Gulbarg Society

If you look up the gutted houses today
you will be greeted by a mass of bougainvillea
spilling out
of the charred walls
and you would have to be morbid
(but not very, this is low-hanging fruit)
to liken this spilling-out
to another kind of spilling
gutting
overflowing
that happened here a while ago
(but not very, not long enough).

Nature aids forgetting.

The screams get buried
in endless legalese
as time papers over
creepers over
the walls that broke, the flesh that burnt,
the voices that broke with pleas
(but not many, not enough to count in our memories)
and I look up at the walls of this Gulbarg Society
and wonder at how green can be so wily
so willing to collaborate
with yet another cycle of moving on
even as voter reports are amassed
and kerosene gathered
for yet another culling
—just another clean break,
before bougainvilleas sprout.

(For context, look up the Gulbarg Society massacre.)

Elementary.

But for these cans they tossed and blended 

with the dust

But for the playgrounds fading silent

into rust

But for the houses, husks now—grinning, 

windows shed

But for the metal carriages, upright,

sentries dead

But for the carcasses washed up ashore

blanched in heat

But for the pigs that they did not slaughter—

now rotting meat

But for the signs that here was a hand

that killed for play

But for the world turned inside out

for a short-lived stay

You would not know that here were men

and women once.

The storm breaks where the land meets sky

the sun beats down

the snow, too, melts

in the highway, now, two peacocks dance.

Coursework

This is what I have to read for today.

1. History of Sexuality, Foucault (extract)
2. The Fate of Meaning, Sheriff (rest of book)
3. The Listeners, Gunn (rest of book)
4. The Interpretant, De Waal (essay)
5. Epistemology of the Closet (essay)

The Islanders, by Christopher Priest

In literature, islands have often occupied a special imaginative space, either as utopia, or the isolated playground of human desires and passions, or even as escape. The self sustaining, and usually verdant nature of a typical island as imagined in popular culture is attractive in how it becomes, in one fell swoop, something which actually exists and yet lends itself sufficiently well to the imagination. The possibilities allowed by such a space are endless: they are within civilization's grasp, and yet beyond it, all at the same time.

Christopher Priest has been writing about a certain specific set of islands for some time now in his Dream Archipelago stories. They are set in a fictional world where the northern and southern continents are trapped in a never ending war, and a large group of islands are trapped in the middle, protected from the warfare only by what is known as the Covenant of Neutrality. But in spite of this, they are not beyond controversy, as the islands become a refuge not just for war deserters, but for misfits and outcasts: artists, social reformers, painters, sportsmen are all drawn to the islands for reasons which are, even at the end of the novel, left unexplained.

That is the heart of the mystery, as propounded by this magnificent exercise in unreliable narration. Trying to explain to anyone what this book is about would be, at once, doing a grave disservice to what Priest tried to achieve here: a Borges like fabulation that takes itself very seriously, replete with excessive, and in some sense, it could be argued at first glance, unnecessary detail. But the accounts of the islands themselves are not all consistent. Their identities overlap and are often contested. Some islands don't have straightforward descriptions. Instead, what we do have are accounts and anecdotes of characters who recur every now and then, and are probably not to be trusted. And, as a result, perhaps what you make of the 'novel' will depend on how many times you reread it.

Is it a bloated exercise in post-postmodern fireworks? Not at all, in my honest opinion. The novel is a multifaceted crystal. When you read it the first time, you might be forgiven for finding it to be overindulgent, with little in the way of plot: a collection of encyclopedic entries on a fictional archipelago, interspersed with first hand accounts of the islanders themselves. It's probably on the second read through that you might start paying attention to the characters who might have evaded notice previously. They, like the islands, become keys to behavioral patterns, and then you begin reading even more carefully, while not trusting a single sentence on face value. Soon you will unearth a murderous painter, a mime artist who takes the stage a little too seriously, towers of rock which are in a state of constant temporal flux, and extreme visionaries who tunnel through rock and create entire musical instruments out of the islands themselves.

Perhaps what is most striking about Priest's novel is that, all said and done, it is entertaining, in spite of the dry voice and the objective narration. The islands themselves become as important, characteristically, as the islanders themselves. The sense of place the novel exudes is enthralling. It is the most entertaining fictional travelogue you will ever read. The fact that it's also a novel is a welcome bonus.

Griffin's Egg, by Michael Swanwick

Griffin's Egg, by Michael Swanwick

The concept of Utopia as being a place that cannot exist, and therefore, a space where extrapolation and speculation is possible, within the confines of reason, is emphasized upon in Swanwick's novella, in spite of almost every preoccupation of SF making an appearance. This extrapolative space, as symbolized by a utopia, is similar to conceits made use of in Fantasy, where the fantastic elements are always at one, or several removes from our reality, thus allowing them an associative power that they would otherwise not possess. However, within the realms of science fiction, this space, while still an imaginative means of testing human insecurities, as it were, is subservient. It exists because the alternative, that is, our reality, is either not viable, or has become meaningless, or is too archaic to revert to, in a future setting. For instance, science fiction that is set on other planets often utilizes the trope of Earth having become so ancient so as to fall out of popular, or scientific imagination, or belief. Earth then becomes somewhat of a goal to achieve, or a memory to avoid at all costs. Similarly, in Swanwick's story, the moon becomes, in its own perverse mirroring of Earth life, a flawed means of regimentation. It cannot eschew the ways of Earth, but neither can it avoid it, because that is still the sole reference. This is made inevitable by the fact that the moon is originally used as a space of manufacturing industrial equipment and chemicals which is ultimately misused. This misuse refuses a complete separation from the home planet. Hubris, which could be said to be one of the three major themes operating in science fiction (the other two being Otherness and 'Alternity'), becomes the umbilical that corrupts existence on the moon. Since science fiction works on both a metaphorical/allegorical level as well as a literal one, the symbolic reading of Swanwick's novella, once interpreted through the lens of Utopia, or even the utopian impulse, opens up a way of gauging the failure of a system that is rooted in control, expansion and ultimately a separatist ideology. Inasmuch as an utopian space has always been regarded as somewhat Edenic, it is doubly significant, from an ecological point of view, that the moon is devoid of any Natural life other than the bastardized versions of the trees and animals introduced by the settlers. The protagonist, however, seems to prefer the desolate landscape of the moon, and even, on one occasion, complains that the natural beauty of the moon be preserved, even though it serves no purpose. The failure to reject a utilitarian worldview even when under no obligation to adhere to it, after the destruction of Earth, results in a reality where the humans are faced with estranged, and estranging versions of themselves. Their agenda to dismiss these people as sub-human, and further, to control them, could then be interpreted as them trying to grapple with their own guilt. Ultimately, therefore, the entire novella could be interpreted on several thematic grounds, but the dominant theme is still that of Man overreaching, at the expense of his environment, and as a consequence, his mental health, which is symbolically shown to be inextricably linked with his environment. The moon then becomes a space of the ultimate extrapolation of what Earth might be approaching itself: a barren wasteland, a simulacra, as it were, of the imagined future, or even a literal manifestation of the Heideggerian being-toward-death.  

The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro

I have never read a novel by Ishiguro before to completion. Generally, I'm quite trusting of a new author if I like his prose style, and his vocabulary, but there is a small problem, a prejudice really, that I have when tackling novels which are purportedly science fiction, written by the so called 'mainstream' author. This innate distrust, however, is a conditioned distrust: for someone who takes his science fiction very seriously, and reads very widely regardless of genre, style or period, I have seen my favourite genre being lambasted on and off by those who have either not read widely in the field, or are living under the assumption that all science fiction fans are prone to blindly following any author at all who makes a name for himself in the field. They'd be most surprised to know that, on the contrary, serious SF fans, much like any other genre, are often most discerning and critical of the SF that they read. But they might also find, in the process, that they aren't snobs about it either: they are voracious, they'll read every new release, but they'll also read the latest mainstream read as well, along with anything else they can lay their hands on. It makes no sense to be prejudiced when it comes to the matter of reading.

Which is why I began my first Ishiguro with some apprehension. An author I'm quite fond of, Mrs Le Guin, was extremely critical of the novel. She seems to have taken offense at Ishiguro's opinion of the fantastic, and the traditional motifs and conventions of fantasy fiction, as being essentially allegorical. I understand why she might have a problem with this. I do myself. Allegory in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's the preachiness and the relative ease of the medium when it comes to translating complicated emotions and sensations that gets my goat. One could argue that you can add as many layers and as much depth to an allegory as you'd like, but if at the end of the day the book reeks of an ideological motive driving time tested characters such as dragons and ogres, people are bound to become suspicious that they're being taken for a ride, as it were, through the author's personal hells and heavens.

The Buried Giant is obviously allegorical. There's no escaping it. But it's also exquisitely written, with an understated grace and an attention to detail and preciseness of language that puts the lie to the entire trend of churning out fat fantasy novels. While you could argue that Ishiguro's priorities are very different, and that he is using his characters as tools, and that this story has a warning sign of a Moral tacked onto every other chapter, and be correct, it's quite uncanny how, in spite of all of this, he manages to be delicate and inspiring all at the same time. Why delicate? Well, for starters, the customary fight sequences that inform a Knights and Warriors yarn are present here as well, but they aren't dull exercises in exhaustively laying out, for pages on end, how one man parried and the other ducked. In a few sentences he gets across all the excitement a lesser author would have happily spent long paragraphs articulating. One senses, while reading Ishiguro, that brevity is more a necessity at times than a fashion statement in the literary world. If your story needs you to be precise and direct, then that's what it should deserve.

It is the same with Ishiguro's descriptions: they are all essential to setting the atmosphere of the story, and nothing is wasted in the telling. They are an organic part of the world of medieval Britain he creates, and of his characters.

Perhaps the greatest single strength of the novel, however, is what everyone seems to be at odds with: Ishiguro's understanding of the genre. It is surprisingly well informed. The pleasure the reader receives in allowing the words and the conversations, whose context Ishiguro often keeps hidden, nevertheless making an immediate impression upon the reader is nothing short of amazing. Again, with lesser authors, this becomes a tricky protocol to successfully execute, leading to a pace that drags till the reader finally is made privy to the key to understanding every passage that escaped him before. Ishiguro's hoards his surprises like a dragon himself, but what's exciting is how you read for the language and the descriptions first, trusting the author implicitly in the process. And Ishiguro respects this trust, all the way. While a few threads are left dangling, the majority of the secrets are quietly revealed in the end, with a lot of grace and compassion.

Ishiguro's latest is a joy to read, and is one of the greatest fantasy novels in and out of genre you can possibly read in the twenty first century. 

"The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea": Making Sense of The French Lieutenant's Woman

The title of The French Lieutenant's Woman used to summon up a kind of generic image in my mind, love in the time of war, separation, long years bathed in tears, reconciliation. You know the type? It was the 'Lieutenant' at work in these subconscious conjurings, possibly. Be that as it may, it was a book that I thought would be an elegantly-written bland little novel that would possibly have languished indefinitely in a corner of my bookshelf had Tito, whose taste in literature I greatly respect, not praised it to the skies.

Let me just say at the outset that having read it, I now think that The French Lieutenant's Woman is an exquisitely written book. Whip-smart, full of literary Easter Eggs that should make it a delight to revisit, and extremely humane. I am impatient of the kind of writing that sacrifices characters and their inner lives at the altar of Quip. I had suspected Terry Pratchett to be of the same school before having read him, and absolutely charmed to find myself mistaken. The French Lieutenant's Woman is avowedly postmodern, the narrator revealing himself in sudden insertions to refer to Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes. He does, then, have a more well-travelled air than Sir TerryP's kindly funny voice. He sees through his protagonists' momentary weaknesses and more entrenched streaks of folly with a more unrelenting eye. But throughout the book runs his narratorial flourishes, as if to say, 'Now that you have seen the trick, let me show you how I did it. This, reader, is how I pulled the wool over your eyes. But now you see me pulling it back.' It is an exhilarating, exasperating experience. It never quite lets you settle down. An unreliable narrator who proves himself the most conscientious, never quite letting you forget that these fallible characters, they are but one possibility thought up by one mind, and there might be many more possible beginnings and ends.

What is absolutely surprising is that while your illusion is broken, time and again, none of the pleasure is lost. It is not as if a traditional plot has suddenly been ruptured, and you have the sense of a feast interrupted by a cook intent on telling you the recipes. Fowles breaks the illusion of time, of space, of reality - repeatedly weaving away to wonder who and how Character X or Y might have been in a different time. But the digression concluded, he lets you sink back into the very narrative that he undercut just a moment back. Strangely enough, he succeeds. You smile at the cleverness of the narrator, tip a hat at his erudition, and are again rapt in the acts of these fickle little 'characters' very soon.

These characters inhabit the years 1867-1868, and it is no mean feat that you come away from a postmodern novel having understood the Victorian age a little better. At least, so I thought. I had wondered sometimes at The Odd Women, a novel I really liked, at whether the actions of the characters were quite 'realistic'. The French Lieutenant's Woman makes the notion of such wondering quite redundant. Yes, we might think they behaved in absurd ways, but here are the particulars of their circumstances - Fowles lays out. And the pieces start falling together. How they loved, how they courted, how they shamed, how they prayed - nothing is redundant if one is to truly attempt to understand. But how does one understand a time separated by the gulf of a century? Can one ever?

Fowles seems to try. But he is too deft a practitioner to not know where his craft falters. However keen be the vision, omniscience is always out of reach. We try to reach out to each other. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes the weight of all that we are required to be make us veer maddeningly out of the course of the happiness, or the closure, we think we deserve. Do we give up? Not necessarily, if Fowles is to be believed. For 'life...is not a symbol, is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly...endured.'