Chabon's World

Sometimes one walks into a bookshop and a book catches one's eye. You have never heard of the author, you flip through a few pages and are hooked. Then you take it home and devour it over your weekly commute and before long you suspect you will be living with a few more of the author's books. Something much like this happened to me when I picked up Michael Chabon's collection of short stories, A Model World, a few weeks ago.

It turns out the man is something of a literary superstar and one half of a - ahem - model writing couple.

A Model World is an early book of Chabon's. The stories in the first section, A Model World, are disparate. Section 2, A Lost World, follows Nathan Shapiro through the aftermath of his parents' divorce. Chabon's stories are loose, shambolic and yet perfectly structured. Through them course many elements of pop culture and literary nods. And here's the thing, the stories themselves do not always engage or ring true. Even in the straightforward chronicle of A Lost World, at some point you disengage with the characters even though Chabon is so very good at creating the world of childhood and adolescence in the midst of changes it does not fully understand. Yet you are utterly charmed. It is a collection where the persona of the author looms larger than anything the stories might have to say (and inspite of the aforesaid disengagement they do have plenty to say though never in a sledgehammer way). Chabon's joy in writing, the beauty of his language (I haven't read anything in a long time where you want to copy out the sentences), the suggestion that many of the enthusiasms, interests and wistfulness in the stories (and these are many) are all his is effortlessly communicated to the reader so that you care less about the story Chabon chooses to tell than the way he tells it.

Books are expensive, unfortunately it is not always possible to maintain a book harem of an author you like. Still, I might invest in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.

R.I.P.

It has been a month in which a fair few writerly olds - as Gawker might put it - have departed. Happily after they have lived long.

JD Salinger wrote a book which everyone carried out around when young to indicate that they totally identified with adolescent angst. The other books were unreadable so no one read Salinger once they left academics.

Erich Segal wrote a silly novel called Love Story and and no one had to use the sorry word again., except pollies of various stripes.  He also wrote a book called The Class, the over many years kind of book Americans like to write. The most fascinating part for me was all that bit on Greek Classics (Segal taught Greek & Latin Lit.).

Louis Auchincloss wrote about the upper crust and in an old fashioned way. That is enough for an author to lose street cred these days though I don't mind a bit of old fashioned now and then. Should I test the Auchincloss waters? I am still undecided.

I have never read Howard Zinn. But judging by the eulogies, I should definitely dip more than a toe into A People's History.

26 January 2010

On this day in 2001 there was an earthquake in Gujarat.  A moment in memory of those we died.

On this day in 1950 India became a republic.  I feel a patriotic song coming along - hearing it left me slightly teary.

On this day in 1788, the First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove changing the continent forever. Some part of my heart will always belong to this country.

On The Street

When my cousin was here on a visit I took a number of pictures of her along the lines of "spotted on the street" fashion blogs. This one remains my favourite for its casually put together ensemble and the cousin's fetching smile.

Eileen Chang

A few years ago ago I saw a movie called Red Dust which was loosely based on Eileen Chang’s life. It was my first introduction to Chang, who by all accounts remains wildly popular in China. Of Chang’s fiction itself, translations are few and far between though Chang herself was proficient in English. In fact it was not until Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution came along that her short stories were readily available in a foreign language. Now there is not one collection but two, Lust Caution which kicks off with the short story that inspired Lee’s film and Love in a Fallen City which collects some of her better known stories. Of the two, Love in a Fallen City is superior though most of Chang’s highly compressed, perfectly composed work is accessible and readable. Many of Chang’s stories focus on the relationships between men and women in a Shanghai and Hong Kong on the cusp of war. Love in a Fallen City, for example, is an account of a love affair whose “will they, won’t they” is suddenly decided by the bombardment of Hong Kong by the Japanese. But the love itself, like in all of Chang’s stories, is troubled and complex, a series of half-gestures, withdrawals and second guessing. Few Chang stories and few families in her fiction are happy though I hesitate to call Chang a cruel writer. Her writing style is cool and excavating, often she allows one to see the mixture of good intention, false assumptions and self-interest that direct the course of human affairs. Additionally, some stories are shot through with Chang’s unhappy childhood and her real life involvement with a Chinese man working for the Japanese occupation and the subsequent rupture of the relationship. This is certainly true of Lust Caution, where youthful patriotism is undone by a girl’s fall into a sado-masochistic relationship (far more indirect and shorter than Lee's explicit and indulgent film). Additionally, Chang’s own sophistication and English influences makes her cast a particularly interesting light on a China in flux. Many of her Eurasian or “mixed-blood” characters are seen as “forward” and are not fully accepted by conventional Chinese society. Chinese society itself is in transition, shedding a feudal past yet still to embrace its modernity. As an example "Red Rose, White Rose" deals with a man from China’s burgeoning middle class who is attracted to the Red Rose of the title but cannot deal with her modern flirtatious ways or even comprehend that she is an ideal match for him. Instead he marries the girl who is purely Chinese and a White Rose i.e. the idealised chaste wife (the admiration men feel for this ideal recurs in a few stories). Further, Chang’s protagonist, Zhenbao, is from a family which has made sacrifices to get him to his position of comfort and moderate wealth and to whom he thus feels obligated. Zhenbao is both a risk taker (he goes to England to study, has affairs, he is a man of the world) and risk averse (he settles into the managerial job, marries the right kind of wife, assumes his family responsibilities). Chang sets up the chess pieces and moves of this story till its ultimate denouement – a stalemate which is not so much of a bang but a whimper of life must go on. It is a very Asian tale that may still take place.

A great deal is of course lost in translation. Chang’s The Golden Cangue (translated by Chang herself) is, for example, firmly set in a feudal past. The cangue of the title is a device for punishment. The story of a girl from an ordinary family of sesame oil merchants who marries the ailing son of an aristocratic family and is slowly undone till she turns into the worst kind of harridan is in itself effective. Chang was apparently a keen follower of old Chinese works and intended to capture their tone and language in The Golden Cangue, it is of course not possible for the non-Chinese reader to appreciate this. One has to assume that since Chang herself was translating (as she did with The Sing Song Girls of Shanghai, itself the basis for Hou Hsiao Hsien's exquisite film, it is the closest we will get to the story's original intent.

Whilst Chang is at her best in her longer short stories or novellas, some of Chang’s short, experimental pieces are also interesting. "Sealed Off" for example is a charming account of a bus ride during the occupation which is impressionistic in nature. In other non-fiction works, she is lively when touching on topics ranging from her friendships in Malaysia to the evolution of women’s fashions in China (Chang clearly loved clothes). Her essay, A Chronicle of Changing Clothes, touches on Chinese history and concurrent fashions but unfortunately is not available unless by subscription - though it is partly available via Google books. Here are the final lines of the essay after describing a man in a dress she finds ridiculous only to think "why not, if it gives him pleasure"?

".........an autumnal chill as dusk approaches and vendors at a vegetable market prepare to pack up and go home. Fish scraps and pale green husks of sweet-kernel corn litter the ground. A child on a bicycle dashes down the street just to show off. He lets out a shout, lets go of the handlebars, and effortlessly shoots past, swaying atop the seat. And in that split second, everyone on the street watches him pass, transfixed by an indefinable sort of admiration. Might it be that in this life that moment of letting go is the loveliest?"

Lockhart, Moree and Warmun

Works by indigenous artists in Australia are generally pushed under the label of "aboriginal art" but they differ quite a bit in different parts of the country. Of course the underlying themes of country and family loosely bind them but these are by no means confining.  I thought I would put up a few pieces - mostly culled from Hogarth Galleries - to illustrate how different they are.  This is merely a sampling of course.

The Lockhart River Gang is fairly young and a lot of their work has attracted quite a bit of interest because it draws from tradition and yet breaks away from it.  I saw some of their work in Queensland (they are from the Cape York region of the state). Namok is probably the most famous and the most collectable of the group but I quite liked Fiona Omeenyo's work (Family Gathering right below).

There are also newer areas that are drawn into the  aboriginal art scene in the country. I don't recall anyone from northern NSW at the Garma Festival in 2003 but Brent Beale (below) appears to be from that region.  His work seems to draw heavily on country, the picture to the left is titled Roads and Paddocks whilst that to the right is a representation of the Mehi River in the region.

Paintings by Warmun artists were some of the first that I saw and they remain artwork that I am  most responsive to.  It sounds a bit precious but I do find a certain desert purity and spirituality about these paintings. Picture to the left is Waterholes by Tommy Caroll and to the right is Mabel Juli's work.

Tales of the City

Before malls were plonked down on the Indian landscape and rising incomes made internet shopping possible, plenty of things one lusted after were unavailable in the country.  Happily these included bad 80s fashion (modelled by Mses. Cates, Ringwald and Houston in Seventeen, which magazine inexplicably turned up regularly at the circulating library, thus creating unfulfilled teen desires - though a few decades later I am happy no picture of mine in fishnet bracelets or leg warmers exists). Unhappily these included plenty of books, amongst them Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. I therefore just got around to reading the first novel and enjoyed it a great deal. Maupin's milieu of late 70s San Francisco might have dated but the sweetness and charm of the book hasn't. The book was serialised in the San Francisco Chronicle much like a Dickens novel so the chapters are short and self-contained. Maupin's tale of half a dozen tenants in a building with a somewhat eccentric and bohemian landlady could have been as sprawling and crowded a novel as any of Dickens or Balzac's but isn't. But it is vastly amusing and tender in its depiction of louche bohemia in a particular city at a particular point in time. It is that rare thing, a book you want to read all over again once finished.  Now to hunt down the remaining books in the series.

As a post script, at one point, talking of the future, one of the characters in the book states "we are gonna be fifty year old libertines in a world full of twenty year old Calvinists." It is interesting that Maupin is now married and no one would be surprised if some 20 year old decided to post their sex tape on facebook :-)

Eric Rohmer RIP

Sadly Eric Rohmer has died though being 89 tempers things to some extent. Along with Ozu and Varda, Rohmer is one of my favourite film makers.  Neat tributes in the NYT and Guardian that sum up his work here and here. Selfishly, I hope the DVDs of his films will now be available, they are few and far between at the moment.

Death in Cambodia

Been trying to stay off the Internet for awhile but got absorbed in sections of the Guardian this weekend, in particular this piece on a murder in Cambodia in the dying days of the Pol Pot era. It gave me the shivers at some points and brings out the lunacy and evil of governments based on ideology.   Though by any standards, the Pol Pot regime seems unrivalled in its insanity and cruelty. Also pertinent points at the end on the need to still cling to the ideas that formed the beginnings of some of these regimes.

Kanpur evam Cawnpore

I was 10 when I went to Kanpur for my school admission. My father took me and we stayed at the Inspection Bungalow at Armapore and all I remember is not combing my quite long hair for a few days. My mother and brother arrived later; my hair was firmly plaited and as ever a temporary home was set up replete with a big bowl of delicate blue larkspur and yellow dogflower.

A few months later we moved to a home in the city on the ground floor of a house that belonged to local merchants. It was damp and dark and when it rained green slime flowed out of the pipes and into the courtyard. We had a long commute to school on the Army bus. We had little connection with the deeply traditional, Punjabi joint family who owned the place. Or their dog who left little piles of runny shit all over the house. Life passed unhappily, languidly. Summer afternoons were the worst - hot, unbearably still. The only event that enlivened these days for us was pheriwalas selling cucumber slices (evocatively described as “Laila ki ungliyaan, Majnu ki pasliyan” in our school lesson) and watermelon. Living there my mother went a little mad. So did our dog who singlemindedly tore up all our linen. Finally my father was allotted a house and we moved to the cantonment.

The cantonments of India in the 70s and 80s were both isolated worlds and connected by some invisible bloodline to the cities they belonged to. Cawnpore (to use the anglicised version) cantonment had roads named after English governor-generals and colonial bungalows that lined the Ganga. Once in a while bodies lazily floated in the river, no one knew if death had come from natural causes or otherwise. Here and there were the remnants of history like Massacre Ghat and Bibigarh. Cawnpore Club was a mouldy old place where drinks were served at six by liveried bearers and dinner was served in courses. We lived opposite the club. At night the lanes were dark, the trees cast long shadows. Visiting relatives were spooked by the darkness and silence but we felt immense relief away from city lights.

Our school had been set up by missionaries. Legend had it that a local rich boy had been rejected by our school and so a new school was set up right across the railway tracks that ran alongside our school. Naturally we disdained the students of the other school. Our school offered a sound education and we even had a few American teachers, this felt quite exotic at the end of the 70s. It also offered a sound thrashing for misdemeanours in the old public school tradition. And demented teachers who talked to themselves, like our Sanskrit teacher.  As also Hindi teachers who ensured our Punjabi Hindi was  erased and replaced with a purer diction. It was quite an old school and for some reason its historical photographs have got embedded in my mind so I remember it as a place populated by Victorian schoolgirls rather than us modern Indians.

My mother’s mood improved in the cantonment. She had a social circle more to her liking and was soon immersed in Army life as we knew it. One month Shia-Sunni riots broke out in the city. At its height, my mother had a previously scheduled party for which a rice plate was deemed necessary. In the midst of a curfew mother and daughter sailed forth, found a willing rickshaw wallah and an open store in Navin Market and returned with ceramic plate in hand. Many months later we encountered Sanjay Gandhi, campaigning for an election at the end of the Emergency that the Congress lost. He had a lone driver and a local chap in attendance and waved to a few of us in that cantonment country lane. In retrospect, it is a touchingly innocent moment.

If the cantonment was a safe haven in which our lives were lived out undisturbed, nothing prevented us from enjoying the delights of the city. Shivala had tiny shops and giant mounds of glass bangles which everyone bought – no one even knew or cared that these were made by children under appalling conditions. We simply wanted a colour for every mood, every occasion. You could pick up leather chappals – also dangerously made in the city’s tanneries - for a pittance. And the alleyways were filled with food stalls, including those that made kulfi by rattling the metal cones in a pot filled with ice.

Kanpur had unmotorised rickshaws which depended on raw pedal power. There was no other way of getting around the city if you didn’t own a vehicle. It was always an unhappy ride, especially since most drivers were emaciated men with leg veins that stood out. Jostling for space with these rickshaws would be cows and elephants like some stereotype of India writ large. I think the Mall had a cow that never moved and traffic simply went around the animal. Further slowing matters were the numerous gumtis or railway crossings across the city.

And there were the ubiquitous servants since most Army houses came equipped with “servants quarters”. Of ours, one was a widow with young children, rather sad and outwardly colourless. The other was still young and  our playmate. They had resoundingly epic names like Urmila and Shakuntala. Many a solitary evening whilst my parents were out at a party, Shakuntala would play with us and our two dogs. The dogs buried and dug up bones in the garden, which made us feel like we were living in a proper Enid Blyton story.

Kanpur was a strange city; it had none of the glamour or culture of neighbouring Lucknow. It had a history but it was an industrial city above all, though its proximity to the river also made it a city where everything bloomed. Menace hung around, even in the cantonment. Tales of abduction, thefts, murders were rife all the while we lived there. In the end we were happy to leave and arrive in a city where people roamed freely at night. I am in no hurry to revisit Kanpur but all these years later the memory of the city is a surprisingly pleasant one.

Lit from Within

The glittering performance at the heart of a film is usually the one rewarded. It’s what can be called the Anthony Hopkins/Cate Blanchett school of acting in which we are called upon, nay compelled, to laud a great actor at work. Why then do these performances leave one cold? In contrast, some performances are subtle and do not call attention to themselves yet you are certain that you have witnessed a small miracle. The same goes for films.

The subtle, the unfussy, is rarely rewarded. Generally we watch to be dazzled, even if a hollowness lies at the heart of the film or performance.

Two films that I saw last year fall into the unrewarded category. The less flashy of the two is Two Lovers in which a depressive Jewish man is torn between two very different lovers - one a wild, damaged child and the other a warmly sweet Jewish acquaintance. It’s quietly sublime, expert in both setting up emotions and it's Brooklyn locale. And at its heart is an equally quiet and astonishing performance from Joaquin Phoenix. Sure it turns up in critics’ lists here and there but it is hardly an instant recall. Is it the better or the worse for it? It is hard to say. Perhaps it would wilt under the white heat of intense adulation.

Quiet is not a word one would associate with Jane Campion, whose choices as a director are bold. Campion is in fact the glittering centre of her films, her visual stamp so distinctive that no one can mistake it for anything else. Her latest film, Bright Star, based on the last three years of Keats' life, is however a quietly glowing work. And its performances, especially from Ben Whishaw who plays the poet, achieve depth by omitting anything overt. Its period details are lyrical, beautiful but never overwhelm the characters or the story. Bright Star is slow and for its 110 odd minutes, Campion chooses to place you in the slow minutiae of everyday life within which the poet’s work and love flourish. And yet the film is transcendental in its romanticism. Even aspects that could be showier – Abbie Cornish as the flirtatious fashion plate who captured Keats' heart and Campion’s signature visuals – are muted and therefore wondrous. Whilst Campion is always brilliant, even at her most flawed, here a mellow, mature vision has come to fruit. Campion’s film too has thus far been unrewarded except for generally positive reviews. Both Gray’s and Campion’s films are however so subdued, so honest to their directors’ vision that perhaps putting them in an awards race is to drag them down to the commonplace.