Critical Dan

The God of Small Things is the first novel by Arundhati Roy. Published in 1997 and winner of the Booker Prize, this beautiful book is a melancholy, endearing portrait of a shattered family, and the slow recounting of their destruction. A wonderful, painful read, the haunting tragedy hanging over the story sets the tone as Roy’s abundant language fills the landscape, providing the reader with both a sweeping view of India, and a detailed illustration of this family.

The story centers around the twins Rahel & Estha, and the death of their cousin, Sophie Mol. A sweet girl, but never a full character, “…far more quickly than ever should have happened, Sophie Mol became a Memory, while The Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive.” The opening scene is of the adult Rahel walking through her hometown. Here where disaster struck, where her soul was rent in two, where her life fell apart. Where she was separated from Estha, who was sent away directly after tragedy, a separation from which neither has recovered. We then move shift back to their birth, and then the funeral they all must attend. The novel’s flits between past and present allow great flexibility, building the environment of both times so the reader understands the state of these characters, both then and now.

Told in a series of snapshots that capture the personal quirks and flaws of her cast, Roy’s use of a non-linear narrative better entrenches the reader in the heart of her world, riven with tragedy. From the beginning, she shares the pasts of characters, even the ancillary, not to further the action, but to induce a mindset of loss as a fact of life, something expected, unavoidable. And while this tactic is easily perceived by the reader, Roy’s skill resides in the creation of rules unspoken, but ever-present.

Often left unmentioned, the “love laws,” as Roy terms them, are such rules. In India, the love laws pervaded society. These laws determined “who should be loved, and how. And how much.” In a broad, cultural sense, these can be interpreted through the caste system, which determined the social class of an individual. In The God of Small Things, Roy takes the concept and runs with it. Much of the book can be seen as a riff on these laws, even if hardly mentioned in the text. To Roy, the love laws seem to be an aspect of India’s essence, and in this book they appear in much the same way. So ingrained are these laws that for the adult characters, no mention is needed. Yet the children are left in the dark. The adults act as if these love laws are inherent, ignoring the fact that their discrimination is learned, not primal.  It is only as the reader moves through the book that this social construct is perceived, a construct so necessary the narrative would crumble without it. The magic of this work exists in Roy’s ability to lay this truth bare without subverting the small, essential joys sprinkled in the pages.

The ability to find joy and survive tragedy is in the realm of the Small God. A mercurial being, the God stands at the edge of the page, but his presence is always felt. Roy’s first explanation lies behind Rahel’s adult eyes, wrongly perceived as “between difference and despair.” In India, the Small God offers respite through both tragedy and joy. In comparison to the epic turmoil surrounding the country, personal despair is inconsequential. The Small God is happiness in the face of small tragedy, and small joy. “In the country that [Rahel] came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening. So the Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully…the source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune.”

After finishing the last word, I had the strong urge to return to page one, reliving the story in a more informed fashion, but since I read those last words on the way to my book club meeting, I haven’t yet gotten the chance. As per usual, I picked up the book three days before the meeting, a time when the countdown is measured better in hours than in days. But the last few books hadn’t been this literary. Or I’d listened to the audio book. But this one won an award, is considered literature; the back cover compares her to Faulkner. I felt the sinking obligation. Initially skeptical that I’d finish in time, and with a considerable lack of knowledge about India, I started reading. As the narrative voice took hold, I was captivated. Whisked away to a beautiful India. In retrospect, I think the short length of my reading period was an advantage. Every event was fresh in my mind, no reminders were needed. I could recall the tricks of Roy’s language with ease, and her vast story overtook me like a wave, all at once. It is sad. It is beautiful. It is a Kathakali troupe, full of magic and the Great Stories, dancing “to ask pardon of the gods.”

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan, is this month’s selection for my book club. It follows the story of Clay Jannon, a recent art school graduate, who happens upon a job as the third-shift clerk for a peculiar bookstore run by a peculiar old man. He is as of yet unaware of the adventure awaiting him in the secret books and curious customers walking into his life. While wearing the appearance of a quirky modern novel focused on the confrontation of literature and technology, it read more like a classroom exercise in novel composition, and seemed less interested in the artistry involved in writing. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t fun moments, but it was extremely predictable at every turn, and I wish it hadn’t been.

Seeming more interested in pushing toward conclusion than exploring his creation, Sloan chooses a plot and then sketches a world around its edges, giving his creation no room to thrive. The reader is sees a set of predictable, well-worn characters with no substance, stirring an emotion closer to loathing than anything else as the story unfolds. We have the awkward main character who is a nerd because he used to read a fantasy novel, The Dragonsong Chronicles, and play Dungeons & Dragons, wait I mean Rockets and Warlocks (a terrible fake title; you shouldn’t mix fantasy and science) as a child. There’s the love interest, herself a nerd and computer whiz who works at Google, and has a surprising amount of clout with her employer for her young age. There’s the sidekick best friend from childhood (specific friendship centered upon love of aforementioned fantasy novel and RPG) who is just as nerdy, but also a Silicon Valley tycoon thanks to his computer software that renders breasts in 3D for video games. Then we have Mr. Penumbra, the eccentric old man that the young folk must save. All the other characters are ancillary, and most could probably be discarded without damaging the plot. Of the main four, none really even stood out and the entire book felt so generic. I think Sloan is unable to harness the voice of the generation he depicts, and it seems to me the work of an author pandering to a disengaged audience, much like a father attempts to impress his children. He spends more time mentioning iPhone games, e-readers, Google and than any quality character development, and the few characters who develop more than a sentence-long background are still just a hodgepodge of quirks, nothing more.

By mixing flimsy character elements with rapid narrative speed, we’re left with a lack of suspense and an overflow of action. Somehow days or weeks elapse over the course of a few pages, so the reader has no concept of time in this world. There are myriad plot points hit in unrelenting succession, but don’t think that signals adventure. Although not likely the intent, this book undercuts tension  at every turn. Any exciting incident is immediately resolved so the narrative can move forward; there’s no time to understand the effect these situations have on the characters. I was baffled why any character was emotionally invested in any other because no reasons were given for such investment and the amount of emotional depth in all the relationships, even the romantic one, equates to that of cordial acquaintances at a party. Even if the author consciously forsook character for plot, he apparently figured focusing on plot meant writing a lot of it.  More often than not, the tension is destroyed by the undermining of consequence. The narrator finds himself in bad situations, but always gets by, not by any personal means, but simply through the indifference of the other characters. No one seems to worry when centuries-old secrets are revealed, instead using those moments to supply back story. No stakes are clearly established so the story always feels vague, as even the characters themselves don’t seem to understand their motivations.

This novel didn’t explore greater conflict of literature versus technology any further than the difficulty of scanning books and harvesting their information. A detailed rumination on the subject would be welcomed, as this fight gets at the core of new versus old, but instead we have a book that would rather let us know friendship is important, because that’s news… I guess I just left disappointed with the book it could have been. The writing style, while not terrible, is nothing to write home about, and I think he should have styled his novel like he described in the epilogue. “I will write down everything that happened. I’ll copy some of it from the logbook, find more in old emails and text messages, and reconstitute the rest from memory.” In this format, Sloan’s story could have been told with a collection of all the different writing styles available in books and online, letting the reader piece the novel together and solve the puzzle himself. Sadly, we’re not left with anything as exciting, and close the final pages unsatisfied.

To those who liked the book, my apologies. To my book club cohorts, I hope this doesn’t sour your opinion of me or my reviews, and I’ll try to like things more in the future. I think I just let my inner cynic invade this entire review. While not an amazing work of literature, it’s a short, easy quest that fits in a weekend, and can be quite fun. Don’t worry though, you’ll take home a number of life lessons at the end; they’re all summarized in the epilogue.

I could not put down this collection of short stories. A wonderful mixture of philosophy and fantasy, I would place this book in the hand of any friend. I hope not to weigh this review down with too much philosophical talk, even though that’s practically all this book is, because in the hands of many a person, the stories and language would surely captivate enough to not overwhelm the reader with philosophy.

I suppose I should provide a little background for this book choice. Recently, I finished Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, a phenomenal book I’m still trying to review. Throughout 2012, as I worked through IJ, I researched the a bit on the history of modern literature, but not anything too in-depth. One short story consistently reappeared in lists of influences and innovations as I searched, The Garden of Forking Paths. After reading a few sentences about the story I was convinced I needed to read it and anything like it, so I finally ordered the book on Amazon and tore through its pages in two days. I will say I had to read every story twice, if only to grasp the philosophical weight contained in each piece, but that did not dampen my adoration or enjoyment. In these stories, Borges tackles two important ideas of the human experience, time and memory; ideas filling the minds of men and pages of books since the dawn of time. I found this collection a concise and useful portal into these philosophical worlds, and cannot wait to expand my reading list to include a much needed philosophy component.

There are two sections of this book: The Garden of Forking Paths (also the title of the last story in the first part), and Artifices; I think they’re separated in such a way because of original separate publication, but don’t quote me on that. While I usually skip the prefaces, introductions, or forwards, finding them often too full of vanity or misplaced reverence, I decided it was necessary to read them since I’m offering a review and not just reading for pleasure.  As expected, the introduction, written by translator Anthony Kerrigan, was stuffed with lofty thoughts on the genius nature of Borges and left a bad taste in my mouth. Kerrigan seems to have felt the need to justify Borges’s place in the pantheon of great philosophical literature, considering the readers too unintelligent to grasp the quality of Borges’s contributions otherwise. I found the author’s prologues much more self-effacing as he succinctly explains the intent of his stories while avoiding self-righteousness, and they primed my pump for the stories ahead.

Instead of attempting to write magnificent, enormous tomes, Borges explains his style as simply writing about these tomes, using the imaginary work as a driving force of the story. This allows him to both create numerous fascinating books without the difficulty of writing them, and to imagine works impossible in reality, but relevant to his philosophical intents. While I found a desire to read these fictional books he discusses, I also understood these masterpieces are unable to exist. The imaginary world provides limitless potential and mystery, so an ephemeral story existing only in thought possesses unfathomable beauty, while a realistic attempt at such a fantastical idea could result in nothing but failure. As Borges introduces these fictitious writings, he weaves them so deftly into the real literary world that it grows difficult to distinguish the two. It quickly becomes apparent that the only memorable line from the Introduction, “…he has read all of the books,” rings a resounding truth. Somehow, Borges has read every book, or at least the vast part of major literature from all ages past, and uses every tool gained from such knowledge to construct this book. At a certain point, the reader must give up any attempt to note all the references made; I stopped at the end of The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim, the second story. Of course the allusions never feel forced, and Borges uses them only to further the plot or philosophical questions posed, not for flashing his impressive bone fides. The most useful addition to this book would be an annotation so the reader can begin to understand the depth of thought and literary ancestry involved. Plus, I think it’d be a fun follow-up read.

The most striking stories of the collection include The Garden of Forking Paths, Funes the Memorious, Death and the Compass, and The Secret Miracle. While I think any of his pieces have strong resonance with the audience, I believe those I just listed would be most appealing to the unfamiliar reader. Of course I recommend them all, but don’t want to put off any fickle readers with the more opaque selections. The Garden of Forking Paths and Death and the Compass are both detective stories, though while I think the latter is strictly that, I believe the former to be a deep exploration of thought masquerading as mystery, but with a shocking end. In Compass, the reader is carried along a murder mystery exquisitely rendered. Borges captures in thirteen pages what Dan Brown clumsily seeks in all of The DaVinci Code, and since I’m ever the cynic, I cannot avoid the thought that Brown simply created a blatant and bloated version of a wonderful story, and I feel retroactively cheated for having read the rip-off in the first place. Funes the Memorious is by far the most thought-provoking, dealing with the concept of human thought and the perception of reality. In Funes, the narrator recalls a meeting with a unique young man, able to remember everything, even minute details from any instance in his past, much like an autistic savant. As the conversation is revealed, Borges slowly confronts the reader with an unsettling conceptualization of reality, and, in my opinion, the strongest articulation of a philosophical concept in the book. The final of my recommendations, The Secret Miracle, deals with an author, sentenced to death, forcing him to leave his magnum opus unfinished. Being one of the only two stories in the book dealing with God, I believe Borges embraces the higher power without heralding belief or blasphemy, a refreshing change of pace. I felt Borges goal lay in convincing the reader that regardless of the content of a personal masterpiece, its value is ultimately, and perhaps intangibly tied only to the self and higher power. The illustration used was both poignant and comic, and captured the mercurial essence of God in a way that has left me thoughtful. Paired with his considerations in Three Versions of Judas, Borges provides a complex portrait of God within this book, through which I believe Borges’s reverence and respect is apparent.

If I must offer one criticism though, and I must, it is the translation. The original stories were written in Spanish the years of 1936-1953, and in 1962 the English translation was published. With a fifty year gap between the translation and current day, a certain level of anachronistic language would be expected, but as I stepped into the stories, I noticed something that felt less skillful and more frivolous in nature. I balked at unnecessary words that left the text cloudy in places, and while a likely detriment to the original, it’s not unsettling enough to avoid the read. And let’s be serious, if you’ve read this far, you’re hopefully slightly interested in this book, regardless of my final ramblings.

If allowed, I’d wax rhapsodic about this book for days, but I do not want to spoil any plots or drive anyone away. I honestly could not sing the praises of these stories enough and urge anyone slightly interested in thought to pick this collection up.