Human brain still remains largely unmapped, but illuminating studies by Sigmund Freud, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and the art of Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Egon Schiele, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon and FN Souza is a revelation into the dark recesses of the ‘Walnut’.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Plumtopia Returns (PG Wodehouse)
Plumtopia Returns
Sebastian
Faulks has dared to tread the sacred turf and impersonate the art of the PLUM,
to a divided reception. Diehard fans of PG Wodehouse are outraged at Faulks
sacrilegious feat of writing a sequel to the famous Jeeves-Wooster series. The
other more tempered audience has expressed intrigue and admiration at his close
imitation of Plum’s stylistic tropes and his sheer chutzpah to imitate the
inimitable emperor of the English sentence. But I am not here to join a
bandwagon and add fuel to the fiery furore. Rather, it gives me an opportunity to
celebrate and delve into the unceasing pleasure of Wodehouse utopian world –
“Plumtopia” (courtesy: a blessed Plum fan)
Plum, as he
was lovingly called by his dear ones, believed in the lightness of being. He maintained a cheery disposition throughout
his life. He did not involve himself in the everyday care of life, leaving it
all in the able hands of his wife Ethel. Testing times of his life did not mark
him adversely. On the contrary, he continued to write comic pieces and jested
and broadcast humorous anecdotes after his internment with the Germans in the
Second World War. The ugly aftermath, which exiled him from his home
country and expatriated him to United States, was born by him with genial
happiness. Such a blessed soul could not help but paint an idyllic world in his
writings, imbued with humorous phrase, wit and the comic unsurpassed.
His critics accused him of churning out the
same story with variations over and over again. And indeed, it is intriguing that his ardent
readers awaited his next read eagerly, and haplessly absorbed his plots and
delightful recurring characters ravenously. Many a writer has been lost to the
dark recesses of forgetfulness but Wodehouse still sells along with
contemporary bestsellers. The plots of his stories are intricate with neat
twists and absurdity reigns supreme. The
Gentleman of gentlemen, the Edwardian Bertie Wooster, man of leisure but
undyingly kind and honey sweet is pursued relentlessly by lay women and
heiresses alike. He finds himself unduly
engaged, and in a mess in a country estate, not of his making, just everyday
turn of innocuous events. Cogs in the chaotic situation could be more such
incidents (of unpleasantness, inheritances or thefts) or men and women
entangled through an intricate vicious web. Jeeves, the erudite Butler, is the
only miracle man who can unwrangle the mess and set everyone free and good. Bertie
and Jeeves appeared in 1915 and were reworked by the author till their last
appearance in ‘Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen’ in 1974 when he was in his nineties. Non-Bertie
novels, the Blandings novels, The
Uncle Fred series, The Psmith novels and stories from earlier years are
indicative that his stories are somewhat
repetitive in nature – but the fanatic adherence of his followers to his
works is the magic of his language. When
we read him and assimilate him, the experience is like the man who drank his
first glass of sparkling French wine.
The word bubbles whizz and fizz in the mind creating ripples of savory
reading experience par excellence.
The characters acquired a life of their own beyond his
books. Lord Emsworth and his pig, Mr
Milliner, Jeeves…………are as alive as our real life best friends and we know them
warts and all. Their unfailing power to
woo and enthrall us is bewildering beyond reason. Wodehouse, though indicted of
creating scatterbrained female characters, evermore meddling, domineering and
stubborn, is also credited with creating women who are feisty, bubbly, witty
and with a mind of their own. And these
women were not always beautiful, young, rich or articulate to find love in
their lives. The standard prerequisites of heroines in romantic novels of his
age were subverted and they find love, companionship and joy irrespective of
looks, age and size. A true feminist agenda. “Lord Emsworth’s nephew Wilfred Allsop falls in love with his Uncle’s
‘pig-girl’ Monica Simmons, whose solid build and agricultural occupation could
hardly be less feminine. Wilfred Allsop
objects strongly when his friend Tipton ‘Tippy’ Plimsoll points this out. “I’m
sorry you think she looks like an all-in wrestler,’ he said stiffly, “To me, she seems to resemble one of those Norse
goddesses. However, be that as it may, I love her, Tippy. I fell in love with her at first sight.” A blogger writes , ‘In Wodehouse’s world, a man can have a crooked face and
a cauliflower ear, yet reign supreme. Just as it should be.’
Psmith is
the only character drawn from his own life. But he did not go on with him as an
older man because he thought that what made him funny as a young boy could not
be applied to an older version of him. Wodehouse always knew that wooly head Lord
Emsworth living in a castle was a
hilarious character he had created and he stuck with him. It isn’t every writer’s cup of tea to think of
comic sequences. It’s only if you view life lightly, are amused at life’s
twists and turns and are able to see the absurd in every person or situation ,
in short you are psyched with a funny bone , then you can dole out fiction like
PLUM, like 100 books in his lifetime. He
read exhaustively, like Shakespeare complete works throughout his life. And then, very skillfully he made a soufflé of
Cicero, Shakespeare and Spinoza and
delivered it to his readers laced with the right dose of humor.
He also
broke the standard cliché that books sell if they have hot sex in them. The
closest he came to sex in his books was a kiss on the cheek. He felt that sex could be funny, but he
refrained from it. And wow, still his
stories sell till today.
Delight in
the world of PG Plum and deliver yourself from the captivity of life!
Labels:
Book Column,
Navhind Times Book Column,
PG Wodehouse
Sunday, November 10, 2013
The Bard's Bards
The Bard’s Bards
Shakespeare lives on in our lives subtly, unconsciously and
pervasively. If we were to pay more attention to our daily English
conversational exchanges we would be astounded to note that our talk is
sprinkled copiously with phrases from the Bard’s writings.
Hot-blooded.I have not slept one wink.
Love is blind.
Make your hair stand on end.
Neither rhyme nor reason.
Too much of a good thing.
We have seen better days
Wild goose chase
A fool's paradise
A sorry sight
Brevity is the soul of wit
To be or not to be
What is in a name
Et tu Brutus
His skilled use of certain common phrases lent them an air
of extraordinariness, and he further devised many original phrases of his own,
with special effects ( like the last one). These ordinary and not-so-ordinary words grouped together as conceptual units
(phrases) have become a part of the modern English language through its
evolutionary history since the time of the Bard. When we speak in English, our
talk is intimately laced with Shakespearean quotes and phrases, being applied
everyday to new situations, circumstances, events, places and people.
Now, isn’t that exhilarating? Like being part of a greatness without a
conscious effort, as if it’s a gift to all
humanity (since English is a global language) to be used exhaustively
without even reading his extensive works. An everyday example would be –
The wild goose chase led us to places which made our hair
stand on end. We were a sorry sight by the end of it, we have seen better days,
you see.
But the interesting facet is to know the origin of a phrase
that one uses frequently. The context in
which it was used by the Bard in his
plays and verses.
The course of true love never did run smooth -This expression derives from A Midsummer Nights Dream, 1598:
LYSANDER:
Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood,--
Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood,--
Many a true word is spoken in jest -The first author to express this thought in English was probably Geoffrey Chaucer. He included it in The Cook's Tale, 1390:
But yet I pray
thee be not wroth for game; [don't be angry with my jesting]
A man may say full sooth [the truth] in game and play.
A man may say full sooth [the truth] in game and play.
Shakespeare
later came closer to our contemporary version of the expression, in King
Lear, 1605: Jesters do oft prove prophets.
Something is rotten in the State of
Denmark.
A feeling that something fishy or suspicious is going on. Hamlet: The character Marcellus states this when Hamlet is hallucinating and seeing the ghost of the recently deceased king. This phrase is especially used when describing scandals.
A feeling that something fishy or suspicious is going on. Hamlet: The character Marcellus states this when Hamlet is hallucinating and seeing the ghost of the recently deceased king. This phrase is especially used when describing scandals.
Fair play.
Miranda: "Yes, for a score of kingdoms
you should wrangle, and I would call it, fair play." The Tempest, 1610
If music be
the food of love, play on. Let us just go on dropping bard lines, ‘cause the be
all and end all of all is that the World ‘s a stage and men and women mere
players , who have their exits and entrances, or stuff that dreams are made on
, our little life without rhyme or reason , may not be just a walking shadow,
full of sound and fury , but touching heights, for what a piece of work is man
.
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