Look, Who is Talking

Look, Who Is Talking?

It happened yet again. Nilanjana Roy, the journalist and literary critic released her first book - The Wildings, in which the narrators are cats, cheels, dogs and tigers. Successful people don’t do different things , they do things differently. Imagine hearing the story from the perspective of cats, which she set out to do initially but later with the progression of the book other interesting animals too found a voice in the narration. Structuring of a book is an art ever so subtle and masterful in the hands of great writers. The craft is prevalent, though superbly restrained, and holding the entire work seamlessly together.

The narrator who tells the story is distinctly chosen by the writer, after great thought.  A masterstroke would be ‘My Name is Red’ by Orhan Pamuk in which the first narrator is a CORPSE. The book is narrated in 20 different voices, with a dog, a horse and the colour RED, too, taking turns to narrate the story of a miniaturist illuminator who is murdered in medieval Turkey . Here, we cannot but talk about DEATH  as the narrator of ‘The Book Thief’ by Markus Zusak . The over busy death, weary and cynical of retrieving souls during World War II in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, is a humane entity, devoid of grotesque monstrosity, serving its purpose with great empathy. If I say a  grandfatherly  figure, I wouldn’t be far from it.

To take the conversation further, the first section of ‘Sound and Fury’ is from the point of view of an AUTISTIC  33-year old man Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a source of shame to the family due to his autism. The narration is a series of non-chronological events and shifts haphazardly. Limited by himself he cannot interpret time, cause and effect and conceives happenings through visual and auditory stimulus. Moving on  to the autistic brave boy Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy  who describes himself as "a mathematician with some behavioral difficulties” is a deserving mention here , from the book ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. ’ Finding a keen grasp of his social fears, he solves the mystery of the murder of the dog and then goes on to find his mother. An appealing, quirky novel. A great feat, using a narrator with asperger syndrome. The chapters are numbered according to prime numbers; the book is filled with mathematical puzzles, maps and illustrations.

‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka is told by a GIANT INSECT– a young lad morphed into an insect. A symbolic, multi-layered story of human complexities.  ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ by Garth Stein uses brilliant narrative device. The narrator is the know-all old dog Enzo, who has mastered human behavior by watching TV when his master is away. The story of the master who is an aspiring car-racer is relayed from the perspective of his dog, who is as good as human except for opposable thumbs and no speech. He takes us through the joys and pains of marriage of his master, meddling in-laws, illness, highs and lows of a race-car driver. A catchy read with emotional strings attached to it. You will never be able to look at a dog in the same way again.

‘The Screwtape Letters’ by C.S Lewis is in the voice of two DEVILS who exchange letters between themselves. The letters appeared during the dark days of World War II and later came out as a book dedicated to his friend TRR Tolkien “ The secret's out. You've stumbled upon a mysterious series of recorded conversations between two demons tasked with securing the demise of their human patients. Delightfully disturbing (and often diabolically humorous) entertainment, The Screwtape Letters will open your eyes and ears to the devil's schemes — and to the One who has overcome them.”

No doubt all the books mentioned above have been a great success of their times. Next time you set out to write a book, think hard who is going to do the talking.

One Book Wonders

One Book Wonders

There are books and then there are wonder books. They are wonderful as they leave us wondering about the wonders of our world. There are books we visit once and there are those that we revisit repeatedly. Then there is the story of a book belonging to an author, as the very act of its conception and birth springs from the one who writes. But the question is who rears it. The first pair of eyes which read the book claim a belongingness to the book which is multiplied with each successive visitation, such that the more the eyes and minds devour it, the more it grows and becomes equally theirs. We as readers delight in our readings, are passionate about our books, we talk, discourse, in course of which we push up the sales and fame of our reads. Then we could very amicably conclude the argument that the book belongs equally to the writer and the readers.  The mother and the foster mothers!

In today’s column, I thought we could ponder on all the books that we as avid readers have reared to top the bestselling charts for extended periods of time. I  would also like to stipulate a catch here; that is, those writers who wrote just one wonder book in their lifetime; that very special book, sooooooooooo special that the creators themselves could not replicate the pattern again and became legends for  one superlative novel. The ONE BOOK WONDERS!

The reasons for a one–in-lifetime fabulous work of literature could be many. To start with, it could be the age old truth of human existence; mortality. To add one more, a writer like Harper Lee said , "I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again." Sometimes it rested with their nature of being a recluse; the recognition shattered their lives. Last but not the least the quality of contentment and bliss with just one peak .

The one book wonders or as I call them ‘Phenomenal Books’ have been on my bookshelf and a part of my research and book-reading workshops over the years.  To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee. A political story about the trial of a black man in the American South during the depression ; but essentially a classic because of its depiction of timeless themes of childhood and innocence. Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a classic which begins with the maxim of aestheticism "art for art's sake." He wrote numerous plays and short stories and an exclusive novel. It is the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil for eternal youthfulness.  An excerpt from the novel was a part of my English reader in school and I am still haunted by the uncanny ageless youth of Dorian Gray , frozen in time in contrast to his unseemly deteriorating portrait. The theme of self- love and a pleasure seeking lifestyle in the book became recurrent questions during his real life trials brought on by his homosexual liaisons.

Boris Pasternak’s, Dr. Zhivago exposes the starvation, cannibalism, murder, reprisals, legitimized slaughters in Russia during an extended period of the world wars, revolutions, civil war and famines. To be precise and accurate, the writer expounded on Stalin’s reign of terror and received a midnight call from Stalin himself, but his garbled explanation did not interest Stalin and he cut the call. An explosive dynamic novel, that blew up in his face, simply impossible to translate and further complicated by his incomprehensible public speeches. A man who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, but he denied it and refused to be exiled to the West. He spent his entire life translating Shakespeare into Russian. 

“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied” – Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
A writer of essays , short stories and book reviews, Ellison wrote the book steeped in the African -American experience. The book was a classic success and he joined the coterie of famed African - American writers with it. The beginning of the book is self- explanatory of the rendering of the invisible man. “I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids–and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible,  simply because people refuse to see me. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination–indeed, everything and anything except me.”

Scarlet O’ Hara the protagonist of Gone with the Wind created ripples. We read her with censure rather than admiration and sympathy. Margaret Mitchell turned the tables when she portrayed her as a brave woman who survives the civil war with hard work and a no nonsense attitude to the whole scene of war. Rhett Butler is attracted to her in the first place is because of her forthright attitude and outspokenness. A force to reckon with, who cooked and plotted scenes and was relentless in her love pursuits but that is what made  her human and not just a doll with plastic well- rehearsed answers and expectations. More recently a novella and a collection of Margaret’s journal articles have been printed to give a better insight into her writings. 

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is her debut, booker prize winner, only novel. A book that one would wholeheartedly appreciate and but not necessarily like, bogged by the morbid betrayals of love, politics, religion and family. A heroine who comes to love by night the man her children love by day.  I  would like to leave the readers with a quote from the book “laws that tell you whom to love, how and how much.”

To end the narrative of one book wonders, I quote ‘Black Beauty’ by Anna Sewell. A book that Anna bequeathed to the world in the 19^th century, loved and coveted by animal lovers and children alike, a simple but powerful book about the life of a horse – Black Beauty- with far reaching ubiquitous messages.

The list would also include books like ‘ Catcher in the Rye,  The Bell Jar, Wuthering Heights, A Confederacy of Dunces’………………, but maybe I can sign out here and leave the reader with thoughts and further readings and research.