On reading Coleridge’s “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”

It has been more than two hundred years since Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” has been published and when I read it recently I felt completely captivated. The language of the poem is simple readable English but the extraordinarily inspired wordplay, the stirring cadence and the rhythm of the verse, the imagery, the power of its moral vision, the evocation of the darker side of thoughtless and ignorant action and its consequences, the relief in redemption of the Mariner and the simplicity of its message are astonishingly wondrous and deeply impactful. There is something extremely beautiful and transcendental in this poem

As I read through the poem, I felt that it continues to remain intensely relevant to all of mankind even to this day. As the power of technology ascends, man’s power to cause irreversible harm to nature is also increasing. It is this harm that in analogical terms will be equivalent to the harm the Ancient Mariner inflicts on the well-meaning and benign Albatross. While the Mariner in the poem gets his redemption towards the end and the dead Albatross slides off his neck to sink deep into the sea, will the modern man have a similar chance? In reminding us that there is an urgent need to ask this question and find a suitable answer to our current predicament lies the relevance of this magnificent poem. Coleridge also leaves us with a possible clue in the seventh part of the poem where he points to the way for our redemption through these deeply wise words

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all

Ghostwritten – David Mitchell

The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting – David Mitchell

Zadie Smith and David Mitchell are two current day writers – of younger generation – who have impressed me a lot with their writing talent. Ms. Smith’s treatment of the dynamics of a mixed race Britain in “White Teeth” is nothing short of an unforgettable bravura performance. She is blessed with an extraordinary control on language and effortless storytelling. The only disappointing aspect is her limited oeuvre – one wishes she had written more. Mitchell covers even that short coming. He is in his mid-forties and has already written half dozen novels each of which are of exceptional merit and with possible promise of more to come in the future. He is one of those writers whose books one should read with a pencil in hand

“Who was blowing on the nape of my neck” – thus begins David Mitchell’s “Ghostwritten” – a roller coaster of a book written in nine loosely interlocked parts with the key characters touching the life of the other – knowingly or unknowingly, in time – past and present, in places – scattered across the globe spanning Japan, China, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Russia, England, Clear Island, Switzerland and America. The nine parts of the novel are so distinct in their nature, characters and plot, that they do not allow the novel to be pigeonholed into a specific genre. Mitchell writes with an exuberance of language that is a joy to read. The prose has a calm confidence of having a control on words, images, metaphors to produce the precise effect he intends to as part of the narrative flow. There is a bursting verbal energy, great rush and flow to the prose and suddenly in that torrent out of nowhere as if to put speed breakers come sentences which are beautiful, elevated and breathtaking for their imagination:

‘All that I remember about Tatyana’s flat is a sober clock, that dropped tocks like pebbles down a deep shaft”

The tocks in a clock’s “tick-tock” acquire a material weight and solidity of a pebble

‘The minutes are hauling themselves by like a shot Hollywood gangster crawling down a corridor

The slow passage of time is being compared to a shot, bleeding and crawling Hollywood gangster

… that plump, juicing, yielding buttock of fruit

Will fruit eating ever remain the same for me again?

“Killing is a sensation, like abortion or birth, that you can never accurately imagine

Whoa!!

There is nothing contrived in Mitchell’s sentences. The metaphors employed appear effortless and matter of fact. There is a deeply satisfying nature to his writing. In the chapter titled London, there is a place where Mitchell describes the routes on London tube in appealingly anthropomorphic terms with temperaments, personalities and wonderfully ascribed oddities  

The Jubilee Line, the young disappointment of the family….. The District and Circle Line, well, even Death would rather fork out for a taxi if he’s in a hurry… Docklands Light Railway, the nouveau riche neighbour…. Stentorian Piccadilly, Central….the middle-aged cousin, matter of fact, direct… Yep the Northern Line is the psycho of the family

 and while one is enjoying this, Mitchell then suddenly concludes with the one liner:

London is a language. I guess all places are.

I would have traveled on London tube routes a thousand times but never managed to see it this way. The job of a writer among others is to give us an alternative way of seeing things, a possibility of imagining things differently. Mitchell produces these alternative realities with a dexterity that borders on genius. Here are a couple more which I liked immensely:

…Italians give their cities sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that.  London’s middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay.

A city is a sea that you lose things in. You only find things that other people have lost.
‘Wonderful isn’t it?’ I say to a man walking his red setter
‘Fackin’ shithole innit?’
Londoners slag off London because, deep down, we know we are living in the greatest city in the world 

As I read through the book I kept looking for Mitchell’s real voice – the author’s omniscient voice and found it difficult to isolate and pin it.  Ghostwritten is densely populated with characters both minor and major whose importance, relevance and life spans vary. Mitchell manages to control and orchestrate the variegated voices of his characters wonderfully well even while sustaining their distinct identities. There is a lot of clever writing in the book but always and unfailingly it is backed by genuine talent.

Ghostwritten was written when Mitchell was just about thirty. At this age many of us would be getting out of our protective shells to face the real vagaries of life and to form opinions which could potentially sustain us in the future. Judging by that yardstick, Mitchell appears precocious for there are some deep insights he proffers matter-of-factly. Consider this wonderful insight into the minds of cultists, fanatics and terrorists:   

Society…………. is an outer abdication. We abdicate certain freedoms, and in return we get civilization. We get protection from death by starvation, bandits and cholera. It’s a fair deal. Signed on our behalf by our educational system on the day we are born. However, we all have an inner self, that decides to what degree we honour this contract. This inner self is our own responsibility. I fear that many of the young men and women in the Fellowship handed this inner responsibility to their Guru, to do with as he please. And that…. is what he did with it

..or the phenomenon of cherry blossom which the Japanese love so much

The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree it turns ever more perfect. And when it’s perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits the ground it gets all mushed up. So it’s only absolutely perfect when it’s falling through the air, this way and that, for the briefest time… I think that only we Japanese understand that, don’t you?

..or the metaphysical soliloquy on chance and fate

Therefore, does chance or fate control our lives? Well, the answer is relative as time. If you are in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you’re reading, it’s fate all the way

In an interview given to Paris Review magazine, David Mitchell declared that he preferred to discuss the human heart through characterization, and to address the human condition through plot. In Ghostwritten he lives up to this declaration truest to the stated intent.

Both Nabokov and Sontag opined that novels are to be re-read for reasons that are universally justifiable. Notwithstanding the reasons, a re-read is never like the original read where the first time pleasure of encounter is mingled with a sense of progressive anticipation. In a re-read, anticipation is near dead. One knows the plot, one gets familiar with the characters and one is aware of the conclusion. The place of anticipation is taken by a quest for clarity, insight, analysis, a certain critical bent attended by slightly dimmed joy. While all of this may be true for a majority of books, David Mitchell’s “Ghostwritten” will remain a near certain exception to that

A wonderful book by one of the most talented writers of our time and a book worthy of reading many times over

Miscellaneous murmurs: Random thoughts on writers and libraries

Franz Kafka once said that a book is an axe for the frozen sea within us. In today’s India there is no dearth of frozen seas. All around us we see these congealed and frozen seas – a billion plus of them. Some are frozen seas within frozen seas. We are desperately short of good axes. But more worrying than this shortage of axes is the shortage of axe makers: the swarthy blacksmiths with their capacious bellows of humane concerns, ignited and blazing forges of personal conscience, heavy hammers, tongs, anvils and chisels of writerly skills using which the axes are moulded, beaten and shaped to be used to prise open the frozen seas within us. If we run short of axes we can borrow from our neighbours (which we are already doing), but we run short of axe makers where can we borrow them from? We need to have our own blacksmiths

Do a sampling of what defines a well-read person and invariably one finds that the proffered list of read books contains a disproportionately large number from other countries. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact it is heartening for it indicates a level of familiarity with world literature and also of an evolved taste. However, that does not take away the truth that the books of other countries were written primarily with their immediate concerns in mind. It so happens that they were so well written, that the act of writing elevated the books from a local to a more universal human appeal. We too need our writers to be able to do that for us and for the citizens of the world as an act of reciprocation. Sadly, we are far away from stepping on to that podium of world literature where our writers too can stand shoulder to shoulder with writers of other countries. It would be nice to see some of our giants rubbing shoulders with some of their giants. Barring one or two, where are our giants? We appear to be producing more dwarves and at best ordinary humans than giants. The regional literatures are producing some tall men but for lack of translation they are being shoved into oblivion of limited readership. This needs to change and if it does not we will lose something relevant and precious forever

That brings us to the next question:  So are writers made or are they born? David Mitchell in his brilliant novel Ghostwritten says: Birth deals us out a hand of cards, but as important as their value is the place we are dealt them in. Note the importance of the place in deciding the strength of the hand. Here lies a clue to the question posed earlier. One may be born with strengths of expression, urge to write and tell a story brilliantly but all that gets dented and stunted if one is not in the right place. And that place should be created in our surroundings, with our resources and by our powers. The British Library in London is called “the memory of the nation”. There is not an iota of exaggeration in this. There are similar memory banks in the US and almost all countries in the developed world. Besides the dazzling array of resources bestowed on these memory banks what distinguishes them is the user friendliness that is embedded in them. They readily lend a helping hand to lay readers, amateur and professional writers alike to base their research for their books. Many great and outstanding books are indebted to these institutions. Surrounding these memory banks is a network of top notch institutions that feed into and feed out of these memory banks. For a country of 60 million, Britain still produces the highest per capita of quality writers. US, Germany and France have very similar numbers. So given the right conditions, the writers will be allowed to make themselves. As much as they are born they are made too

Sadly, in India, while we have enough money to buy humongous quantities of armaments and enough money to give away to crony capitalists (if you don’t believe me please ask Mr.Raghuram Rajan – former chief economist of IMF) we do not have enough to invest in world class libraries and educational institutions. Our libraries are already in a state of crisis and if we continue like this we will have no libraries worth talking about. While a well written book is a great achievement, a well-read book is a great personal satisfaction. We need to have numerous great achievements and manifold more personal satisfactions. It is time the powers that be did something about this

The Feel Good Accident

The sudden screech of braking tyres accompanied with the loud crashing noise jolted me out of my reverie. As I snapped out, I managed to catch a glimpse of a black object flying in the air at about six feet above the ground and land in the midst of the road like a lump of putty. It took a split second for me to realize that the object was a human being clothed in a rider suit. The yellow bike from which the rider was propelled into air was lying ten feet behind him with its front wheel still turning at high speed. The Mercedes coupe which crashed into the bike held the hind wheel underneath its front tyres. With its shattered windshield the car looked like a hungry carnivore pinning its victim to the ground at the terminal stages of its hunt. All around me people at all corners of the junction where the accident took place came to standstill with curious, anxious eyes directed towards the site of the accident. Some ladies, especially the middle-aged and older, already had their hands to their mouths, proving that the enormity and suddenness of what transpired already sank into their minds with the attendant reflexive action already in place. There was mild acrid smell of burning rubber in the air. None moved from their places.

The door of the Mercedes coupe opened slowly and the driver, an old man of about sixty with a French beard staggered and slumped on the road. He looked completely dazed and tired. The bike rider lay stretched on the ground without moving. A couple of brave souls reached out to the car driver and were asking him some questions which did not appear to register with him. One of the men who were trying to speak to the driver disengaged and began calling an emergency number on his mobile phone. The way he was gesticulating and pointing to the various landmarks at the junction while on the call indicated that he reached the right number for help. The rider lay still unmoving. A couple of more people walked towards rider. They bent over him and attempted to make a conversation. The lack of response forced one of them to clap his hands in front of the rider’s visored head. That did not elicit any response either. There was no attempt to move the rider or make him sit. The dutiful traffic lights at the five-way junction kept doing their programmed job of changing from red to green via yellow but no traffic moved. The empty junction, with its thick white crisscross lines, suddenly appeared to possess massive proportions – much bigger than what it normally appeared to be with regular bustling traffic.

The wailing sirens of a medical ambulance and patrol vans were heard on the horizon and in minutes using whatever passage ways were available they reached the site of the accident. Half a dozen paramedics rushed with a foldable stretcher towards the bike rider. The stretcher was laid by his side carefully and the one of the paramedics started to speak to the rider who was still immobile. The crowds began to grow on the pavements. The police swung into action and cordoned off the site of accident with phosphorescent signs. In doing so they took adequate care to be economical with the space they were encroaching. One of the cops was on his walkie-talkie pointing to the traffic signals which got switched off and traffic control operations switched to a manual mode. While the paramedical staff was at work, the traffic police resumed the flow of traffic. From buses, cabs and cars people were craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the accident while they passed by. After sometime one of the paramedics stood up and pointed his two fingers towards his own eyes and raised his thumb. As if waiting for this cue the others shifted the rider to the stretcher carefully and unzipped the riding suit and slowly eased the helmet off the rider. One of the paramedics who looked like the lead of the pack sauntered towards the police and conveyed something and walked back to his team taking along with him the zonked car driver. The stretcher and the car driver were eased into the ambulance and with wailing sounds and flashing lights it began to move away from the accident site. In the meanwhile a largish tow-vehicle appeared on the scene and carefully loaded the bike in its carriage, hooked the Mercedes to its tow and moved away from the scene. The cordons were removed and gradually the traffic started to assume its normal intensity of flow. Even the thicket of cops dispersed leaving just a couple of them to monitor the traffic situation and ensure its return to normalcy. As if to survey and assess the overall progress, a helicopter from emergency services hovered over the scene for a brief while and then left. From start to finish the whole incident took under an hour to clear out. It was as if a stone was dropped into a calm pond which after seeing its share of splashes and ripples settles back to its usual serenity

Even to this day I am not sure whose mistake it was in the first place. Is the biker alive or dead? Maybe he is alive, with a few scars, a half broken tooth, mild limp but continues to ride a bike – with a sense of caution. Maybe he is sharing his wisdom by cautioning his friends, kids in the neighbourhood and members of biker communities and clubs to drive more carefully. What happened to the car owner? Did he get penalized? Was it his mistake? Was his next car a Mercedes? Did the biker and the car driver ever meet again? May be they are good friends now and exchange greetings on occasions to remind each other what they went through. Who knows? May be they are sworn enemies blaming each other for inducing excruciating moments of uncertainty, panic and pain in one another’s life

My distinct memory of this incident was the feeling of a surreal. The red helicopter hovering on the top, paramedics in their trademark dresses surrounding over a stretcher, the body of the man lying on the road unmoving mostly because of shock, the anonymous person who instinctively knew what to do and called the hospital for emergency help with a gratuitous kindness, the cops in their blue and white dresses, shining shoes,  buttoned down holsters, minimal epaulettes, the ambulance and emergency response vans on standby with their flashing lights, the tow vehicle that gently crawled in and out of the scene from nowhere were all an odd mix of things. I also have a remembrance of feeling very hungry, walking to an Italian joint and asking for a baguette with egg mayonnaise and sun dried tomatoes to be packed for my lunch to be eaten at my desk at work

However, what I remember most was also the memory of a strong surge of a feeling of hope engendered by the first-hand demonstration of a social system responding with a throbbing urgency to the need of one of its distressed constituents. That man can design and invoke human systems to work for the common good in times of crisis while keeping the collateral impact of disruption to others at a minimal left me with a sense of feel good and remembering this accident also reminds me of that sense of feel good. Contradictory……………………. is it?

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri – Scintillating Glimpses of Emigrant Experience

We normally speak of “emigrant experience” as something whose nature is homogenous and uniform. This view is largely misleading. The drives, motives, challenges and experiences of the first generation emigrants differ a lot from that of the second and subsequent generations of emigrants. The umbilical cord of cultural mores, shared values and blood relationships, longing for one’s land of birth, tastes and preferences starts to wilt over a period of time for the first generation emigrant. Despite this and in a way, the first generation emigrant is Janus faced. While one face is looking towards the possibilities and opportunities in the migrant land, the other face is looking, not infrequently, towards the land of birth with a sense of nostalgia. The pull of the faces in two opposite directions is long drawn and troubling. On the other hand the second generation emigrant would already have crossed over to the other side culturally and in every which way one can think of. However, they inevitably encounter two different atmospheres and value systems – one within the home and another outside of it. The reconciliation of these two value systems is mildly puzzling and frustrating at times. The issues around the sense of identity, loss, longing, value systems and belongingness are never easily resolved. “Unaccustomed Earth” – Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest collection of short stories deals with the tensions, disappointments and frustrations of these unresolved issues in a way that is at once mature, beautiful and moving     

In a broader sense Lahiri’s characters are all unwitting victims of geographic dislocation who carry with them the burden of heavy expectations around the need for high distinction, material progress and academic achievement. Yet their trophy master and doctoral degrees from Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Stanford and LSE and the concomitant material progress for which they have migrated in the first place offer them no protection from the inherent turmoils of emigrant life. It is these turmoils that form the foundation of Lahiri’s stories. Barring a drive and desire to achieve academic distinction nothing appears to remain constant between generations. The variance in cultural values between generations actually engenders a drifting apart leading to isolation, loneliness and unhappiness. Lahiri captures these feelings with a wonderful subtlety and mastery

In the title story “Unaccustomed Earth” – a widowed father struggles with the dilemmas of the propriety of staying with her lawyer daughter who is married to an American, striking a new relationship with a widow he meets on a trip to Europe and his own need for independence that he has come to treasure during his long stay in America. The hesitation to strike a companionship prevents him from posting a card to the widow which eventually gets posted by his daughter on his behalf despite the mild feeling of betrayal of her father towards her dead mother. In the story “Hell – Heaven” – what in my view is the best story in the collection and one of the finest I have read, one gets to see the silent attraction between the mother of the narrator of the story and a long time guest who despite his closeness moves on to get married to an American. The mother is so heart-broken that she almost commits suicide but is saved by a neighbour’s greeting which distracts her from the act. There is a splendid balance and control with which this story is told. In the story “Only Goodness” one gets to see the complete drift between a once promising but presently alcoholic brother, his successful and well-meaning sister and their parents. Lahiri’s depiction of the gradualness with which the family ties unravel setting in place an irreconcilable distance among them is brilliant. The story “Nobody’s Business” is a love affair which comes to naught between a Bengali girl and an Egyptian professor of history who is a womanizer. The girl’s roommate loves her but his love is not acknowledged and she moves on to London simply fading out of everyone’s life. The stories “Once in a Lifetime”, “Year’s End” and “Going Ashore” are stories revolving around the families of Hema and Kaushik, their drifting, temporary intertwining and moving away for good with the death of Kaushik

All the stories in this collection are extremely well written with the power of authenticity produced by an eye for idiosyncratic detail which appears to have been drawn from Lahiri’s own experiences as the child of a first generation Bengali emigrant. While the specific details add to the power of the overall storytelling, the stories themselves could have been the stories of any Indian emigrant and not necessarily a Bengali emigrant. Lahiri has picked up the title of her book from a passage of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Custom House” which runs as follows:

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth”

Hawthorne’s intention of embracing unaccustomed earths for his children was with the fine motive of enabling their flourishing. While Lahiri’s characters do successfully strike their roots in the unaccustomed earth of America, do they flourish in the complete sense of the word is a big question. It is in this authentic portrayal of unintended outcomes resides the power and beauty of Lahiri’s stories.

A memorable reading experience

Writers on Writing – Part 5

Of all the forms of writing, I love short stories the most for the extraordinary innovation, creativity and originality they have produced. I have a special affection for them as they give me enormous joy and relief from bouts of boredom and listlessness that are my lot from time to time. In utilitarian terms too, I like them for the advantage of modularity they carry with them. Here are some deep and brilliant insights on the craft of short story writing from three of the greatest short story writers of our times viz. William Trevor, Frank O Connor and Mavis Gallant.   ( Source: Paris Review Magazine)

INTERVIEWER: Why do you prefer the short story for your medium?

FRANK O’CONNOR: Because it’s the nearest thing I know to lyric poetry—I wrote lyric poetry for a long time, then discovered that God had not intended me to be a lyric poet, and the nearest thing to that is the short story. A novel actually requires far more logic and far more knowledge of circumstances, whereas a short story can have the sort of detachment from circumstances that lyric poetry has.

INTERVIEWER: Faulkner has said, “Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.” What do you think about this?

FRANK O’CONNOR: I’d love to console myself, it’s that neat—it sounds absolutely perfect except that it implies, as from a short-story writer, that the novel is just an easy sort of thing that you slide gently into, whereas, in fact, my own experience with the novel is that it was always too difficult for me to do. At least to do a novel like Pride and Prejudice requires something more than to be a failed B.A. or a failed poet or a failed short-story writer, or a failed anything else. Creating in the novel a sense of continuing life is the thing. We don’t have that problem in the short story, where you merely suggest continuing life. In the novel, you have to create it, and that explains one of my quarrels with modern novels. Even a novel like As I Lay Dying, which I admire enormously, is not a novel at all, it’s a short story. To me a novel is something that’s built around the character of time, the nature of time, and the effects that time has on events and characters. When I see a novel that’s supposed to take place in twenty-four hours, I just wonder why the man padded out the short story.

 INTERVIEWER: Yeats said, “O’Connor is doing for Ireland what Chekhov did for Russia.” What do you think of Chekhov?

 FRANK O’CONNOR: Oh, naturally I admire Chekhov extravagantly; I think every short-story writer does. He’s inimitable, a person to read and admire and worship—but never, never, never to imitate. He’s got all the most extraordinary technical devices, and the moment you start imitating him without those technical devices, you fall into a sort of rambling narrative, as I think even a good story writer like Katherine Mansfield did. She sees that Chekhov apparently constructs a story without episodic interest, so she decides that if she constructs a story without episodic interest it will be equally good. It isn’t. What she forgets is that Chekhov had a long career as a journalist, as a writer for comic magazines, writing squibs, writing vaudevilles, and he had learned the art very, very early of maintaining interest, of creating a bony structure. It’s only concealed in the later work. They think they can do without that bony structure, but they’re all wrong

 INTERVIEWER : What is your definition of a short story?

 WILLIAM TREVOR: I think it is the art of the glimpse. If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more. It is concerned with the total exclusion of meaninglessness. Life, on the other hand, is meaningless most of the time. The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.

 INTERVIEWER: You have never created a hero. Why is that?

WILLIAM TREVOR: Because I find them dull. Heroes don’t really belong in short stories. As Frank O’Connor said, “Short stories are about little people,” and I agree. I find the unheroic side of people much richer and more entertaining than black-and-white success.

 INTERVIEWER: What do you think about the state of the short story?

MAVIS GALLANT: With few exceptions, books of short stories seldom sell well. Short-story readers are a special kind of reader, like readers of poetry. Many novel readers don’t like collections of stories—I think that they dislike the frequent change of time, place and people. Of course, stories should not be read one after the other. A book of stories is not a novel. Someone once said to me, “Katherine Mansfield died before she was ready to write a novel. Perhaps she would never have been ready.” I thought that was just stupid.

INTERVIEWER: In the past you’ve said that Anton Chekhov is the writer who most strongly influenced your writing and Eudora Welty the contemporary writer you most admire. Could you elaborate?

 MAVIS GALLANT: Because one is asked the same question all the time one almost unconsciously develops answers that are passe-partout but undoubtedly incomplete. About Chekhov: I have nearly no idea what influence was brought to bear. I discovered Chekhov young, in the Constance Garnett translation. I still read him—there seems to be always some volume or other lying about with a marker in it. But the same is true of Proust. I wonder if any writer can say where an influence came in. I now think influence is almost anything one admired when young. Perhaps one was influenced without knowing it by writers one later ceased to admire. Not long ago I heard a writer say he disliked Hemingway when, in fact, his work wouldn’t exist in its present form if Hemingway had not come first. About Eudora Welty: I discovered her work in my twenties. I reread her now with the same pleasure and admiration.

After Rain – William Trevor

INTERVIEWER: What is your definition of a short story?

WILLIAM TREVOR: I think it is the art of the glimpse. If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more. It is concerned with the total exclusion of meaninglessness. Life, on the other hand, is meaningless most of the time. The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.

The above is an extract from an interview given by William Trevor to The Paris Review Magazine in 1989 carrying one of the most comprehensive and finest definitions of the art form of short story. However, what caught my attention is his declaration that life for most part is meaningless. If one were to suspend the commonly accepted religious and philosophical positions that life has certain inscrutable cosmic purpose, then Trevor’s assertion appears to have hit bull’s eye. Yet no other writer, other than Chekov, could use life’s inclusive sense of meaninglessness, dereliction and frequently perplexing feeling of purposelessness as raw material to spin stories of dazzling brilliance and lasting beauty as Trevor can do. Both Trevor and Chekov are like the eponymous dwarf in the story Rumpelstiltskin who could spin gold threads of finest counts out of bundles of worthless hay. The artistic achievement of Trevor lies not in dwelling on the grand truths of life, shattering epiphanies or shocking realizations but in the ability to depict the minor turmoils and tremors of quotidian life with a refined gravity and a frightening clarity which is subtly haunting and definitively disturbing. This is the conclusion that I have come to after reading Trevor’s collection of short stories ‘After Rain”

The characters that Trevor so tellingly portrays in this collection are ordinary people living commonplace and routine lives. On the surface, their lives are like placid lakes without ripples but underneath there are strong undercurrents of human jealousies, apprehensions, unintended cruelties, intended kindnesses, habitual indifferences, silent and explicit expectations, lingering memories, staunch and sincere dogmas and beliefs, failed and failing marriages, of being victims at the hands of villains who themselves are equally ordinary, personal hurts and the ensuing pain. It is these undercurrents that Trevor captures and depicts with extraordinary skill and mastery. Trevor makes no attempt to build heroes, heroines or larger than life personalities in his stories. In an admission in the interview to Paris Review, Trevor claimed that “he finds the unheroic side of people much richer and more entertaining than black-and-white success”. This belief is never broken in any of his stories in this collection and the tales he spins out of the common lives and mundane incidents are rich with feelings, sensitive, full of pathos and harrowing gravity that one ends up marveling at Trevor’s grasp of human predicament in diverse situations.   

In the story ”The Piano Tuner’s Wives”, an ageing blind piano tuner gets married second time on account of the death of his first wife and his new wife is dismayed at the strong traces of conditioning left by the former. The ensuing jealousy drives her to erase these traces to create her stamp of authority. What makes the story touching is that a living person is competing with a mild sense of spite and bitterness with a dead person to whom these things do not matter anymore. In the story “A Friendship”, a woman’s infidelity with an acquaintance from her past inadvertently facilitated by her close friend leads the woman’s husband to demand the termination of this friendship as atonement to the indiscretion. In the story “Timothy’s Birthday”, a homosexual son’s indifference to his parent’s efforts to celebrate his birthday leads him to send a substitute to inform of his inability to attend the birthday celebration. The substitute turns out to be a petty crook who steals from the house after having a generous meal and this whole incident further deepens the resentment and sadness of the already distraught couple. In the story “A Bit of Business”, two small time crooks break into the house during a papal visit and mug an old man, steal money and go on a jolly ride in the town with a couple of girls. However, the joy of the jolly trip is spoiled for one of the crooks by the nagging feeling that it would have been better to have killed the old man instead of hurting and binding him to a chair to avoid consequences of identification. In the title story “After Rain” a broken relationship brings a lady to a small town in Italy on a holiday which she had visited as a child along with her parents. Along also come a flood of memories from her past that is mildly unsettling. In the story “Widows” the attempt by a house painter to extract his due for work done from a recently widowed lady brings back the memories to her sister of her position, beauty, authority and her own unhappy marriage. The sister is a widow herself. “Gilbert’s Mother” is a mildly disturbing story of a mother who suspects her son of being a murderer and yet they continue to share an affectionate life under the same roof. In the story “The Potato Dealer” – driven by economic reasons a poor potato dealer marries a pregnant girl half his age. Many years later the mother reveals the truth to the child which had been kept a secret so far much against the wishes of the potato dealer. In the story “Lost Ground” an entire family and community gangs up against a protestant boy for his claims and beliefs in the visitation of a saint from Catholic Church. The boy is sequestered in his own house and eventually killed by his own “hard-man” protestant brother. “Marrying Damian” is the story of a troubled old couple whose daughter ends up in a marital relationship with a shiftless man twice her age – who himself is a close friend of the couple

There are no happy stories in this collection. The conclusions around loss, hurt and unhappiness are mostly allusions lurking in shadows. Trevor leaves the inferences as interpretations that the reader is forced to arrive at. And it is in this lies the grace and beauty of these brilliantly written stories. A wonderful reading experience

Jack London’s Argonuats – Stories From “Son of the Wolf”

Jack London produced some remarkable stories around the people who participated in the Klondike gold rush at the turn of the twentieth century. The northern part of Canada that constitutes the Klondike region is known for its extreme weather and any misadventure or miscalculation can turn into a definitive recipe for death. Yet the availability of gold and lure of lucre led hordes of prospectors from America and Canada to try their fortunes in this indifferent and brutal setting. London traveled to these regions for a brief while and gained firsthand knowledge of these Argonauts who went gold prospecting and celebrated them and their lives through a series of stories. The setting in which men pitted against harsh nature, fellow men and animals brought the best and the worst in them. The greatness of London’s stories lies in spinning interesting tales around his observations and encounters of these men, women and animals leading to a popular body of fiction which is unique, well-admired, memorable and a joy to read. “The Son of the Wolf” is one such collection of London’s Klondike stories.

For the gold prospectors in Klondike death, dying and destruction are part of the deal and therefore death of men, women or animal did not accompany conventional expression of grief. In the story “The White Silence”, Mason – a gold prospector – is crushed under a tree by a freak accident and after meaningful attempts to do his best, Mason’s best friend Malemute Kid despite his great attachment and love for Mason puts a bullet in him and continues on his journey with Mason’s wife Ruth without a word or murmur. The loneliness of two men and a pregnant woman in the vast silence of those frozen wastelands is brought to life by London in a way that is unforgettable

London’s prose has a peculiar masculinity associated with it. Yet his portrayal of female characters in these stories is never any less to the male characters he writes about. In the stories “The Priestly Prerogative” and “The Wife of a King” one gets to see two strong willed women have their way and assert their independence with the help of honourable and just men who populate this male dominated setting

In Klondike region, weak minded and weak bodied men are simply winnowed out by the natural conditions. The story ‘In a Far Country’ is a tale of two such men who cocooned in an isolated shelter work towards mutual destruction for lack of strength, moral tenacity and trust. In an environment where being unjust and unfair could mean a chance of survival and an opportunity to live once again one expects men to develop a code of ethics that are savage and easily comprisable. On the contrary London’s Argonauts are men of a moral fibre that is sturdy, impressive and emulation worthy. In three of the best stories in the collection “An Odyssey of the North”, “To the Man on the Trial” and “The Wisdom of the Trail” one gets to see this chivalrous conduct of men

All migrations of human beings invariably end up in clash between the migrants and natives in some form or the other. The Klondike prospectors too had their share of such encounters. The title story “The Son of the Wolf” is a white man’s attempt to get a native wife of his choice against the opposition of the youth and priest of the Tanana tribe. London’s narration of the atmospherics of this encounter outlines the customs, mores, and apprehensions of two different cultures brilliantly.

For the narrative power, character delineation and absorbing story telling the stories of Jack London are second to none and this collection is a testimony to that

The Imperfect 10

To draw out a list of ten perfect short stories is a futile and a slightly rash endeavour. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, there are thousands of short stories and I have not read them all nor will I ever read them and that reduces the authenticity of the list. Secondly, of all the literary forms of storytelling, short stories are the most protean, flexible and innovative and choosing specific criteria to fit them into a rigid framework of evaluation, goes against good sense of judgment. The only meaningful criteria of weighing the worth of a short story against its peers is the intensity of joy it gives while reading and the number of times one gravitated to rereading it. Even here one ends up (unjustifiably) leaving out many than including them. So here is my imperfect list of 10 best short stories that gave me enormous joy when I encountered them first and continue to provide undiminished happiness even while rereading them  

Enemies – Anton Chekov. My all-time favourite for the indescribable beauty this story carries with it. Two people with deep personal losses end up clashing with one another in a situation for which both of them are not responsible. The hallmark of the story is its subtlety and Chekov sustains it with an unparalleled mastery. I distinctly remember my experience when I first read it. By the time I reached the last sentence of the story my admiration for Chekov’s grasp of human predicament and situation simply grew like the way morning sunlight suffuses every corner of a house and gradually drives away darkness.

To Room 19 – Dorris Lessing: A disturbing story of the plight of a woman who descends into despondency, madness and then suicide. Lessing’s prose is clinical, dispassionate and harrowing. There is an effortless gradualness with which the descent into final destruction is described which is the demonstration of rare artistic talent. I have lost the courage to read this story when I am alone by myself

Rain – Somerset Maugham: A gruesome drama of the frailty of human will leading to disastrous consequences against the backdrop of a rain drenched island is incomparable. I would have read this story a dozen times in the last ten years for the sheer artistry with which Maugham allows the story to evolve. The strange thing is that the picture of the island and the ambience of rain in my imagination continue to remain the same. It has one of the most unforgettable final sentences delivered by a prostitute to whose charms the sanctimonious and moralizing priest succumbs and subsequently driven by guilt commits suicide by slitting his throat with a razor blade

‘You men! You filthy, dirty pigs! You’re all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!

Jubilation, disgust, triumph, wry mirth and a sense of dismissal are all mixed in this one knock-out of a sentence  

A Piece of Steak – Jack London: After I read this story, I had decided not to grow old the way “Tom King” – the protagonist of this story does. In particular, it is a touching depiction of the plight of an ageing boxer. However, using this as a springboard, London leads the reader into a universal realisation of the relentlessness with which old age, youth and wisdom interoperate. London describes the dynamics of a boxing match so very brilliantly that my revulsion to boxing as a sport loosened a bit. Detail, it is said brings authenticity to narration. There is a paragraph in this story where London describes the face of Tom King the boxer and I think it is an extraordinary feat in detailing:

But it was Tom King’s face that advertised him unmistakably for what he was. It was the face of a typical prize-fighter; of one who had put in long years of service in the squared ring and, by that means developed and emphasized all the marks of the fighting beast. It was distinctly a lowering countenance, and, that no feature of it might escape notice, it was clean-shaven. The lips were shapeless and constituted a mouth harsh to excess, that was like a gash in his face. The jaw was aggressive, brutal, heavy. The eyes, slow of movement and heavy-lidded, were almost expressionless under the shaggy, indrawn brows. Sheer animal that he was, the eyes were the most animal-like feature about him. They were sleepy, lion-like–the eyes of a fighting animal. The forehead slanted quickly back to the hair, which, clipped close, showed every bump of a villainous- looking head. A nose twice broken and moulded variously by countless blows, and a cauliflower ear, permanently swollen and distorted to twice its size, completed his adornment, while the beard, fresh-shaven as it was, sprouted in the skin and gave the face a blue-black stain

Retrieved Reformation - O.Henry: There are many stories of O.Henry that could easily challenge this choice of mine. However, the distinctiveness of this story is that it has a cinematic edge to its climax of an intensity which no other O.Henry story has. The story is about a bank burglar who after falling in love jettisons his profession but it is for the same love he has to display his bank busting skills while being tracked be the long hand of the law. The real twist lies in the behaviour of the representative of the law at the final moment of reckoning. Only O.Henry can take the reader on such a spin.

Monkey’s Paw – W.W.Jacobs. In the past I found it difficult to believe that people could be frightened on account of reading horror stories. Sometimes this opinion bordered on mild condescension. All that changed after I read W.W. Jacobs’s “Monkey’s Paw”. This subtly horror story and the way the climax plays out in the night in an isolated hut is truly chilling

Rip Van Winkle – Washington Irving: Oh! I love the portrayal of the easy-going, genial and kindly character of Rip Winkle juxtaposed with the shrewish personality of Dame Winkle. It is a strange and delectable story with a proper mix of myth and reality. Superbly entertaining and is a masterpiece of American short story

A Cup of Tea – Katherine Mansfield: This clever story depicting the subtle transformation of an insecure woman due to jealousy engendered by a casual and the off the cuff remark of her husband is an absolute treat to read. Mansfield’s prose has a grace and moves like a gentle butterfly with iridescent wings

Interference – Julian Barnes: The final days of a cantankerous and brilliant English music composer – Leonard – who for reasons of perceived hostility of England to foster artists, relocates to a remote French Village with his wife four decades ago. The story is a reminiscence of a life gone by and the small demands of the dying (in the present) set in an environment and circumstances where they are difficult to meet. Towards the end Leonard wants to listen to his own composition “The Four Seasons” — which BBC plays on his 70th birthday as he is breathing his last and interference of electrical signals do not allow him to listen to it. And even the records of his own music that he ordered from the music company located in Britain arrive into the hands of his despondent partner after his death. Moving and brilliant

We’ll Have Fun – John O Hara: To summarize the transition of an age in the span of a few odd pages is not an easy thing to do and O’Hara did it in his inimitable style when he narrates the plight of a happy go lucky out of job alcoholic who is trying to eke out a living by tending to horses at a time when automobiles where making their presence felt and horses were going out of fashion and becoming a rich man’s hobby in America

A One Way Ticket To Wilderness – Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild”

A thing of beauty is a joy forever – this observation is equally relevant in the context of beautiful prose as it is relevant anywhere else. Good writing lives and grips a generation or two and once the context of the setting wanes, the prose starts to lose its sheen. It will start to acquire the hue of a “has-been” similar to the well preserved ruins of a once great civilization. On the contrary, great writing effortlessly transcends multiple generations and yet continues to retain its grip and haunting charm on its readers. Readers, despite passage of time, find new meanings that continue to remain relevant to them. There is an element of permanence associated with it. One feels involuntarily impelled to introduce such writings to subsequent generations as something valuable and sacred with a fervent hope that they too will get to see the same signs of greatness that one has witnessed in it. Into this category of great writing, I would unhesitatingly include Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild”. This is a book that I have read at different stages in my life and every time I found it to have an undiminished freshness, vitality, vigour, energy and relevance

At its core, “The Call of the Wild”, is the story of a transformative journey of Buck, a domesticated dog from Santa Clara valley in California ending up in the northern wildernesses of Klondike region in Canada, with the cleverness, killing instinct and cunningness of an untamed wild beast. The transformation is educative in the ways of the wild not just for Buck but also for the reader. London endows Buck with convincing intellect of a human being and yet retains the true nature of its being in an atmosphere which is primal, harsh and punishing. There is an unfettered freedom and abandon with which this landscape is described by London.

 London’s narration of Buck’s change from a neophyte follower into a confident leader of his dog pack and gradually extending his leadership over the wild wolf packs is a joy to read. It is in describing this change that London’s prose bristles with energy and insight that is memorable and memorability is an essential mark of greatness. Here is a passage which demonstrates this:

 There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move

London is said to have lived the life of his stories, traveling in harsh climes far and wide and mingling with men whose life was full of danger and adventure. He is an extraordinary observer of the landscape around him and to the brilliant descriptions of external beauty; he also effortlessly melds his own highly refined thoughts which make his prose remarkable. In writing fiction that is vigorous and virile, London can be counted among the greatest of the greats – a true master. But that to my mind is not where the greatness of London’s writing lies. The aspect that heightens the appeal of London’s writing is the underlying and unstated thought revolving around the enticing allure of the wilderness and the primal nature of the wild. He makes the atmospherics of the cold north come alive seeing beyond what is visible

 Given the burden of our day to day living in this increasingly complex world of technology, urbanization and strife, there are times – not infrequently – when one feels like escaping into something which is far more natural, original and pristine. It is in the escape of Buck from the constraints and mores of a human civilization into a state of unrestrained existence of wilderness lies a vicarious escape for all men and women which is viscerally liberating  and that to me is the greatness of this wonderful book

 An all-time classic !