Reflections: A Confederacy of Dunces

Ignatius J. Reilley is an eccentric idealist. Highly educated, extremely opinionated, completely frustrated and disillusioned with the ways of society, he lives with his mother, watches juvenile TV shows, criticizes every kind of movie that comes out, and records his intellectual musings in his notebook. In short, he leads a life that is devoid of responsibilities of any kind until one day his mother’s little accident forces him to find a job to scrape together some money. With that begins a series of (mis) adventures that are as funny as they are frustrating as Ignatius fumbles across events with misplaced idealism and obtuseness. Ignatius’s adventures take on more color and absurdity in the backdrop of New Orleans in the 1960s. With rich descriptions of unique characters and situations, the book offers an uncomfortable glance into the life of a socially unadjusted character that evokes humor mostly at his expense.

This is a Pulitzer Prize winning book that is often described as a hilarious read. I wish I had read the book to verify that claim. I listened to the audiobook, and in this case, it seemed like listening to subtle and sarcastic humor that was meant for reading made a difference to the overall experience. While the narrator was great at delivering the distinct New Orleans’s dialect and in giving voice to the different characters, especially the deep booming voice of Ignatius, his monotonous narration fell  flat for me and the humor didn’t come through as much. It is tricky to convey subtle humor through narration. Also, some of the characters took the same “voice”, so it was a little confusing at times, especially given the similarities in the slang and accent. As an aside, the Southern American accent is one of my least favorite accents because I need to concentrate real hard to parse through their unique syntax and semantics. So it was tiring and mildly annoying to hear the repeated “Whoa”s and “Wowee”s. This is just a pet-peeve of mine, and doesn’t indicate anything more serious.

So, all that said about the narration failing to deliver some of the humor, some passages did get some chuckles out of me. However, as Ignatius repeatedly creates chaos, at a certain point in the book, the humor is lost, because the humor is often at the expense of Ignatius, and the reader is heavily aware of the undercurrent of pity, frustration, and mild sadness couched within the sarcasm. I think as unique as Ignatius’s character is, most of us have probably come across a similar persona in real life. They are pseudo-intellectuals who are well educated, but don’t have the right kind of mental framework or substance to live out their idealistic views/opinions that are sometimes radically different from others. But, that doesn’t deter them from holding onto their stubborn views. They therefore become social misfits, and their frustration deepens to the extent that they begin to shun society and morph into ever more difficult and intractable people. They cease to be “normal” and always stand by the wayside of standard societal dictates. Such personalities are frustrating to me, not funny. I feel sorry for them, but at the same time, I also feel sorry for those that lose their peace and happiness over them. Other “normal” people’s reaction and treatment of such individuals is judgmental and foolish too, of course.  So, the whole thing just leads to loops within loops of frustrations involving flawed, imperfect people directing their ill-informed judgements on each other. The author has portrayed all of this through a comedic approach, a dark comedy of sorts, because the author himself committed suicide after writing this book.  It seemed like he poured all his bitterness and sarcastic observations into this story. Tragic isn’t it?

A person who is incredibly frustrating in real life can be represented as an endearing, or at the very least, sympathetic character in literature/movies in terms of how they are portrayed and developed. The writing rendered Ignatius as a frustrating and unsympathetic character.

So, all in all, this is a book that is not going to stay with me. It is memorable in its own way, of course, because Ignatius is a unique character. But, I can’t say I enjoyed the book or appreciated the humor. I did appreciate the novelty of the story and the implied social commentary. But this view may be biased because of listening to the book as opposed to reading it.

Reflections: The Museum of Innocence

Kemal is a young and wealthy Turkish man educated in the West.  He is soon to be engaged to Sibel, another wealthy and westernized young woman wholly in love with Kemal. But when Kemal chances on Füsun, a poor distant relative, he is hopelessly attracted to her. The two begin an affair that soon escalates into something far more serious and destructive than they could ever imagine. Through a detailed narrative of Kemal’s relationships with Füsun, Sibel, his family and friends, Pamuk lays out a comprehensive account on the nature of love, romance, and relationships in Turkey’s patriarchal society.

Obsessions are comforting in some ways. The regularity of faithfully doing something with a mixture of helplessness and dogged determination, oddly enough, imparts a higher meaning to those lives that struggle to anchor onto something. It sometimes elevates the otherwise mundane and unimpressive qualities into something profound and sublime. And that is essentially what happens with Kemal’s life story. It is a story that is at once supremely shallow, indulgent, careless, and annoying as it is profound, romantic, idealistic, and heart-tugging because of how an obsession is portrayed. That a book can evoke and convey such contrasts and ironies from one simple story is testament to the writing and story-telling prowess of the author. With an astounding sense of perspicacity, Orhan Pamuk meticulously pieces together Kemal’s thoughts and feelings, drawing a portrait that is incredibly detailed and true to reality. Every simple element of human interaction is zoomed in and presented through a micro-analytic lens that helps the reader vividly recreate the atmosphere and characters in Turkey. Sometimes, this microscopic narrative does teeter on the edge of becoming mundane and boring, but the narrative is well paced and keeps you engaged. For example, you wouldn’t realize that you just read several pages of text on how Füsun smokes her cigarette. The writing helps with this as well, for it is unpretentiously smart and lucid, so at least it saves you from rereading overloaded sentences. The story, if one can call that, does crawl at a snail’s pace, but it is not frustrating to read Pamuk’s abundantly rich prose on the subtle and intimate aspects of Turkish culture. And since I love books on culture that are woven around a simple story, the long book was engaging to me.

Kemal’s story is a vehicle through which Orhan Pamuk illustrates the dynamics, ideals, and values that shape Turkey’s society, specifically in regards to its attitudes towards men and women. He explains to the reader almost every relevant detail and minutia about the strongly patriarchal culture that struggles to fully embrace certain western ideals whilst holding onto conservative standards on women, notions of propriety, and class-distinctions. What amazed me (I don’t know why it should amaze me) is how identical (well, almost) Turkish society is to Indian society! I could relate to everything the women were going through - the taboos, the prejudices, the subtle mistreatments, the constant reminder of being secondary, the hypocrisy, and how everything comes together to unnecessarily complicate people’s lives. The dynamics between people in a Turkish household is also quite similar to an Indian household, right down to the nosy and gossiping neighbors. It surprised me that even the descriptions of Turkish movies – the stories, the workings of the industry, etc., were exactly like ours! The book also brings to light the all too familiar clash of Western ideals against traditions and socially-conditioned values that are so deeply ingrained, to some measure, in everyone – wealthy, educated, progressive or otherwise. And just as how being educated is different from being literate, the story subtly shows that being “westernized” is different from being truly progressive. But these aspects are Pamuk’s secondary deviations and observations. In this story, he primarily describes the nature of romantic relationships, some of which are universally true and generalizable, and some are specific to Turkish society. There are aspects that everyone can relate to, because that’s how thorough and all-encompassing the narrative is, spanning the entire depth and breadth of what it means to be romantically involved, especially if that relationship is forbidden, elusive, or out of reach.

As the narrator/author often alludes, this is more of an anthropological account of a lovelorn Turkish man in the 1970s, 1980s of Turkey, than a page-turner of a story. But through this subject, Orhan Pamuk delivers a richly ethnographic account of Turkey’s socio-cultural framework. It is an interesting book, for Pamuk’s keen sense of observation and insight makes it an intelligent read. As always, the nuanced writing and insightful portrayal of a culture makes all the difference to an otherwise simple story.

Reflections: The Reader

The choices we make mold us into the people we are today. Sometimes, we underestimate the weight of those beliefs that doggedly lead us to make choices that cumulatively stray us down paths we least anticipate. What does one do when one walks down a road they didn’t mean to take but can see no exit, little alternative, thanks to their beliefs, their insecurities, their mental-model of themselves and their place in the world? So many of us are caught in such traps. We rush headlong into something in order to desperately escape confronting our deepest fears, only to realize that we have landed onto something even more miserable; from the frying pot to the fire. When caught in extenuating situations with no easy answers, no easy alternatives, nothing is more meaningless than the discussion of choice. One can only invent their own meaning, their own purpose, their own reasoning to maintain enough sanity to ensure self-preservation to live through their unintentional mishaps.

The protagonist in the story, Hanna, goes through this struggle. She befriends the narrator when he is a young teenager and begins a unique relationship born out of a desperate need for companionship. Loneliness is a cruel punishment, especially when one is broken in spirit. One of the ways in which she tries to restore her spirit is by listening to the words of great poets and novelists read out to her by the young boy. This ritual deepens their relationship profoundly. But one day, she disappears out of the narrator’s life until he finds her in court, accused of a grievous crime. Hanna’s struggles to find the words and the rationale to defend or explain her choices frames the story with equal measures of shock and poignancy.

The Reader is a haunting exploration of the weighty issues surrounding choice, free will, duty, and morality. It’s actually much more than just these themes. It pinpoints at the most basic insecurities and beliefs that are harbored in the guise of seemingly ordinary foibles, but that slowly erode us, our confidence and the core of our self, and drive us into rash and impulsive decisions in our life. I think this is an aspect that most of us can relate to. Most of us have been in unpleasant situations because we felt it was more bearable to face a harrowing situation that is external to us than face the inner-demons haunting within us. After all, what choice did we have?

But while reading Hanna’s story, it is difficult to empathize with her at times because of the horror and weight of her involvement in a crime that still terrifies the world. However, what the author accomplishes to beautifully address is this - we, as readers and third persons have the benefit and luxury of not having lived Hanna’s particular life, of not knowing what it means to be traumatized by her demons and fears, of not being in those exact situations that she found herself in, and therefore can readily sit on our moral high horse and apathetically view her life as a case-study to be judged and analyzed. But, when one can’t even imagine being in the same situation as Hanna, forcing to speculate on such a hypothetical scenario and engaging in our moral reasoning in the comfort of our secure lives is meaningless. It also brings up the difficult facet within moral dilemmas - what do you do if you are forced to carry out a duty that you know is amoral and terrible? If you fail to carry out the duty, you will be killed, and if you do carry out the duty, your spirit withers. Choosing death seems like the “right” choice to most of us, the privileged third persons, secure in the tacit knowledge that we would never have to make such a choice and therefore discerning the right choice from the “wrong” one. But again, we are not living that exact situation, are we? Maybe there is a third choice, or even a fourth choice in that situation that we can’t even begin to comprehend?

This is a powerful and heavy book that tells a devastating story with sensitivity, clarity, and insight. It is intelligent, poignant and beautiful. The writing moved me and helped me read into Hanna’s difficult life with understanding, if not complete empathy. It explores a confluence of issues surrounding morality through a story that I never imagined would move me.

 

Reflections: The Hungry Tide

Marine biologist Piya travels to the Sundarbans to study the rare Irrawaddy dolphins. Through her research and friendships she learns about the history of the islands in the Sundarbans and the dangers and realities of the people living their fragile lives in a place that’s equally menacing as it is beautiful. With Nature’s sleight of hand, Piya is pulled into unique friendships and an everlasting bond with the people and the place in a way that realizes her true calling. In this engaging and extremely readable novel, Amitav Ghosh lays out the breathtaking landscape of the Sundarbans and walks the reader through its beautiful terrain and ugly patches of history. 

World Life Conservation has a self-righteous and virtuous ring to it. Everyone (almost, everyone) agrees with it and vehemently advocates it. Ghosh asks a very simple question through this book – would you believe in wildlife conservation to the same degree if your family, your livelihood, and your home were nonchalantly treated as being disposable, or rather, considered inevitable sacrifices in the light of protecting endangered animals in a beautiful landscape? Hundreds of thousands of people live in the Sundarbans. However, these people are mostly viewed as inconveniences, for they come in the way of protecting the tigers and many other exotic species. Even though people are routinely killed, and their livelihoods are routinely trampled on, the conservation project carries more priority than human existence. Something is not right – at least from the perspective of us humans thinking of human survival. That’s not to say that protecting animals in their natural habitat is not important. Conserving nature and wildlife is as important as treating fellow human beings with equal dignity. It doesn’t seem right to callously sacrifice certain human lives because they are considered expendable, and then call it the way of nature. Ghosh’s suggestion is for a more symbiotic, mutually beneficial, mutually helpful approach that aims at a mostly peaceful co-existence. This is surely the most obvious “answer” to a complicated situation, but unfortunately not as simple to execute. But it has to start somewhere. 

I have briefly wondered of these repercussions and conflict of interest between human survival and the survival of the eco-system, and it really just boils down to primarily safeguarding the survival of human-beings whilst being as responsible and sensitive as possible to other animals and the ecosystem. Human survival really trumps the card at a deadlock situation, for I am a human being and it's in me to want to protect my species.

So the crux of the book explores how and in what ways Wildlife and Nature Conservationism affects human lives. But Ghosh doesn’t take sides or push his agenda. He has characters to represent either sides of the argument, but the arguments are always subtly presented in the background. The book tells a seemingly simple story of love and loss without hard-hitting arguments or explicit social commentary strewn across the pages. Also, the unfolding story navigates the reader through real historical events, and questions the morality behind the occurrences. 

Since I love marine beings, I loved that the protagonist was researching on dolphins, that too on Irrawaddy dolphins, a species I hadn’t heard of before. It was fascinating to learn about these dolphins. Ghosh vividly recreates the Sundarbans and sensitively portrays the characters and their lives. The forest is portrayed with mysticism and reverence, as if it were a nurturing being of itself. While I was expecting Ghosh’s writing to be cerebral, pretentious, and convoluted, I was pleasantly surprised (and grateful) that it was simple, lucid, and extremely engaging. Although there were aspects of the book that I thought were too drawn out or uncharacteristically romantic or idealistic, I still enjoyed reading the book. And it was refreshing to read a story that teases out significant social themes without weighing down the reading experience with too many layers of complexity. 

Reflections: In Custody

Deven is a timid and oppressed Hindi professor in a town near Delhi. His profession is a drudgery he has to put up with for the sake of a livelihood that barely meets his family’s needs. His hobby, his passion, is Urdu and Urdu poetry. But when India fragmented during its Independence, the birth of Pakistan also meant the loss and steady whittling of Urdu within India. Hindi elevated to be the National Language, the language of Hindustan. Many Indian scholars continue to lament on the neglect of a language so historic and beautiful as Urdu. So when Deven is approached by his sly friend Murad to interview Nur, a rare Indian legend of Urdu poetry, he pursues the opportunity hesitantly, hoping that this precious experience would rejuvenate and give meaning to his mundane existence. But the experience proves less than rejuvenating and more aggrieving as Deven wrings himself out to record the troubled and difficult poet’s words for posterity. Anita Desai conveys the angst and longing for a bygone era through a simple story that mercilessly underlines the imperfections and frustrations that color certain sections of India.

This sounds like a depressing book, but it is actually more frustrating than depressing. All the characters are flawed or deceitful. It seems like Desai has highlighted the darker sides of her characters, each caught in their own web of frustrations and disappointments. Even physical descriptions of the characters have a bitter and unattractive edge - the women are given the appearance of old hags and witches, the men are sketched as reptiles and weasels. It’s difficult to empathise with any of the characters, except perhaps Deven, but even he exudes so much timidity and cowardice that it pains to see him bullied at every turn. Event after event weighs down Deven’s meek spirit until things just run their course. The reader closes the book with a sigh of frustration.

All that said, the story does realistically represent a slice of India. The characters are true, and very much real, flawed to such depths that their virtues remain firmly shadowed. Much credit goes to the excellent and intelligent writing that unflinchingly etches out the characters and settings with remarkable perspicuity. So many aspects of Indian society and prevalent attitudes are seamlessly layered onto the narrative. The book is not just a commentary on the eviction of a beautiful language from India, but an objective portrayal of  the corruption and dissatisfaction that took over Independent India. Taking on an idealistic tone, Deven’s passion gives him that much-needed meaning and purpose in his existence that regardless of the outcome of his pursuit, just the journey is shown to fill a void within him that was so lacking in confidence and belief. I think one needs to hang onto the romanticism lent by the arts (such as poetry) to see beauty in an otherwise gray existence. In that sense, this story can be appreciated by those of us that get carried away by the beauty of artistic expression.

The book is surely worth reading for the writing and the characterization. And on another note, I would highly recommend watching the movie adaption of it, if you are not so inclined on reading. The movie is adapted and directed beautifully. The atmosphere created through the visual medium softens the rough edges of the story and the characters, making the experience much more satisfying. With a cast of really talented actors, the movie complements and does justice to the book by showcasing the characters and the story in the best possible light. I watched the movie mid-way and it was remarkable how much it positively enhanced my reading experience. 

Reflections: Clear Light of Day

All families are wrought with emotions. Emotions in so many colors, brightness, and intensity that they are hard to capture and arrange within a structure, a spectrum. But its presence in the form of wild splatters, delicate splotches, careful strokes, and rough smudges creates a unique pattern that begins to define the family. Only the those within the family unit can find meaning in that colorful picture and remain connected to its significance. It’s a bond so full of intense contradictions that sometimes we come across as silly and self-absorbed creatures. But, this bond of vibrant emotions exists in every home and will continue to flourish with time. In this vividly sensitive and beautiful book, Anita Desai explores the emotional complexities that are knit into the intrinsic fabric of being a family.

This is a quiet and contemplative book. There is no plot, no story that races or twists or turns. It is simply a sensitive commentary on a family that strains to solidify their weakened bonds. It is a relatable story of siblings who drifted apart and are navigating towards each other against the currents of time, words, memories, and emotions. Sometimes there is more comfort in nursing grudges than healing wounds. But I think there always does come a time (however long it takes) when it gets tiring to hold onto grudges, because we finally see the bigger picture. This novel is a sensitive portrayal of this inner journey.

The writing and the characters make this novel stand on its own. Every character is meticulously and sensitively written. The scenes are beautifully rendered. Anita Desai recreates images and memories that every Indian raised in a middle-class family holds and nurtures. From the tank in the terrace to the dirty well in the backyard to the heat, the dust, the wild gardens, the peeling paint,  the annoying geckos, the rhythmic winding of the ceiling fan, to our own aunts and cousins and neighbors, every image has been reconstructed with delicate attention. The writing grows and matures with the characters, taking on a heightened sheen of insight and beauty towards the end of the book. The beginning of the book doesn’t carry such beautiful writing, but as the book progresses the writing just blossoms with poetic grace and insight!

Recommended for a quiet afternoon read. 

 

Reflections: The Great Gatsby

In feverish anticipation of the movie, I read this acclaimed book. I know it sounds shallow to read a book just to prepare for a movie-adaption, but it’s so fitting given the main themes of the book. With “Love is Blindness” ringing in my ears, the trailer playing in my mind’s eyes, the reading experience was way more dramatic and sweeping than the book itself inspires.
 
Jay Gatsby is a mysterious millionaire shrouded in enigma. He yearns and cultivates a dream so fantastical, so pure, so unreal that it represents the collective American dream of the 1920s to pursue the “unreal”. In the age-old clash of idealism against cruel reality, loyalty against selfishness, the dream crumbles and emphasizes the beginning of hedonism and moral deterioration of a materialistic world of excesses.  

Almost everybody has been edified on all the various social and moral symbols pervading the novel. The sudden wealth and economic boom after the first World War saw America burgeoning with so much materialism that it loosened the social morals of the middle and upper social-strata. The American dream turned into something wholly greedy and selfish. With the swarm of such ambitions and vapid pleasure seeking, the disparity between the social classes widened, and everyone wanted to imbue and realize the dream at any cost. When such ambitions consume one, nobler feelings compete with the brasher ones, and the pursuit is romanticized as something one dearly wishes it represents than what it really is. This is the core of the whirlwind drama that tells the familiar story of the careless rich and the trampled poor. These themes are familiar enough for us today because of the innumerable books and movies that have been cloned and inspired from an original piece such as this. Reading the book from that perspective helps to appreciate the author's foresight and insight.

The deeply buried and half-dead romantic in me still gets swept and swayed by stories and characters that idealize and romanticize romanticism just for the sake of it. Jay Gatsby is an impressionable character whose personality is an endearing set of contradictions that make him an aggressive, mindlessly ambitious idealist. All the characters are memorable for the deft ways in which they are given their personalities with so few words. The author is extremely economical with his words (my perpetual aspiration). Everything is expressed with incisive sarcasm, insight, and beauty. Sometimes, the brevity and incisiveness result in a few vague phrases. The other downside to the writing was the sudden shift between scenes, the impulsive (sometimes flighty) dialogues, and the rapid rush to the end. It all seems too sudden to take in, too unbelievable to let the weight sink in. You need some time to let the book touch you. This makes the book constantly alternate between being a satire and a serious drama. Perhaps the writing itself represents all the contradiction and moral conflict of that era.

As I mentioned, the movie and its dreamy lead may have had a strong bias in my reading experience! But I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it.