such a warm book) and resolving to become acquainted with her works. First up is the Edward Burne-Jones biography and then possibly The Bookshop or The Blue Flower.

Now that we are three paragraphs into avoiding guilt and feeling puffed up (must avoid ballooning descriptions to keep guilt at bay) at the effort and looking at the clock and thinking that the last sentence must be typed soon or sleeping G will morph to crying G, it is time to switch to trusty, lanky, self-critical I:

I realized, on a quick look back at recent reading practice, that I have started to gravitate towards biographies. A few days ago I picked up Andrew Lycett's Conan Doyle, a book whose existence I had been completely unaware of upto that moment. Someone from that foggy slushpile of memory had remarked that biographies were written for mature (read OLD) people. That remark of all the discarded remarks found its way to light at a perfectly inopportune hour.

After some consideration I am pleased to declare that I still have something called the reading habit and while I cannot quantify it because each day is so fuzzy and intangible, I do note that books get read and get replaced by new ones, magazines also get read over a month (before the next one arrives), online articles are skimmed, starred and read on lucky afternoons, newspapers get missed in the bargain and much to her chagrin, dear L does not have a clue about what is happening to General Election 2009. Yes, I intend to vote thank you very much. Jaago Re! And yes, IPL Season 2 is the only soap opera I watch.

One of the nice little retrievals I've done is listen to A R Rahman's 1947 Earth. I used to play it a lot when it was first released. Then it got lost in myriad new things and I remembered the album when someone asked me about Rahman and the Oscar. Was it a popular album? I don't know. But the music grows on you. I do know that. The other Rahman albums I plan to unearth are En Swaasa Kaatre, Pudhiya Mugam and Indira (especially for Thoda Thoda Malardhadhenna, a past favourite.)

Let me leave you with a few Atwoodian quotes from Waltzing Again:

"Complication" is a matter of how you perceive yourself in an unequal power relationship

good writing of any kind by anyone is surprising, intricate, strong, sinuous

I think everyone should go out and get themselves a set of colored pencils and play with them. They will have fun

Under pressure, you can't depend on human nature to remain the way you think it ought to be. Under pressure people do strange things.

By my age and stage, you're going to know a couple of things. And if you don't know these things, where have you been all your life? Number one: some people aren't going to like you. This may come as a big shock. But it is true of every human being. There's some people who aren't going to like you. And there's some people who aren't going to like what you do, no matter what it is. So why not enjoy yourself and have fun?

There is a great risk of my typing in a large portion of the book if I go on picking out the pinked beauties, so take my word for it and read the book. Bye-bye.

some random things...

2009-04-01T16:38:00.000+05:30

The 25 random things meme that has been floating on Facebook is quite interesting to observe from a distance. The things that people choose to tell has always fascinated me. I did not do the meme. Because? Well, because.

Yet it is a list and lists are tempting. So here is an inspired version.

I can never remember what bildungsroman means. Every time I come across the word I have to look it up
For many years I used to say that good friends have matching interests. That invariably meant that I was looking for the good friends from those whose interests matched mine. A day came when I named my best friends (in my head) and I realized that we did not have many interests in common. Instead what we did share was a connectedness - what I like to call resonance
Define Love - how many times one hears that question! one asks it to oneself, one asks others, others ask one. Pity that we need to define everything. Let me give it a try - it is a four letter word. It can be easily replaced by other four letter words pain, hate, like, life, lies, care and what other foul words have you. More commonly three letters would do - sex. Sometimes people use just two letters - it - I have it for him! Actually just one letter would do - I. The only love in the world that one has is for oneself, undeniably. If one were to go beyond the four letters mark one could throw in guilt, affection, compassion, companionship. So what is love? Ah no no, wrong turn. Define Love is what we started with. So define it shall be. Love is a euphemism (using an 'an' jars)
I enjoy saying bourgeoise aloud. Likewise for subterfuge
I am usually surprised by people who warm up to babies immediately. I mean how HOW do they do it?
Long long ago a friend, writing about me in a slam book, said, L you know what you want and you want what you know. Years later I still think that is so true
My favourite colours are black and blue. Beating who?
Avunculize and cacozealous are the recent words I learnt the meanings of (remember all those transform sentences exercises? I learnt the meanings of avunculize and cacozealous recently)
I borrowed Penelope Fitzgerald's Letters from the BCL last week, utterly thrilled to catch sight of it on the rack. Later I was delighted to see that I was the first borrower. Somewhat like the full attendance certificate from school!

And I've been confining my list to nines on a whim.

2009-02-27T13:34:00.003+05:30

activity has been slow here because

we have been busy taking in the sights. March arrives in a couple of days. And then he will be one. Gosh.

Elizabeth Gilbert

2009-02-12T14:33:00.005+05:30

In the past few weeks I've been eating my words about Eat, Pray, Love. Yes the book has been read cover to cover. Yes it is still unbelievable how neatly everything turns out in the end (I mean you get your mind, you get the guy, you also get a bestseller.) However in that earlier post linked to above, I was pretty skeptical about EPL because of its subject and its popularity. I am not skeptical about its contents or its success anymore. One of the reasons for this change of heart is because a complete reading offers better perspective to comment on any book (it is not fair at all to skim a book and pronounce mighty judgement given the fact that somebody toiled over it for months or years.) Another reason, the opinion changing one for me, is the genuineness of the voice that wrote this book. I don't think you can fake that kind of presentation throughout a book. Something in you had to spill on the page in order to write a book like EPL. And yes, I am recommending the book.

I must also strongly recommend this wonderful talk by Gilbert on A different way to think about creative genius. Brilliant, Honest.

And a short conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert on EPL by the Borders Book Club (yes all women.)

Lastly, this hilarious Mars vs Venus conversation about EPL on the Slate Book Club (I must confess I listened to this way back in April/May 2008 while I was reading EPL and I suspect Stephen Metcalf had an influence on me).

BAFTA

2009-02-10T14:29:00.004+05:30

Ah well, another round of applause. Congratulations A R Rahman!

Mettu Podu!

Another favourite from Duet: Naan Paadum Sandham

Needless to say, we are delighted.

Rest in Peace, dear Mr.Nagesh

2009-02-01T11:14:00.004+05:30

Genius, Icon and now History...

If you are a Tamilian, there is no way you could have grown up without watching Thiruvilayadal about a hundred times. And then there were many.

2009-01-31T13:12:00.003+05:30

Among the various ways in which one gets introduced to a book, the best is to be the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf

Joseph O'Neill on John Updike:

It is not an overstatement to say that this bereavement [Updike] is, for writers and countless readers, of a paternal magnitude

Unrelated to the above (or is it?): The Susan Sontag page with links to many of her works and its commentary

Days Are Numbers (The Traveller)

2009-01-30T04:41:00.001+05:30

I am very partial to most of the APP and Alan Parsons pieces. Picking from that collection is a difficult task. Yet, I find this song particularly comforting...

The Alan Parsons Project - Days Are Numbers (The Traveller) - Amazing videos are here

The Alan Parsons Gateway site

Circle of Life

2009-01-27T17:06:00.003+05:30

Or Life is a Circle?

What is that thing about pegs and holes?

Kannamoochi Yenada

2009-01-23T16:23:00.000+05:30

A favourite number, one that has personal connotations, from the movie Kandukondain Kandukondain

for lyrics (scroll down on the linked page - it contains the text of all the songs in KK)

Keeping it Short

2009-01-17T05:54:00.000+05:30

I have been quite a short story reader lately. The reasons for the shift are all practical - time, variety, sense of completion and the like.

What I'd like to confess to is the blog keeping it short. I look at it as a short story log that I hope gets interesting when I read it a few years from now.

If you have short story recommendations for my reading list, do post a note. Thanks.

Do Kadam Aur, Sahi

2009-01-16T11:52:00.004+05:30

I have many ARR favourites. But some play on, forever. Here's one from the movie Meenaxi. The video isn't the original from the movie because the movie wasn't out at all. However the song is the original.

for a wonderful take on the lyrics: Do Kadam

2009-01-13T17:13:00.001+05:30

Then there are pieces like Henry James tearing apart Lord Leighton's work; Julian Barnes talking about Edgar Degas' portrayal of women; members of the Bloomsbury group praising the work of Walter Sickert (a Jack the Ripper suspect)...

quoted from here

Oh please, what did Julian Barnes say about the Degas women? Note to Self: When you make notes, make them copious.

2009-01-13T17:06:00.001+05:30

"But I always want to know the things one shouldn't do."

"So as to do them?" asked her aunt.

"So as to choose," said Isabel.

-The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

A Year of Lists

2009-01-11T14:26:00.010+05:30

I almost typed A List of Years instead.

I was talking to K, dear friend K, gentle prodder K, bait loving online angel K, the other day and ended up telling her, rather thinking aloud, about the books that I wanted to read in 2009. It wasn't a plan at all until that point. And then I thought, why not. A list of books to read could be a good first list to start my year with. And if Gilbert can do 108 chapters for the 108 beads then I can do nine must read books for 2009. I was laughing (at myself), naturally, at the way we love cliches, at the way we want them to work. Plus nine is a doable number, two thousand and nine isn't.

Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell - heard a podcast, read an extract, and given the nature of the subject, resolved to make it top of the list
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing - a Margaret Atwood needs no reason to qualify itself on any list
White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson - like 1, a letters book, therefore tempting
Netherland - I first heard Joseph O'Neill talking about the book in a Guardian podcast. A few weeks later the whole world was talking his book. Booker 2008 longlisted (always look at the longlist. always. choose using your discretion. always). Incidentally the NYTimes article carries a photo of O'Neill and he reminds me so much of a notorious, intentionally in your face Indian blogger who writes rather well
The Blind Assassin - refer 2
Harvesting the Heart - Jodi Picoult has been on the must-check-out-author list for ages. I picked out the book with the most resonance. Other title recommendations welcome
Ticknor - Sheila Heti's website is fantastic. So is her writing going by the samples I've read. And she comes highly recommended from my favourite blogger
Christine Falls - how can I not have read it until now? blasphemy
The White Tiger - my cat on the wall choice. Reasons: a) popular, necessary for drawing room conversation b) very mixed reviews c) Adiga started schooling at my alma mater (!) d) my dad gifted me the book and said that I cannot fume without a basis

There is a good chance that I might succeed at 2, 5, 8 and 9 because I own copies. The rest need some effort in the procuring department.

And before I forget,

dear K, post dedicated to you.

Many Happy Returns Maestro

2009-01-06T04:18:00.001+05:30

A very happy birthday to you AR Rahman.

Thanks for another year of brilliant music.

I can think of no other better way of saying happy birthday.

Year End Notes

2008-12-28T14:10:00.010+05:30

Year was personally tumultuous to say the least. Been a tough learning experience

On looking back, despite claiming a temporary aversion to literature, I did read a lot. Non-fiction mostly, but some literature. Favourites include Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading, Waltzing Again - New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood, Osho's Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic, and William Trevor's A Bit on the Side. Notables include Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, Arundhati Roy's The Shape of the Beast and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Forgettables include those that I have already forgotten.

My most enjoyable online activity was doing the Laundress series on Pigmentium

I am an accomplished food blender now. Can whiz any sort of pureed palatable combos in a jiffy

Surprise, surprise: caught up on several missed movies on DVD by calling it stress-relief-midnight indulgence

For the first time in my life, was aware of every passing hour for several nights in a row

Best quote of the year, from a friend, via email, I think we have to learn to live in a world where everything - like, dislike, love, hate all exists together. The line is a perfect summary of what I have been trying so hard to learn each day this year

I look forward to 2009 because forward is the best direction I like. Happy Reading in 2009!

Silent Lucidity

2008-12-04T14:27:00.003+05:30

thanks N, for all recos, especially this one

from the Queensryche website: Silent Lucidity

for lyrics: Queensryche - Silent Lucidity

for a custom video with lyrics

so, what does it mean?

Even the Sun Will Die

2008-11-29T14:29:00.003+05:30

When Eckhart Tolle agreed to be interviewed on September 11, 2001, he could not foresee the historic nature of this date or the suffering that would follow. As the day’s events unfolded, in real time, he responded with a calm and clear voice, helping to make sense out of the fear and chaos that will forever define this date.

We live in a time, he says, when we define ourselves through our enemies; and science and technology are in the service of human madness.

Even the Sun Will Die - a wonderful interview with Eckhart Tolle. Can be previewed / downloaded from here.

Mumbai, Terror, Making Sense

2008-11-29T14:13:00.002+05:30

Can we ever make sense of madness?

Can whatever it is that we label 'making sense' change anything?

Is sense non-stop news with live updates of horror in the making? (this morning the media was covering the funeral rites of Hemant Karkare & Sandeep Unnikrishnan in great detail. Is this making sense?)

Sometimes words must stop, digital eyes must stay averted, precious life must be protected, precious life must be respected.

2008-11-26T16:48:00.004+05:30

From James Wood's piece on Naipaul, Wounder and Wounded:

“If you want to write serious books,” he said to me, “you must be ready to break the forms, break the forms. Is it true that Anita Brookner writes exactly the same novel every year?” It is true, I said. “How awful, how awful.”

Resonated so well with me. I enjoy Brookner whose books are fine variations on the same theme. Yet, you know, very same theme.

2008-11-21T13:42:00.002+05:30

Delighted to locate and post this Hugh Padgham video interview. Note to self: Must watch, must listen.

Oh and oh, here's an interview with Neil Dorfsman. Must be my lucky day!

2008-11-19T16:37:00.003+05:30

I told him how all my life I had been making houses for myself - in a corner of the attic in my parents' house in Missouri, in clearings among lodgepole pines in the Adams foothills, in offices I shared with other teachers. My nesting and my neatening were compulsions in me that Theron looked on as plebeian, anti-intellectual, lace-curtain Irish; he said I wanted to spend my life in a tub of warm water, forswearing adventure but, worse, forswearing commitment. My pride of house was the sin of pride.

-Jean Stafford, An Influx of Poets, a story (extract of an autobiographical novel?)

2008-11-14T16:31:00.002+05:30

The relations between parents and children today have a freedom that would have been impossible with my father. He expected a certain standard of behaviour, even, of ceremony, in family life. Yet if freedom means the right to think one's own thoughts and to follow one's own pursuits, then no one respected and indeed insisted upon freedom more completely than he did.

-Virginia Woolf, A Daughter's Memories (1932), collected in The Platform of Time

2008-11-11T15:35:00.001+05:30

The Golden Notebook Project - went live yesterday. Good time to start following the conversation (via). You can read along online.

Walter Benjamin on Flickr

2008-11-11T14:33:00.004+05:30

That is how I got to this page. And then here. And here. Also here. Wanting to reread the essay Unpacking my Library, I searched for Walter Benjamin and ended up spending (still) quite a while looking at photos of books. You know what's funny to me - I had never looked for book pools on Flickr. Odd, really odd, considering I search for bookshelves and desks and so on.

Heartwarming

2008-11-06T22:10:00.001+05:30

Both the pictures and what the election gone by might mean for Americans and everyone else (via)

Of Saris, Sarees

2008-10-24T22:49:00.002+05:30

A gorgeous pink saree that Elizabeth Hurley was wearing at a Breast Cancer campaign caught my attention. I forget where I first saw the photo but on searching for it a few minutes ago (here, feast), I chanced upon just the kind of saree blog that would interest me. Saree Dreams.

2008-10-24T22:46:00.002+05:30

Hear Virginia Woolf speak about writing (via my God, not at all as I had imagined it!). Not at all as I had imagined it either!

Speaking of Faith

2008-10-23T13:47:00.002+05:30

Every once in a while I sneak in a rare mention of Eckhart Tolle, more specifically A New Earth, on this blog. For those who might be curious, here is a good primer radio conversation with Eckhart Tolle.

Speaking of Faith - The Power of Eckhart Tolle's Now, Eckhart Tolle in conversation with Krista Tippet.

Man Booker 2008, Adiga it is

2008-10-15T08:20:00.004+05:30

Yet another Indian debut novelist.

Aravind Adiga wins the Man Booker 2008 for The White Tiger

The thirty-three year old novelist was presented the prize at an awards ceremony at Guildhall, London. Adiga becomes the third debut novelist, and the second Indian debut novelist, to win the award in the forty year history of the prize. The two other debut novelists to have won the prize are DBC Pierre in 2003 for his novel Vernon God Little and Arundhati Roy in 1997 for The God of Small Things.

***

The White Tiger was one of six shortlisted titles for the prize. Also shortlisted for this year's prize were Sebastian Barry for The Secret Scripture (Faber), Amitav Ghosh for Sea of Poppies (John Murray), Linda Grant for The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago), Philip Hensher for The Northern Clemency (Fourth Estate) and Steve Toltz for his debut novel A Fraction of the Whole (Hamish Hamilton). Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer-bound edition of their book.

more at the Man Booker website

Also read Adiga's interview at The Brooklyn Rail (via)

The India Yoga Spirituality Travel Genre

2008-09-26T13:13:00.021+05:30

Part of my skepticism (scepticism anyone?) for the genre of books that talk about Travel and Spirituality and Yoga and India in the same breath stems from the fact that such books lack depth. There is the evocation of the exotic, the squalid with frothy accounts of how close yet how far self-awareness is. Of course there is the unfailing mention of kundalini and chakra along with a good smattering of other Sanskrit words (dhyāna features prominently in that list). And there is the vague Coelholike conclusion that the treasures lie in your own backyard. One of the examples I looked at some years ago was Yoga School Dropout which is funny and timepassy and generously fictionalized (fictionalised?) but there is something eerily fantastical about such a book when you happen to live in the country it features.

Given such a preamble it is not surprising that I looked part curiously, part cynically at the copy of Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert) that was lying on my friend's sofa when visiting her flat a year ago. She did not wait for me to ask. Instead she said it was a lovely book and then tossed in a line, which caused me to double take (when nouns become verbs you know the language is evolving!), about EPL's similarity to A New Earth. Really? Really!, said my mind. Now I must mention that A New Earth is a book like no other to (for?) me. I'd call it the single most defining book I've ever read. And if someone was equating EPL to ANE then they better know what they are talking about and they better be ready to talk to me after I read EPL. So a resolve was made to get to EPL sometime irrespective of the fact that it was a bestseller and that it had a very YSD feeling about it.

In my post-partum period, earlier this year, I decided to act on that resolve and requested the EPL copy that I had originally set my eyes on. From then until now I have been reading the book, in spurts, with a sense of amusement and a vague sense of disbelief. Gilbert is a very talented writer and her narrative is engaging, though a gastronomic urge is more than enough to help one through the part where she talks about her Italian decadence. However when I got to the part about India (Gilbert's book, as the title suggests, is Eating in Italy, Praying in India and Loving in Bali), my skepticism came to the fore. As expected, this part of the book is more fantastical than the one about Italy. I stopped when a New Zealand plumber came along with a poem. As a finisher, I will get to the end of EPL - one, it is written well; two, I am curious how Bali will turn out. But this book is nothing like ANE thank you very much. And picking up an argument about apple and no apple is a complete waste of energy.

Part of my skepticism for the genre of books that talk about Travel and Spirituality and Yoga and India in the same breath stems from the fact that each book is a copy of the other. Indian Spirituality, at least its orange hued esoterica, its limbs contorted utopia, have forever been topical. And topicality usually sets off verbal excesses. And topicality usually sells the best.

I am still a skeptic.

Notes:
EPL - Eat, Pray, Love
ANE - A New Earth
YSD - Yoga School Dropout

Often I cannot help indulging in laughing at myself. Especially when writing I notice the various stutters that come along and it is irresistible to make a note of it for future amusement. You know the parenthesis shows up and on cue you laugh at your earlier bumbling self. Much joy presents itself on rereading one's own writing. One of the reasons why I love blogging - it is a wonderful snapshot of one's own ramblings from years past. And as I was writing this post I kept thinking I should stick a note on it saying 'adverbially yours'.

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan

2008-09-25T14:23:00.003+05:30

She wanted to be in love and be herself. But to be herself, she had to say no all the time. And then she was no longer herself.
(Pg 146, GBR Hardback 2007 ed.)

This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing.
(Pg 166)

For more...
On Chesil Beach extract from The New Yorker

Did I like it? Well, loved it. Recommended. A bonus: it is a short book.

2008-08-24T18:24:00.002+05:30

The Tie Project

The Dress a Day Project

I guess you might say some people will do anything to keep a blog alive! Don't ask me how I came across these links though.

And Thus Spake the Master

2008-08-05T22:20:00.001+05:30

The second most mysterious thing, after being, is language, in its ability both to express and to conceal. If I were asked to name humankind's greatest invention, I would answer, "The sentence." Yet, in inventing language, we also invented a kind of subtle monster that is as much in control of us as we are in control of it. The poet writing a poem or a worker writing a job application has the same eerie feeling on completion — "This isn't really what I meant to say." Who speaks? Language speaks, and it speaks us.

Mister Black has more to say

Children Are Bored on Sunday

2008-07-14T16:58:00.003+05:30

is a brilliant short story by Jean Stafford. This is the first of her works that I read (listened rather) and I was very impressed and amused by the way she presents her story.

Children Are Bored on Sunday appeared in the New Yorker in the 1950s as did many other short stories of Stafford. The audio version of the story can be downloaded here (actually most of the stories in the New Yorker Fiction podcast are worthy of your time)

diJest

2008-06-22T09:12:00.001+05:30

One morning.

Two at Breakfast - One Giver, One Getter.

Three Idlis, Four Vadas, Five types of Chutney.

Six years of Indifference to wash down in a meal.

Love's Arrears.

2008-06-21T19:28:00.004+05:30

The Typo Eradication Advancement League

The Writers' Rooms Homepage finally shows a list of all featured writers. Earlier it would be the writer of the week and you would need to fish for the others from the Guardian Books homepage. Btw, almost all of them have a room with a view.

This and That

2008-06-01T16:33:00.008+05:30

Does one say welcome to oneself? Which leads to 'Oh these social niceties', which leads to 'why does one have to comply with what the society expects', which leads to 'man is a social animal' (this is memory quoting and being a pain), which leads to 'or was it man is a social being?' (this is memory doubting), which leads to 'what did I want to post now?' - the mind is a madhouse!

Having (this leads to wondering who was the grammarian who said you shouldn't start with a gerund!) suitably welcomed myself with blabber, let me offload the links I came across:

Chandamama, the wonderful magazine of childhood, several people's childhoods across several decades I might add, has a nice website. They have a Junior Chandamama as well. Also, you can subscribe to a story a day, gift the magazine to children and so on.

Talking of magazines of childhood, I read Gokulam, Target and Wisdom as well. A google search for Gokulam led me to a site that tried to hand my laptop a Trojan so I guess the magazine does not have a web presence. Target closed down long ago and Wisdom, does it still exist?!

I recently read and enjoyed Last Chance to See - A remark of Douglas Adams in the book

I have the instinctive reaction of the Western man when confronted with the sublimely incomprehensible: I grab my camera and start to photograph it. I feel I'll be able to cope with it all more easily when it's just two square inches of colour on a light box and my chair isn't trying to throw me round the room.

reminded me of several Indian friends of mine who follow the well trodden path of taking to photography and then graduating from automatic to SLR (invariably I hear Canon Rebel XT). Hmm...

I have been extracting guffaws and flak from the Dad and the husband for relying on books to understand how a baby is and what a baby does. Honestly, it is quite a good book - What to Expect the First Year. I did read Benjamin Spock as well (from a copy that I bought for Rs.10 at a second hand bookstore last year. What prompted me to buy the book was the previous owner's scrawl saying Baby Rose, 1960) and found his book too Americanized to be useful to me.

Finally, am reading Roy's The Shape of the Beast - whatever else, the book design is fantastic.

Right, now time to say, welcome!

Away...

2008-02-26T21:17:00.003+05:30

This blog will be on a break while I cope with upcoming challenges. As a friend of mine put it, March will be the first month of the rest of your life! I guess she meant 'rest out of your life'! Anyway I have some labour to attend to, so wish me luck and I shall catch you in a few months.

Best!

More Banville...

2008-02-19T21:14:00.004+05:30

The other Banville lover (former cynic who did not want The Sea to win the Booker...hmph) goes ga ga after reading what K had to say.

Also, forgot to quote K on her favourite Banville works and her recos for new readers:

The favorites are: The Book of Evidence, The Untouchable, Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, Athena.
The ones that are worthy of read, but probably won't "strike a chord" are: Mefisto, The Sea, The Newton Letter.
Can't possibly be called literature, still is pretty darn good - Christine Falls. (as Benjamin Black)

I disagree with K about The Newton Letter and The Sea because I thought they both struck a chord with me. But I guess that The Book of Evidence flavour needs to wear off completely for these two books to find some mind space.

Also, to quote from a blog (TEV) I admire immensely (the link leads to Mark Sarvas' interview of John Banville):

TEV: Well, I know that when people come to me and ask me which of your books they should read and why they should read them, I tell them that about this thwarted quest for authenticity.
JB: If they asked you what book to start with, what would you say?
(TEV Note: Herein follows a brief shocked silence followed by much unseemly stammering in which we desperately try – and fail – to avoid the wrong answer.)
TEV: (fumbling) I'm usually useless in that I usually end up suggesting three or four …
JB: (vaguely disappointed) Oh.
TEV: (continuing) … in that one of the things I'll do is point to the one that I read first, which is Eclipse. I came to it on the strength of a very positive review in the New York Review of Books, which you may recall. I also tend to recommend based on what I know about the reader, which can bring me to The Book of Evidence or The Untouchable … Oddly – and it's hard for me to say I have a favorite because it shifts –
JB: Oh no, I don't mean your favorite. I mean which would you say to someone, This would be a good place to start?
TEV: The Book of Evidence, I would say, because it's quite self-contained or –
JB: I would say The Newton Letter.
TEV: (of course, we knew that all along) The Newton Letter.
JB: It's pretty well all there. And it's short.

Why does John Banville appeal to you?

2008-02-18T20:00:00.005+05:30

Once in a while I pester K with a question. She first reminds me that I am baiting her and then, unfailingly, obliges by grabbing the bait. What follows below is her reply to my most recent question on John Banville. I warned her that I might convert it into a guest post and accustomed as she is to my threats, she granted me the indulgence as always.

Her words reassure (to me) the importance of reading and writing in individual development. No matter what the content or the form, words have the power to stretch at least one mind from its present dimensions. And so, we write, we read, we reply, we grow.

---***---

It is rather interesting to think that over the half dozen books I read last year, atleast three-fourths were by John Banville. The only 'break' from Banville was reading The Emperor's Children and The Common Reader series – just to see if other writers appeal to me the way Banville does. No, they don't. My Banville spree isn't over yet. I have Eclipse and Ghosts lined up next longing for a couple of four day weekends so that I can read in peace. Peace. Is that what I feel when I read a Banville book? What is it in his writing that draws me and makes me read more? You wanted to know "why the book appealed to you or why the author appeals to you, whatever." The answer to that, I'm afraid is tortuous. If there can be an answer at all. Most of what I wish to say might seem sentimental, but I remember Banville's words: "If you write honestly, you will not be sentimental..."

You probably read Banville because he is a stylish writer. Yes, he is. I fail to associate with that line of thought, though. Or rather, I fail to see how stylish prose alone would appeal to me. I have never been able to partake in the style or substance argument ever, because I can't see either side's point. You probably write down Banville words, because they are rarely used by anyone save Banville. I do that too, but that ends up being an amusing activity, a digression, that is all. I have made note of interesting and uncommon names appearing in fiction beginning with the letter O and a chunk of them coming from Trollope. But do I devour Trollope? No. He doesn't even come to my mind when someone asks me who my favorite writers are.

I remember us talking about the art connection to his books too. Yes, indeed. Bonnard in The Sea. Poussin in The Untouchable. I can distinctly recall those references to Chirico's sharp shadows and Magritte's clouds and Vermeer's portraits in Athena. Those are the finest descriptions of art I've read. Remember those seven elaborate descriptions of artwork that are fictitious? I couldn't for a second believe it was meticulously constructed forgery. His enthusiasm is contagious. And then the inter-textual allusions. I never understand those, except on very rare occasions. Nor do I take the trouble of searching for those allusions so that all pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place. When I come across such activities, I make a note to pursue that myself, but I give up eventually. But are these a good enough reasons to revisit his books? Savour it the way I do now?

I realize that reading Banville is a kind of self-discovery. There were things that I felt, but couldn't understand. Or things I thought I understood, but when asked to defend or explain, I felt inadequate. Like now, like this instance when I'm trying to understand why I read his books. The first Banville book I read was The Book of Evidence, which introduced me to confessional narratives. The last Banville book I read was The Untouchable. I am not sure if you've read it: In the confessional narrative that he is so famous for, he narrates the double life of the bisexual Cambridge spy and art historian Victor Maskell. Between the two books, I don't see a world of difference. Middle aged men, trying to understand why they did those terrible crimes. What could narrators like those let me realize things about me that I don't know already? Do I enjoy confessional narratives and unreliable narrators? Do I enjoy the writers that Banville is compared to - Joyce and Beckett and Nabokov and Dostoyevsky? Joyce and Dostoyevsky I tossed aside after painful attempts, and Beckett and Nabokov I am reluctant to try. There is something I feel while reading Banville, which just doesn't happen when I'm reading anyone else.

I once scoffed when some one said books are aphrodisiacs. I considered it unholy, and I looked down upon that statement as though the speaker had committed sacrilege. But that is the closest any one can ever describe a Banville book. Some might find his style seductive and hold on to it. Yes, I find it attractive. But I realize I read him because I am curious about knowing myself. Some might call it "the book speaks down to me". No, it doesn't. That would be an inaccurate description. Impossible though it may sound, between those several passages of verbal jesting and ironic descriptions of the world around him, Banville writes that odd sentence every now and then, that makes me acutely feel, well, that electric throb and tingle.
"I am done with blaming anyone for anything. Except myself, that is. No, no end to that", he wrote in Athena. At that wee morning hour, as I held that book in my hand, I had magically transformed to the raving madman of a narrator. I shuddered as I read that. "But you tried to discard the commonplace truths for the transcendent ideals, and so failed." This was a few months before the Athena experience happened. Doctor Copernicus, it was. That instance, as I read these words across the printed page, I felt a voice in my head speak those words down to me simultaneously. It was something buried deep in me, some truth about myself, and it came out when I read those words. How could I ever do justice to how I felt then? How could I ever write about that experience which was at once exciting and frightening? "It is at such moments that I am most acutely aware of my conscious self, and feel the electric throb and tingle, the flimsiness and awful weight, of being a living, thinking thing." I can borrow his words.

---***---

PS: I read him because I am curious about knowing myself, wrote K. When I first read Banville a decade ago (I started with The Book of Evidence too), what stayed with me was the feeling that this man was documenting my mind. And that is why there was immense joy when he was shortlisted for and ultimately chosen as the winner of The Man Booker 2005. His style and his language deserve plentiful praise but one does not remember his books for merely those reasons as K rightly points out. So there, after a long long time, a post I loved putting up on this blog.

What the verb...

2008-01-29T10:04:00.000+05:30

Dash, on meeting Murugappa* for the first time at a gathering, said hello and added, "you are...." Those words were always a cue for Murugappa to embark on who he thought he was...

M's pitch: I am a Senior Manager at YadaYada and have 80 people reporting to me
D's response: --nothing--

M's pitch: I work with Fortune 500 clients only
D's response: --nothing--

M's pitch: I enjoy travelling and have been to at least thirty countries. Mostly on work you know. But sometimes I pack in a vacation as well. My wife and I were at the Maldives last month
D's reponse: --nothing--

M's pitch: I am very passionate about Hinduism. I mean, I am not a hardcore ritualist you know, but I love reading the Upanishads. In fact I am analyzing the merits of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's version against Rajaji's version. Actually they are different but you can still compare them you know
D's response: --nothing--

M's pitch: Oh in fact I must mention that I love reading and buy all the books I read. My busy schedule does not permit me to borrow from libraries. I like airport bookshops. Do you read?

D's response: A bit. But Murugappa, you haven't answered my question yet

M, bemused: What do you mean? I've told you so much about myself

D: About what you do, yes. A little about what you have - that was an Opel Vectra that you drove isn't it?

M: Yes, yes. Good car. My wife thinks that the fuel consumption and maintenance costs are too high. But forget that. I love the car

D: Well, Murugappa, you must excuse me now. I would like to meet many people today

***

M to wife: I met a weird man today. He kept asking me who I was despite all the information I gave him

***

D to friend: Yet another failure. When am I going to find a person who gets his verbs right?

***

Ever wondered how we use the verbs 'be', 'have', 'do'?

We seem to have a life. We ask others to get a life (yeah, apparently, it is sold somewhere or can be stolen from somewhere). We do a lot of living (which, incidentally, a dictionary defines as 'having life'!)

Do we ever consider that a usage such as, 'I am life' / 'you are life' / 'we are life' is perhaps possible? Well, it is grammatically correct. I suppose many would call it logically flawed (logic - the answer to everything!). Btw, correct is to 'set right', which is something entire lifetimes are spent on!

PS: just in case we are unsure, a verb expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being (here)

*just a fictitious name. No connection to anyone living

No chance. Not today. Maybe next time.

2008-01-24T17:53:00.000+05:30

No chance. Not today. Maybe next time.

What happened to your game? asked they of Rafa.
Nothing. I play very good. But Tsonga played unbelievable.

So true. Tsonga did play unbelievable.

What amazing fun it has been to watch such wonderful matches over the past two weeks!

And oh, you should have seen Hantuchova's cursory handshake to Ivanovic after the women's second semi-final. As for the first semi, Sharapova was in total control and Jankovic was pleasant even when in pain.

2008-01-18T20:49:00.000+05:30

Wow! The Final showdown is seldom as thrilling as some of the early clashes. What wonderful back to back nights it has been at the Australian Open 2008 - Baghdatis - Safin yesterday and Roddick - Kohlschreiber today. Thank you gentlemen, our cup runneth over.

Meme, meme oh mum...err ma'am

2007-12-26T16:01:00.000+05:30

It is not always you can run but you can't hide. Sometimes it is you can hide but you can't run! So here I am, unable to run (though I guess pretty successful at hiding) and taken to task for not having done this meme yet. There is something very odd about the structuring of the previous sentence...hmm...never mind.

Right, the meme says, All you have to do is select and upload one photo that you have clicked this year that is special to you. Could be anything...aesthetic, technical or personal. Also, put in a short note why it is special.

This picture was clicked on a walk around the Ooty Golf course. I was tailing the man in the picture and suddenly as I stood for a moment and watched him walk along, the image seemed to me to be a perfect synonym for life. You know, you walk to nowhere, all by yourself, wayfarers pass every now and then, the weather is fickle, there is much to look at, nothing holds your attention long enough, long is never enough, there is much to do, nothing is much to do, a turn is always ahead, someone is always watching! Isn't life pretty much that? Btw, that man wasn't being stalked. Unless tailing your husband can be called stalking?

Dear Uber, am I redeemed? Gah, now you'll say I have to pass on the meme. Hmm...

I pass on the meme to
Chenthil
Prabhu
CC
Nandhu
and Krithiga (Kay, you can always do a guest post here!)

At Large and At Small...

2007-11-27T18:42:00.000+05:30

Oh, oh, oh...Anne Fadiman is out with a new book, At Large and At Small: Confessions of a Literary Hedonist. Even when you are in an anti-books phase, you just can't resist some authors!

More on the new book

An earlier post on Ex Libris - Confessions of a Common Reader

Quick Note, mostly to self

2007-11-04T09:47:00.000+05:30

I want to write at length on the subject (it has been intriguing me for years now), but I shall dash off a quick note now so that I will remember to do the post later. I just got off reading Shashi Deshpande's The gendered reader in The Hindu Literary Review and am so amazed that the whole issue of validation by the men out there is still so important to the women. Why are we still seeking such kind of approval? Why is it causing so much of angst that every so often women have to write so much about it? It is about time we said, "Oh Christ... I couldn't care less", like Doris Lessing remarked when asked how she felt on being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Be back to to this topic soon.

2007-10-31T18:05:00.001+05:30

The very interesting and very funny "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotations (via). I hope they also include photos of those samples of the human species who mimic quotations with their hands whenever they speak (seriously, some of them think it is a style thing!)

2007-10-28T13:30:00.000+05:30

You know how you used to say 'thrice' and then a teacher corrected you to say 'three times' instead? Then you trained yourself until it became natural to say 'three times' and you raised your eyebrow every time someone else said 'thrice'. Occasionally an equally snooty usage conscious one tossed a 'thrice' at you and instead of raising that eyebrow, you started to show worry lines. Well, is it 'thrice' or 'three times'?

2007-10-27T16:26:00.000+05:30

The Sepoy Mutiny Blog

Direct Path - Atma Vichara

2007-10-18T14:52:00.000+05:30

The 'direct' path is so called because it looks directly for underlying truth. However bad or good the world is seen to be, however badly or how well it is seen through personally, there is in the direct path no concern to improve that cosmic view. The only concern is to reflect directly back into underlying truth, from the superficial and misleading show of all outward viewing.

The direct path is thus no recent development. It was there from the start, before traditions and civilizations developed. And it has continued through the growth of tradition, along with the personal and environmental improvements that traditions have prescribed. For these improvements are inevitably partial and compromised; so that there are always people who aren't satisfied with such improvement, but just long for plain truth that is not compromised with any falsity.

To find that truth, no cosmological improvement can itself be enough. At some stage, sooner or later, there has to be a jump entirely away from all improvement, into a truth where worse or better don't apply. The only difference between the cosmological and direct paths is when the jump is made. In the direct path, the jump is soon or even now. In the cosmological approach, the jump is put off till later on, in order to give time for improving preparations to be made for it.

There are pros and cons on both sides, so that different paths suit different personalities. An early jump is harder to make, and it means that the sadhaka's character is still impure; so even having jumped into the truth, she or he keeps falling back unsteadily, overwhelmed by egotistical samskaras. Then work remains to keep returning back to truth, until the samskaras are eradicated and there is a final establishment in the sahaja state.

A later jump can be easier, with a character so purified that little or no work remains to achieve establishment. But there are pitfalls of preparing personality for a late jump, because a sadhaka may get enamoured of the relative advances that have been achieved, like a prisoner who falls in love with golden chains and thus remains imprisoned.

So what's needed is to find the particular path that suits each particular sadhaka, instead of arguing for any path as best for everyone.

- Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon

Filched from a blog I was reading this morning. Forgot to save the link.

2007-10-12T14:21:00.000+05:30

Apparently, Atlas Shrugged, the book that one was living by several years ago (I know, so embarrassing...), was first published this day fifty years ago:

...the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.

It is often the case that Ayn Rand really converts one at age 17 or 18 turning one into the perfectly egoistic cynic with a totally warped idea of one's exclusivity. Some, thankfully, snap out of the spell in a few years. For the rest, the power of individualism and the attendant vainglory remain lifelong illusions.

It appears that Ayn Rand might be the most influential female writer of the last fifty years {Shudder}

You know, sometimes it is such luck that you don't meet a Howard Roark when you think he's God.

Choosing Brides, Suitability Lists, a little of Heyerian humour

2007-10-09T16:06:00.000+05:30

A couple of days ago, I reread Sylvester. Over the last ten years I must have reread it quite a few times but it wasn't until this time that it struck me how very similar its basic premise is to Pride and Prejudice. I know you are saying that most romantic novels are similar to Pride and Prejudice. But I don't mean that. I mean how pride and prejudice can play havoc with a prospective relationship. No matter how the specifics of a context are, the reactions that spring from either pride or prejudice make for interesting story building. Anyway that's not what I wanted to say. Oh yes, digressing a wee bit, I still love to read Georgette Heyer. It is just that thing called literature that I can't digest at the moment. Ha, you admit Heyer ain't literature isn't it? (hush don't go around prompting people L) Err...this is sounding so much like a womanly burst of incoherents, so let's jump to the original intent.

In the book, Sylvester, the Duke of Salford has a conversation with his mother that goes thus:

Sylvester paused and then said quite coolly: 'I am thinking of getting married, Mama.'

She was taken so much by surprise that she could only stare at him. He had the reputation of being a dangerous flirt, but she had almost given up hope of his coming to the point of offering for any lady's hand in matrimony...Recovering from her stupefaction, she said: 'My dear, this is very sudden.'

'Not so sudden as you think, Mama. I have been meaning for some time to speak to you about it.'

'Good gracious! And I never suspected it! Do, pray, sit down and tell me all about it!'...

...Well, I realized- oh, above a year ago!- that it was my duty to marry...So I began some months ago to look about me.'

'You are the oddest creature! Next you will tell me you made out a list of the qualities that your wife must possess!'

'More or less,' he admitted. 'You may laugh, Mama, but you'll agree that certain qualities are indispensable!...(he proceeds to elaborate on the qualities)...

...'Have you discovered among the debutantes (e acute omitted) one who is endowed with all these qualities?'

'At first glance, I suppose a dozen, but in the end only five.'

'Five!' (At this point Mama Duchess becomes speechless! Sylvester then lists out the names of the five eligibles and asks his mother who will be suitable!)

In a recent conversation, a friend mentioned that along with the thought of settling down came the problem of abundant choice. To paraphrase him, I could choose from many suitables. The question is whom!

Ah well, some of us ancients still think that there will be light bulbs and sound effects to indicate the right one!

2007-10-03T10:15:00.000+05:30

Grmmmm.....Urghhhh....err, is this that justjots place? It seems vaguely familiar but I am not sure. Ever since some fairy...umm....sloth fairy or some such appeared and sprinkled something on me...umm...don't know what that thing was called, I don't know what happened. Actually, what is happening now? Am I typing in that language called E something? Ah, s*d it.

I sort of recall liking those fat printed stuff (books they're called?) and those things that make sound from a machine (music I think?). But I can't stand the sight of them anymore. I still like Indian biscuits (the eating kind), so that is some consolation. Err...well, what I am trying to say is that I am slowly becoming appearing..no no, what is that word...visible! ah yes we see bill. So maybe I'll write about biscuits and Almack's and sloth fairies.

Yes, say that word...err...welcome?

2007-08-11T11:13:00.000+05:30

Yet another Booker longlist, a Baker (or Booker) dozen, was out a few days ago. Unfortunately, this year I do not have the enthusiasm to dig around and read about the longlistees. Anyway, for the record, there is always the Guardian for details.

Also, posting around here will be very sporadic for the next few weeks.

A Torn Page from the Notebook

2007-07-27T10:42:00.000+05:30

>>Danielle hangs Rothkos in her apartment. Four of them. Which ones now. The Rothkos are repeatedly mentioned as tools of solace. Tools? Mirrors perhaps. No, that's absurd. Not mirrors. Must be presence. Whatever. Anyway, must see if Messud offers clues to which Rothkos are hung. But does it make a difference? They are all so similar.

* I knew Potter would have ended up an Auror. But Ron? RON! And what does Ginny do? Keep home?

* Pay Attention to the World. How much one loves Susan Sontag. Can't quite understand why. Must be that essay on how she reads.

>> Buy Harry Potter audio book for Grandpa. I shudder to think of the reaction. Sigh.

* Why do I not listen to books? Why am I so closed to them? That's the thing - closed. Cynical as well. Throw e-books into that muck too. Such great audio around and I can't appreciate it. Hmm...???////??--- The great fault of mine is to think that I have to approach reading through all its methods. Why so?

* Claire Messud is a winner. Clearly. The Emperor's Children beats anything I've read recently. And I haven't even got to the end of the book yet. The dialogues, how does she manage such brilliance effortlessly? Effortlessly??!! Indeed, she'll know about effort!

* Chenthil likes Frederica. Yay! Must find next suspect to foist Heyer on. Somebody open-minded. Somebody who does not equate darling Heyer (say 'Hair' not 'Hey err') with M&B balderdash. The irony of finding M&Bs priced so high in second hand bookstores, higher than the Roths and the Whartons. Dostoyevsky for Rs.20! and the M&B minimum is 60 bucks. Ha, state of the times!

2007-07-21T10:02:00.000+05:30

People like you cause the hype, the frenzy,...(with a sad shake of the head) such madness. Those were the husband's words this morning. One brushed it off until one read this:

The children's telephone counselling service has announced it will be laying on extra staff to cope with any surge in calls from grief-stricken children if rumours are borne out in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

At such times, one thinks the husband may be right.

Nevertheless, one is going to read the last Potter book starting this evening (the book gets home delivered this afternoon). One will try not to read any spoilers, any chapter by chapter updates until one is done with the book (and the series, in a way). One is loath to confess to the shock one felt when, on reading a few pages at random from The Order of the Phoenix last night, one wanted to call the prose pedestrian (an adverbial mess). But this morning one knows that one doesn't read Potter for prose. One reads Banville for that. So why does one read Harry Potter then? Ah, to answer the question you'll have to pick up the book and find out yourself.

2007-07-19T13:02:00.000+05:30

Chris Long Tail Anderson and a couple of his friends start a new website called BookTour. Filching the description from this post:

[BookTour is] a free online service that connects authors and potential audiences of all sorts, from book groups to civic organizations, from bookstores to corporate events. Authors create their own page (biography, books, tour dates and availability) and any group looking for speakers can find them and contact them directly to arrange for an appearance. Relevant information for both authors and venues can be added in minutes through a simple fill-in-the-blanks interface. Connecting authors with potential audiences then becomes as easy as searching (by geography, book titles, subject, dates of availability) and sending an email.

For authors, BookTour.com serves as a one-stop tool for book promotion, allowing authors at all levels of their careers to locate receptive live audiences. For readers and audiences, BookTour.com makes finding when a favorite author is coming to your town as easy as checking the weather.

2007-07-19T10:14:00.000+05:30

You know, this morning, on the blank page at the back of the Edith Wharton hardcover, I was furiously updating my TBR list. This list is made up solely of books and articles that are mentioned in Lee's book. It is amazing how, inevitably, a good book points you to many others. Funny then that I should come across a post on the topic right after my list was updated.

2007-07-19T10:09:00.001+05:30

One hears that Somerset Maugham's books (the first edition one supposes) had a repeating symbol on the cover. An arch over a straight line, each marked by other smaller lines. Head over here for pictures and comments.

2007-07-19T09:59:00.001+05:30

WATER is taught by thirst;
Land, by the oceans passed;
Transport, by throe;
Peace, by its battles told;
Love, by memorial mould;
Birds, by the snow.

-Emily Dickinson, Time and Eternity Collection