Youth by J.M. Coetzee: Book review

Youth (J.M.Coetzee):*****

Is this a satire meant to puncture the monotony and constancy of the mundane, routine existence that infects every metropolis like a plague or a personal diary of a student whose constant self-critique has gradually paved way for stiff self-contempt, and finally reduced him to a psychotic victim of extreme pessimism. Youth’s paramount flavour is as dual as its main protagonist’s conflicts with the world around and inside him.

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Amongst the more recent works of the Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, Youth, “on the surface level” narrates the life of a “seemingly” slim and looselimbed simpleton from Cape Town, South Africa in the 1950s who earns his bread and butter working industriously as tutorial-assistant, dummy-coach, library-assistant and even as a statistician for the Municipality simultaneously. Managing comfortably a no-frills-no-thrills life through these multiple vocations, this child-man, all of 19 years believes “each man is

an island, you don’t need parents” which explains his ambivalence to relationships –blood and societal.

A constant faith that keeps him buoyant is that “love will cure him. The beloved, the destined one, will see at once through the dull exterior he presents to the fire that burns within him”, rejuvenate him, and transfigure him into a poet beyond compare. Till then, resting in his cocoon, he’s happy being “obscure and ridiculous for he believes that it is the lot of artist to suffer obscurity and ridicule until the day when he’s revealed in his true powers.” After two failed affairs in his native town, fearing an impending revolution, this potent poetry-lover, diligent mathematics-student arrives in London in search of true love and an inspirational ground to transform all his dormant visions and imaginations into fecund lines of poetry.

Absorbed initially by the job-search which eventually lands him in the IBM as a computer programmer where clearly he struggles to find a logic in the routine clerical mess he’s landed himself into, he experiences his first major conflict between his id (his primitive instinct to become a world-renowned poet) and his superego (which tells him that he dare not give up for failing would be too much like his father). Not able to balance these extremes, his ego shrinks and he finds refuge in self-justification and self-criticism. The constant rebuke from his conscience about his social origins keeps accentuating his isolation making his preconceived notions about people around him wilder and vaguer. Lonely and adrift, even his search for true love culminates into random, hurried, even downright embarrassing affairs.

With some more hurried and failed love affairs, its not long before he realises that “if there’s any mastering going on, it is London mastering him”. With this absolute belief ingrained, he shrugs off the job, indulges in a few more forgettable and absolutely futile stints at intimacy (including a brief homosexual one, just to see if in case!) and sways from poetry to prose to nothing. Puzzled and baffled, the harder he tries, the more he feels sucked into the English middle class until the combined effect of the wallop of neutral lives buzzing outside him and the constant conscience-pricking present inside him, he realises, have shrunk his life into yet another inconsequential existence. Is there a way to recuperate, or is it too late?

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Coetzee laces the life of his protagonist, John, with his passion of poetry and his backdrop of living in a British colony. Though the snippets informing the political background are penned with the needed color and candor, it’s only when you read the exhaustive observations of bygone authors and poets like Pound, Eliot, James, Beckett and Ford Madox Ford that you realise that Coetzee’s work is much above any amount of appreciation, any number of adjectives. The honest cluelessness of the poor chap in each of his encounters with the opposite sex and his colleagues and seniors (One should read his non sequiturs when his first girlfriend reads his diary or when he quits his third job to observe how pitiably humorous apathy can be!)

But perhaps, above all the flavours, Coetzee tragicomedy comes across a winner each time its protagonist runs into a self-questioning frenzy. Anything and everything that matters in the book happens in John’s mind and there’s so much caution and irony with which his psychology is dealt with that one can’t help empathizing (and smiling) with John as one witnesses him groping for answers everytime he’s faced with a new situation leaving him even more nonplussed, even more mystified.

His innocent faultfinding at the mechanised society when he questions “Is this indifference to the world a consequence of too much intercourse with machines that give the appearance of thinking? How were he to fare if one day he has to quit computers and rejoin a civilized society?… The more he has to do with computing, the more it seems to him like chess: a tight little world defined by made-up rules, one that sucks in boys of a certain susceptible temperament and then turns them half-crazy, as he is half-crazy, so that all the time they deludedly think they are playing the game, the game is in fact playing them.”

Watching the gaps between what he wanted to achieve and what he finally achieves widen, watching his conflicts climax in self-justifying affirmations, observing him falling back on self-sophistry each time he’s criticized or laughed at (he tells himself “I am hard enough on myself.. I do not need the help of others), seeing him degenerate slowly into an inactive, psychotic being trapped in his own questions and explanations and fallacies, finding him realising his blurred thought process for a moment when he observes that “ his colleagues think clearer than him… he has to pretend he understands everything when actually he doesn’t.. what is wrong with him is that he is not prepared to fail…. if he were a warmer person, he would no doubt find it easier: life, love, poetry ”… only to wrap himself finally up again in his dark blanket, where every breath taken is compared to his mentors—the dead authors—the obsession for whose work is so acute that its led him to believe that creativity is reproduced in only a set of situations, one just can’t help but question what causes John to deteriorate –is it too much self-analysis and soul-searching which actually injected complexity into a simple life, making him abhor his very existence or his setting unrealistic, unachievable targets for himself which triggers off a cycle of never ending self-criticism.

This hard-hitting, dark book which is so jampacked with raw emotion and brutal honesty and written with such cruelly precise prose that probably even a library full of fiction put together would find difficult to challenge, gives an awful lot of brain food to sink your teeth into.

A near perfect dissection of a human psyche, Coetzee’s penetrative, direct approach to writing lends this supremely identifiable book an air that’s truly a class apart!

LOTR Fellowship of the Ring: Book review

Fellowship of the Ring (JRR Tolkein): **and 1/2

Laurelled and re-laurelled as the benchmark in English literature, hailed as the monarch of fantasies, the pinnacle of allegoric writing, I embarked upon reading this “mytho-epic” much to the expense of some definitely comfy evenings and nights and the hangover after completion is so severe, that I really can’t be asked to sort out my notes and have simply typed them up below. However much I perceive this to be actually a set of three books, its honestly a single tale and this is the sole reason what kept this review a set of notes in my diary. But finally, after a verdict that has remained sealed in my notes for the better half of this year, by typing it I’ve helped it reach the actual audience (and not the moths).

Day 1 5:30 pm
The exquisite foreword has left me practically exasperated with the author’s level of honesty and

modesty both for his own work and the readers. Was enlightening to note that there isn’t any hidden meaning or “message” and the tale is just a story free of any allegorical significance or political reference. Immediately I am reminded of the umpteen interpretations starting from the decryption of Christian overtones to seeking links with the Second World War, the readers indeed gave new meanings to the phrase “reading between the lines”

Day 1 11:30 pm
No, I just have to admit this. This is the third time I struggled to keep my eyelids from shutting in an attempt to read through the Prologue. The excruciating detail of the background of hobbits, pipe-weed, Shire records and the Ring is so bereft of any fluidity and reads so much like some dictionary, that I better get some nap to regain some sanity. More tomorrow.

Day 2 4:00 pm
The first chapter catalogues the introduction of Bilbo, his eleventy-first birthday and his bequeathing the Ring to Frodo, his young cousin. Though the drama reeks of pretentiousness, Bilbo’s queer obsession with the Ring and his final departure save the day. Dialogues reek with formality with hordes of exclamations and it’ll take some time to get used to hilarious cognomens like Bracegirdles, Sackville-Bagginses, Brandybucks, Lobelia and the ilk.

Day 3 7:30 pm
Am now through the brief chronicle of the ring and its fairly captivating though the expression is downright pedestrian with the only relief coming from an exquisite verse about the Ruling Ring and the nineteen other rings. And yes, Gollum’s tale of yore is immensely appealing, but I can’t wait to get the actual journey started.

Day 3 11:40 pm
I am hooked. Finally Frodo’s journey commenced and what a pulsating start it is! One has to read the sentences to feel the ire of the sinister Black Riders, the strange grasp of the Ring on Frodo and the balmy council of Gildor. I have seldom read poetry that reeks with both tonal and emotional exactitude. The only gripe is an absolute dry conversation and clinically analysed geography. Am hoping that this would erase with the coming chapters.

Day 4 2:00 am
Still reading and the hobbits’ journey is quite intriguing to Mr.Maggot and then to Crickhollow with the bondage between the four subtly sealed and treated with a feather-hand. Readable till now.

Day 4 11:00 pm
The kineticity suffers thanks to the thoroughly repetitive geography but the excitement survives with Pippin and Merry vanishing into the willow tree cracks. However the introduction of Tom Bombadil as the saviour simply fails to cut ice. The verse does the opposite now—replacing dialogue, it stabs any attempt to intrigue the reader page after page. What’s more—a full length chapter on Bombadil’s house would send even the most rock-ribbed insomniacs snoring! From good to pathetic, the experience so far is… err… ummm..

Day 6 11:30 pm
Two days—can you imagine? From Bombadil’s house to the Prancing Pony, I’ve fought with my now-all-sore eyes and with my now-almost-dead brain to survive a petty 20 pages and hail! I have reached the shore! From the sickeningly repetitive geography (I half expected the author to give me distances correct to the quarter of a feet for every step of the hobbits, but then again there’s always the Supreme One for such nanomercies) to the formulaic turn of events to the maddeningly sleep-inducing verse, the following three chapters take the crown for giving me an experience of dozing inside the pages. Of course, the very occasional hiccup in the form of Barrow-wights was more than welcome. Are there any more such tortures in-store?

Day 7 9:30 pm
With the advent of the Strider (Aragorn), some pep re-enters but the scorched-dry dialogues and the forced tale (and poem again!) of Tinuviel dampen whatever little punch that surfaces. The author’s obsession with physiography and geography is thankfully put in good use or maybe heading to the final pages for a glimpse of the map time and again has lent me some patience. The graph reaches its peak with Frodo getting stabbed by the Lord of the Nazgul and continues to enthral, (albeit inconsistently) until the Riders are drowned in the flood of the Ford.

Day 8 11:00 pm
Its almost impossible to forgive the unceasing and forced sermons splashed on page after page in The Council of Elrond had it not been for the Saruman-Gandalf dialogue which uplifts the feel of unseen power of the seemingly dormant enemy manifold. Yet, Rivendell’s beauty comes as unstuck as Bilbo’s never-ending chant about a mariner which can replace all the lullabies and cradlesongs there are in the universe!

Day 9 7:00 am
The summoning of the Fellowship, though slow, grips the moment it sets afoot outside Rivendell. The snow-storm of the Caradhras is as wonderfully realised before the swelling darkness of the gates of Moria. Of course, I have begun to appreciate the author’s prolificacy in imagination when I see the elven characters and read about the Elvish speech. The descriptive topographics don’t veil the hideous dour of the Mines of the Moria and the effect is amazingly consistent with chips of history wonderfully sewn in the dialogues. The Bridge of Khazad-Dum, the Balrog-Gandalf fight, Gandalf’s fall is probably the book’s first full-fledged fantasy escapade and a moderately gripping one at that.

Day 9 7:00 pm
The graph dips slightly but the relief from the balmy descriptions of Lothlorien can’t ever be denied with Galadriel’s careful speech, the amusing Mirror, the captivating dialogue and the soothing poetry. Almost spiritual in its aura, the rush indeed takes a back-seat for some pages with tid-bits of Tolkien’s much-acclaimed indulgence in the flesh of an Elven poem yet the arrival and the departure of the Fellowship into this elvish land is nail-biting.

Day 9 11:00 pm
A snippet of Gollum, a peek of the Orcs, and a sinister glint of the Eye is all that graces the remaining pages. The thrill is masterfully built up and the last chapter holds a menacingly attractive door for electrifying action in the next book. Strangely, the chink in the armour is the episode of Boromir succumbing to the lore of the Ring where the clichéd histrionics flow with surprising nonchalance.

To sum it up:

If you think fantasy fiction is all about a series of events in breakneck succession and adventure that keeps redefining the very meaning of the word “exciting”, look elsewhere for the first instalment of this ponderous trilogy is decidedly sluggish (read dead) and in fact so serial, formulaic and long-winded, that one literally struggles to finish it. If at all, one attempts to connect with the ongoings and the weak characters, any such endeavour is obediently crushed by Tolkien’s tedious, almost comatose style of expression. There are some flashes apparent here and there, but the generous trepanning of the grey cells done by the gawdawful geography and blanched and pale characters is never really compensated for.

There’s this complete indulgence into external detail, which might sum up to make a fantastic screenplay but for any book to be intriguing, the characters need to be drawn with honesty, with care so that they connect with the reader atleast somewhere. The moment an author accomplishes this task of reader-character adjunction, however real or surreal the tale’s background be, the reader travels then with the character, in the character’s world… the book! Sadly, Tolkien misses the point here and its the inclusion of excessive static detail (all those Elvish speeches and writings and dialogues in different languages) that kills the first part of the trilogy, atleast for me. Gasping to be edited, Fellowship of the Ring, as a book is simply not recommended.

PS: By the way, there’s always the cinematic interpretation to feast your senses upon. And you don’t lose any of the story as well! So catch up with the DVD!

Such a Long Journey: Book review

Such a Long Journey (Rohinton Mistry): *** and 1/2

H is later works had their names hidden behind pronouns and their deeds carefully veiled in satire, but in his very first work Mistry seems at a surprising ease in spilling the names of Indira Gandhi and Bal Thackeray all through and its this very no-words-minced attitude demonstrated in every layer of this work that makes it depart completely from its later, heavier siblings “A Fine Balance” and “Family Matters”.

P redominantly, Such a Long Journey, tells the tale of an average Bombay-ite, Gustad Noble’s life, who resides in a congested suburbian apartment building and works as a bank clerk. Beginning somewhere in 1971 against an inviolable background of Indo-Pak war, its principal track focuses on the unusual way in which this very national conflict affects Gustad and his family. The book starts off by building up the domestic skirmishes in Gustad’s life where we witness a father’s quenchless curiosity

as he waits by his door to grab the early morning newspaper to find that one crucial page that shall bear the torch for his elder son’s, Sohrab’s future. Like any father, his joy and excitement knows no barriers as he finds Sohrab’s name in the prestiged IIT passed entrants’ list not realizing how shortlived this delightful moment is, for Sohrab’s neither overjoyed nor interested in engineering. Worse, he accuses his father of making him the victim of his own unfulfilled dreams.

S hattered and emotionally bruised, Gustad stops acknowledging Sohrab’s very presence and retreads into his painful past, peeling off memories of the ruinous bankruptcy that scarred his own past and drove them forever into the constraining lower middle-class domain. Busy driving in the lanes of his psyche, he suddenly remembers his old friend, Jimmy Bilimoria whose disrespect for years of Gustad’s friendship by abruptly disappearing still shocks Gustad and his dilemma on receiving a recent letter from Jimmy asking for Gustad’s help is obvious. Jimmy, as revealed later, works for the RAW and requests Gustad to meet his right hand man, Ghulam Mohammed and receive a package containing the instructions within, which Gustad reluctantly, but finally obliges only to learn that the package’s contents could seriously threaten his vocation and safety. Where exactly is Jimmy? What’s the meaning of all this clandestine political affair?

S een through Gustad’s eyes, the rest of the book brilliantly sews together this political-thriller thread with everyday quandaries in Gustad’s family (like his daughter’s incessant diarrhea, his wife’s shift to black magic, the compound wall which serves dutifully as a public latrine and the recent notice about the wall’s demolition and compound’s further shrinkage to broaden the road plus the ongoing war) all of which coincide to bring the book into a very traditional, yet an entertaining finale.

S eemingly a heavy plot-driven work, Such a Long Journey surprisingly seldom loses out on its carefully drawn characters that so vastly populate it from the first to the last page. Then be it the bizarre and freakish Ms. Kutpitia whose witchcraft traverses through assorted evils and threats fittingly taking aid from hanging threaded lemons, chillies to formulating thick curries (containing everything from cinnamon sticks to lizard droppings) only to be dropped on a rabid neighbor’s head to burning lizard tails in oil cans (which ultimately smokes her house away); or the amusing Dinshawji whose profanity-laden mirthful one liners besides providing the comic relief accentuate his painful demise manifold or even Dr. Paymaster wherein Mistry takes a dig at the atrophied medical system of that decade through the rote learning by Gustad and Dilnawaz of the awfully repetitive prescriptions.

S tylistically, the book’s as polished as you expect any Mistry’s writing to be. Equally comfortable in lending distinct voices to almost every character, commendable is his ability to scoop even the tiniest of dilemmas of the seemingly inconsequential characters of which the most memorable is that of the pavement artist whose transformation of the solid compound wall suddenly instills the “yearning for permanence, for roots, for something he would call his own, something immutable” With a real gift for tiltillating satire, his amusive and depressive metaphors are never blunt in capturing the bittersweet emotions and experiences that everlastingly surround the characters, lending the sketches just the right amount of life.

O ne of the highpoints of the book is how the backdrop of Indo-Pak war, which besides being dynamically present in the dialogues and the various air-raid sirens, blackouts unexpectedly gains the foreground as the sixty lacs allotted by the Indian Secret Service’s RAW (in which Gustad’s friend is included) to provide financial and military aid to the then-freeing Bangladesh vanish suddenly. Besides handling this political-thriller angle with the required acceleration, the candor and the intensity couldn’t have been anymore tarter and sharp-worded to convey the immense price India had to pay for Indira Gandhi’s regime. In fact the overall effect is so spine-chilling that when Ghulam Mohammed utters “And his mummy (Indira) herself has many enemies. Makes more and more every day, from Punjab to Tamil Nadu. Any one of them could do it. I am a patient man. Her life is as easy to snuff out as Bilimoria’s let me tell you.. Like that’’ and he snapped the fingers under Gustad’s nose’’, one can’t help but ponder at the awesome foreshadow laid on the kernel responsible for Indira’s assassination.

Though, the thriller and melodrama make for a largely homogeneous read with the effect intact for both the genres, having a thriller edge means resorting to a traditional finale where the reality factor (that reaches its pinnacle towards the middle where everything seems completely out of protagonist’s control) conveniently reaches a conclusion, and rather too soon. Though understandably, it’s a tale of harmony and settlement which sort of justifies its absolute termination, but almost unwittingly, it is this very completeness takes away the lingering factor.

Of the paler characters, the fast speaking, fractured child-man idiot Tehmul Langdaa, whose intervention is perennial fails to strike a chord as much as the forced characters of Alamai and her son (Dinshawji’s family) who mute the already soggy-with-detail descriptions of the last rites of Dinshawji (much to my irritation) for Mistry’s expression lacks that much needed sympathy that’s evident when he observes a roadside paaniwala who begs for 20 naye paise even as Gustad’s lying half-dead on the road. In fact, in Tehmul’s case the overall effect is so cranky and nonsensically elaborate it almost appears that a joke has been made of the handicapped boy.

But despite its shortcomings, Mistry’s able to convey that indeed the longest journeys are the one taken by the mind and one realizes this every time years fall away as Gustad smells the spine of a classic or looks at an old Meccano set in Chor Bazaar. The rules of memory when traversing years in a single second leap are as incomprehensible as its failures, its speed and its powers and this theme comes across through the author’s unrivaled sensory acuteness that captures the rich texture of Indian life in all its resplendence.

Sharp, short and shrewd, the book isn’t as perfect as Mistry’s later works but still makes for one compelling read.