A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

One of the strengths of this book is its straightforward narrative. Published first in 1925, the story chronicles the experiences of a young American, Frederic Henry, caught in the thick of World War I. Lieutenant Henry (‘Tenente’) serves in the ambulance corps of the Italian army. The book is as much about love, as it is about war.

Frederic is half-hearted about the war, and in no mind for love when he first meets Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. Both his mind and heart are changed fairly soon, though Hemingway is more eloquent about Henry’s growing disillusionment with the seemingly endless campaign than he is in developing the relationship between Frederic and Catherine. The reader must infer their own reasons beyond what is stated in the book: that Catherine is beautiful, and ‘a grand girl’, and that she is lonely and grieving. In the despair of war, perhaps that is enough.

After the Battle of Caporetto and the ensuing Italian retreat, Henry finally decides that he will make ‘a separate peace’. He deserts the Italian army and pursues Catherine to Stresa. Catherine is by now pregnant with his child, and together, the two escape to Switzerland. There, they enjoy a blissful idyll, that alas, proves short-lived.

Hemingway seems to know what he’s talking about when he writes about war. Well, he should. ‘A Farewell to Arms’ is not autobiographical, but several incidents were based on the author’s own experiences in the Italian ambulance brigade, and being wounded during service. Many of the key characters were inspired by men and women he met during that period. Catherine Barkley was the fictional alter ego of a nurse called Agnes Von Kurowsky. The affair between Hemingway and Kurowsky did not end tragically, but came to a more mundane conclusion. While the character of Henry has a force and presence that rings true, Barkley is a fairly two-dimensional and insipid romantic lead. At the end of the book, there is not much we know about her, other than that she for no particular reason, makes Henry her raison d’être and has a tendency to fatuously state that things are ‘grand’ even when they very obviously are not.

But whatever the deficiencies in Hemingway’s take on love, he makes up for it with a perspective on war that is clear-eyed and authentic - its chaos, stupidity, madness, and the collateral damage it inflicts. Hemingway strips away any pretensions of glory in his account of people displaced, in the awarding of military ‘honors’, and the treatment of service personnel in wartime. His style of prose is minimal – terse yet effective. While his writing is unsentimental, his descriptions of natural landscapes are a thing of beauty in themselves; the immutable loveliness of nature stands serenely untouched by mankind’s self-destruction.

Ulysses by James Joyce

Rating: 4 Stars

“I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.”

You’ve got to hand it to Joyce; that breath-taking confidence that he’s written something that will be read for centuries bespeaks a considerable chutzpah. Not quite sure that I would agree with him about that. This amateur reviewer’s unapologetic opinion is that - never have so many words been strung together to make so much nonsense, and for so little purpose.

Perhaps future generations will question the literary merit of ‘Ulysses’ and concur that it’s an imposter that does not deserve to be on every ‘100 Must-Read Books’ list. But as of now, this book remains the unchallenged flagship of novelistic excellence. Having got that off my chest, let’s move on to take a closer look at Joyce’s opus, keeping in mind that there’s really no possibility of one mere blog post doing adequate justice to a work so vast and ambitious in its scope.

A preliminary introduction to how the book originated: the title, structure and theme were inspired by James Joyce’s fascination with Homer’s Odyssey, and in particular, the hero of that epic narrative - Odysseus/Ulysses. It was initially serialized in parts in an American journal and later published as a book in 1922. The entirety of the story unfolds in Dublin on June 16, 1904; a day now celebrated by Joyce aficionados as ‘Bloomsday’ after the novel’s protagonist (and Ulysses stand-in), Leopold Bloom. It’s structured in three parts and eighteen episodes, with each episode named after a character or incident from the Odyssey.

Part One begins with an introduction to Stephen Dedalus, a young writer and school-teacher and the novel’s ersatz Telemachus, son of Odysseus in Homer’s original. Part Two launches our day’s journey with Leopold Bloom. We first encounter him making breakfast for himself and his wife Molly; then setting out for an old friend’s funeral; and later, stopping by his office where he works as an advertising canvasser for the ‘Freeman’s Journal’. The rest of the day is spent in aimlessly wandering in and out of pubs, a church, a library, a maternity hospital, a brothel, with a brief stop at the shoreline. In Part Three, Bloom finally meanders back home with Stephen Dedalus in tow, whom he briefly entertains before heading up to bed. The book concludes with the episode titled ‘Penelope’ (Ulysses’ loyal wife in the Odyssey), but what is more commonly known as Molly Bloom’s Monologue.

The parallels Joyce draws between ‘Ulysses’ and the Odyssey are numerous and more often than not, ironic. After having engineered the victory over Troy, Ulysses voyages for ten years to return to Ithaca, his homeland. Awaiting his return are his aging father; his steadfast son; and, his devoted wife, Penelope, who, spurning her many suitors has remained faithful to their marriage (though Ulysses himself has not). Impeding his nostos (heroic return journey of an epic hero) are vindictive gods, malignant monsters, sorceresses, sirens, and a rebellious crew. Overcoming them all, return he does, thwarting his rivals and reclaiming his throne.

And Bloom? Well, he starts his day making a breakfast of ‘the inner organs of beasts and fowls’; followed by a visit to the outhouse to answer Nature’s call, a visit that is described with unsparing detail. His profession depends on ingratiating himself to would-be sponsors. He is forever an outsider in his hometown, a fiercely Catholic city that has no intention of letting him forget his Jewish lineage; regardless of Bloom’s baptism or general lack of religiosity. As he wanders around town, he runs into colleagues, acquaintances, an ex-lover, a young woman who flashes her underwear at him, barmaids, and wastrels. His thoughts turn often to his father who died of overdosing, and a son and heir whom he lost at infancy. In Stephen Dedalus, in whom he takes a paternal interest, he discovers a kindred intellect and a talent that he hopes to foster. On his return home, waiting for him is Molly Bloom; partnered with him in an adulterous marriage. Unlike Penelope, Mrs. Bloom has seen no reason to spurn her many suitors. They have enjoyed her favors and she theirs; and that is not something she intends to change anytime.

Homer gave us Ulysses’ wit, verve, and heroic adventures; Joyce serves up in ‘Ulysses’ the mundane, the sordid, and the flatly uninspiring. What can I say? I guess we don’t live in an epic age anymore.

Yet, there are similarities, too. Bloom, like Ulysses, is intelligent. He is a well-read man, whose thoughts certainly dwell on his family; and if not exactly a leader of men, he is still amiable and seems to get along with most people. Like the sea-faring voyager of the Odyssey, Bloom too watches the stars – he dabbles in astronomy. In a dull century, perhaps a stroll around town will have to take the place of a thrilling odyssey. While Bloom seems besotted with his wife whose voracious sexuality remains untamed by marriage, it can be said that Molly Bloom, herself, is at least not indifferent to her husband.

So much of ‘Ulysses’ is mind-numbingly boring: an endless stream of fillers and inanities; characters that have little or no bearing to the narrative are thrust upon us; we are pelted with strings of names that serve no consequence whatsoever. The language is needlessly dense and opaque, and the reader is assailed with Joyce’s sesquipedalian loquacity, his incontinent verbosity. Some chapters are not merely tortuous; they are downright torturous. The episode ‘Circe’, for example, is an unrelenting sewage of babble and obscenity.

So why bother to read ‘Ulysses’ at all? Are his erudite fans simply misinformed? No; there are veins of gold in the book, but you have to mine them assiduously. A certain grim sense of commitment is needed, not just to finish this book, but to appreciate the literary genius (okay, I admitted it, alright?) exemplified by the mighty intellect, eclectic multi-culturalism, inspired wordsmithing, dazzling vocabulary, and literary experimenting. I stuck with this book for one reason only. I finished my Masters in English Literature several years ago. This book served to remind me that I’m no Master; but that I am and always will be a student of Literature.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Rating: 4 Stars

“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” – Sal Paradise from ‘On the Road’

And yet Kerouac decided to go ahead anyway and write an entire novel regurgitating that state of mind.

If one has never tried recreational drugs, it’s not particularly pleasant being sucked into someone else’s psychedelic ravings. But hey, once there, why not make the most of the vicarious experience?

This work is considered the definitive work of the Beat Generation, and Jack Kerouac, its spokesman. In historical perspective, the counterculture movement that was the Beat Generation may scarcely register a blip on the radar. But no matter; this droll dubbing of each and every generation seems to be a particularly American trait, one that seeps and permeates its literature. Hence we have the ‘Lost Generation’, ‘the Beats’, ‘the Hippies’, ‘the Yuppies’; all the way up to ‘the Millennials’ - as if labeling a thing enables us to understand it any better.

In Kerouac’s estimate, the Beats were those who were tired of the superficialities of life. In a fairly obvious metaphor, the road is life. Life is to be experienced on a deeper level – “our one and noble function of the time, move.”

And move is what they do. The book traces the restless, fevered traversing of the United States by the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend, Dean Moriarty, between the years 1947 and 1950. Paradise is a stand-in for Kerouac and Dean Moriarty refers to his fellow Beatnik, Neal Cassady. Many of the multitudes of eccentric characters who make an appearance in this novel refer to Kerouac’s real-life acquaintances.

Paradise, who lives in New York with his aunt, meets Dean Moriarty a charismatic ex-con who initially latches onto Paradise for food and boarding; and over a period of two years the two, together, and sometimes with the company of others, crisscross the United States in a haze of motion, till Paradise finally wakes up to the sting of Moriarty’s exploitative nature.

The narrative has a staccato rhythm that effectively captures the manic pace of the Beat existence. The life Kerouac describes is one of fast cars, fast women, hot jazz and easy drugs. He does not waste too many words delving into character and motive. On the surface, there seems to be very little introspection. Yet the characters are strikingly outlined – Moriarty, erratic and incoherent even at the beginning of the novel, grows increasingly unstable towards the end; hurt, resentful women nevertheless make themselves easily available to men who have scant respect for them; men who aspire to beatific understanding mainly seem to spout meaningless drivel, all the more meaningless because more often than not, they are stoned out of their minds and all their elevated talk is in direct contrast to their treatment of others – in their careless mishandling of others’ property and feelings.

The Sal Paradise we see at the novel’s end is perhaps no less wearied of Beat existential philosophy; but he has grown disillusioned with Dean Moriarty.

To readers who may have never fallen under the spell of Moriarty, Paradise’s disenchantment may seem long overdue. There is no single path to achieving Grace. But it seems counter intuitive to believe that a life of common sense, common decency, and kindness to one another, is in any way less than the rapturous epiphanies of a febrile, drug-fueled mysticism.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Rating: 4 Stars

2000 Booker Prize

This isn’t a feel good book. Never mind; it has other things going for it.

For starters there is its technical virtuosity. Atwood has taken an outmoded literary device – the epistolary novel - and imbued it with a savage new life. While the novel is certainly open to feminist interpretations, the author’s approach is iconoclastic in its demolition of fondly-held notions of family, religion, and marriage. That makes for a prickly, uncomfortable read; but artistes’ integrity lies is in staying true to their vision, not in pandering to the fickle caprices of the audience.

The plot is like a matryoshka doll, apparently nesting several stories within the main frame. The narrative opens in the 1940s, ‘ten days after the war ended’. Iris Chase hears of the tragic death of her younger sister, Laura, in a car accident. We learn over the course of the novel that Laura has achieved posthumous fame with the publication of the scandalous (for its time) book, ‘The Blind Assassin’. Iris, several years later, though physically frail, is indomitable and clear-minded in her old age as she never was in her youth. Part of the story is her recollection of her life as she writes it down for an estranged grandchild.

Part of it are also excerpts from ‘The Blind Assassin’ - a story of a young society woman involved with a man on the wrong side of the law, though his crime is never made explicit. The couple meet in various different locations each having their own reasons for being very careful. The word ‘love’ is not mentioned in their trysts, and they are often cruel or callous; yet, their need for one another, even if not always tender, is genuine and palpable.

The third story is the science-fiction tale with which the young man entertains his lover – a fantasy world of oppressive social stratification, sexual deviancy, and a perverted religion based on sacrificial rituals. Even under these unconducive circumstances, there are two unlikely people who fall in love seeking a redemption from the sordid reality of their lives.

Each story is engrossing enough on its own. Atwood’s ingenuity lies in her one-woman enactment of the triple Moirai in spinning the narrative; keeping the skeins from unraveling; and, swiftly and ruthlessly tying the threads together for a truly brilliant yarn.

“…All she has left is the picture. Also the story of it.

The picture is of happiness, the story not. Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

Rating: 4 Stars

1928 Pulitzer Prize Winner

“…soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

On July 20, 1714, an ancient bridge collapses, and five travelers plunge to their doom. The tragedy is witnessed by a Franciscan missionary who is so profoundly moved by the incident that he sets out to seek meaning behind the victims’ sudden deaths.

Starting from this premise, the novel opens with the inquiry into the lives of three of the main characters. Whether it’s a sad woman frantically nurturing her relationship with the daughter who spurns her; or, a brother in anguish over his irreparable loss; or, a caring mentor attempting to help his stricken protégée - the common thread in their lives is love, flawed, yet still sublime.

Thornton Wilder’s classic novel is based loosely on real life characters, and the titular bridge was inspired by a famed Peruvian bridge that spanned the Apurímac River. Wilder’s technique was greatly influenced by his study of classic French literature. The lucid style though emotionally detached is nevertheless deeply compassionate, and his character portraits are indelible. A passage that lingers in the memory is the description of the Archbishop of Lima:

“Between the rolls of flesh that surrounded them looked out two black eyes speaking discomfort, kindliness and wit. A curious and eager soul was imprisoned in all this lard…the distress of remorse was less poignant than the distress of fasting and he was presently found deliberating over the secret messages that a certain roast sends to the certain salad that will follow it. And to punish himself he led an exemplary life in every other respect.”

Though Wilder did not visit Peru until 1941 he is able to evoke the sensibility that we associate with Latin American authors. Like them he too mines the heart for its mysteries. Though Father Juniper attempts to tabulate human virtue and thus make sense of tragedy, the author is graceful in highlighting the impenetrability of cosmic design. 

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Rating: 3 Stars

The concept of Utopia has been around in Literature for quite a while. As far back as 400 BC, Plato described in his Republic an ideal society ruled by philosophers where women are communal property and children are bred by eugenics. All riffraff claiming artistic or literary ability are naturally banned. Brave New World, published in 1932, is the first modern novel to develop further the ideas expounded by Plato. The author leaves it to the readers to judge the virtue of such a society.

In the year AF 632, the World State governs on the doctrine of Community, Identity, and Stability. To ensure that there is no deviation from these guiding principles human beings are produced in labs to conform to the State’s requirement for uniformity. Viviparous birth has become tantamount to obscenity, and the bottle-bred infants are subject to social conditioning from birth that they may adhere to a strict caste system, and imbibe the commandment that ‘Happiness is the Sovereign good.’

Pursuant to that ideal, soma is distributed to all to dispel any negative emotions that may discombobulate the populace. As the saying goes, “Better a gramme than a damme.” To add to all this perfection, it’s a world where women are not only…’pneumatic’, but also have a delightfully laid-back attitude about getting groped, or being ‘had’ by every male in their social circle. The ‘F’ in AF 632, by the way, stands for Ford, and the crucifix has been supplanted by the symbol T.

This charming world of happy pills, free-range promiscuity, and unlicensed consumerism receives a titillating surprise when it encounters John Savage. Savage is of accidental viviparous birth, and has been raised on a Native American reservation. His brain befogged by Shakespeare, and nursing alien hang-ups about sex, Savage is an anomaly in the World State, but determined to claim his right to God, discomfort, inconvenience, and unhappiness.

As I’ve said earlier, sometimes a work of fiction is remembered not for having done something the best, but for having done it first. It’s probably this criterion that allows Brave New World to be labeled a ‘Modern Classic’. Without over-reaching for wisdom, Huxley settles for snippets of cleverness and long-winded, fatuous philosophy. In a hodgepodge of anthropological incoherence, residents of the World State guzzle down Indo Aryan soma; the boy raised on a Native American reservation has oddly Puritanical and sado-masochistic tendencies; and, the dark-skinned races are classified as having sub-par intellects. The novel is broadly derivative in its inspiration, and simplistic in its prognosis of all the possible moral and spiritual ailments that may beset society. It’s a trait unique to dystopia fiction that the writers will persist in their dismal glass-half empty perspective. As a depressing consequence, their reader is left to chase away the blues…and without even a gramme. Damme!

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 –

The temperature at which

book paper catches

fire and burns…

Eminent American writer, Ray Bradbury, died this summer. Over the course of his career, the versatile author wrote many short stories, novels, and works of nonfiction, and is considered one of the most influential writers of the Twentieth Century.

Fahrenheit 451 envisions an American dystopia where independent thought has virtually died out. The country, that has the menace of an imminent nuclear war looming over it, is ruled by a totalitarian government that sedates its population by beaming in mindless entertainment right onto the walls of their home. Those who have not yet become numbed by this process are given to venting their violence in drag races. In such a society, the ultimate enemy is the written word. To eradicate the threat represented by books, the state uses ‘Firemen’ to whom it assigns the duty of burning books – those dangerous harbingers of free thought and dissent.

The book’s protagonist, Guy Montag – a Fireman, has gone most of his life without questioning the status quo. That is, until the appearance and sudden disappearance of his young neighbor awakens a latent unease that leads him to distrust all that he has hitherto obediently accepted. The first step towards rebellion takes Guy inexorably down the path of insurgency. Change is inevitable.

Though some interpret this work as a rebuke of censorship, the author appears to place greater emphasis on the devaluation of books and scholarly pursuits. Published in 1953, at the time of television’s inception, Fahrenheit 451 seems more a warning against a future that disallows intellectual endeavor for the narcotizing effects of mass media entertainment – a message as relevant now as then.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Rating: 4 Stars

William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983

Some books are a rite of passage. We trudge through them cursing the educators who deemed that they should be ‘required reading’; that our academic experience would somehow be incomplete without them. Under this duress, the book inspires fear and loathing, rather than instilling a love of the best there is in literature. It’s with great relief that we turn the final page, submit that last essay, and vow to never pick up that wretched thing ever again. Yet years later, the book continues to haunt, etched forever in our memory. Lord of the Flies is beautiful, ugly, and deeply disturbing; or as my thirteen-year old opined, “There was something seriously wrong with this guy.”

In the aftermath of a nuclear war, a plane transporting an unnamed number of English school-boys crashes on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. The boys range in ages from adolescents to kindergartners. They make tentative plans for their immediate survival while awaiting a rescue. Their ill-formed attempts at establishing a functioning society crumbles in the tug of war between the conflicting impulses of civilization versus savagery.

One reading makes clear why this book is beloved of English teachers everywhere – the abundance of themes, the simple yet sophisticated language, and characters that are universal archetypes. It’s a book that tantalizes with symbolism, and tempts the reader to assay imaginative interpretations.

However, I confess that this book appeals to me at its most basic level – as a riveting tale that has the blood pounding in your veins, and your nails chewed to shreds as you try to guess what’s coming next. As a story-teller, Golding ranks with the best. Where one may find room for argument is perhaps, in his seemingly dark take on human nature. As one of the book’s characters is prone to exclaim, “What’s grown-ups going to say?” The more painful question is, what would adults do that would be any different?

This is the crux of the intertwining themes. Golding was a school-master with a visceral understanding of the school-boys’ mentality. Though the clinical detachment of his tone is chilling, it is not so much misanthropy, as a potent warning of mankind’s proclivity for degeneracy. As he said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech,

“…We need more humanity, more care, more love. There are those who expect a political system to produce that; and others who expect the love to produce the system. My own faith is that the truth of the future lies between the two and we shall behave humanly and a bit humanely, stumbling along, haphazardly generous and gallant, foolishly and meanly wise until the rape of our planet is seen to be the preposterous folly that it is.”

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Published in 1938, ‘Rebecca’ has been hailed as a classic work of suspense. It also seemed like the longest book I’ve read in a while. I’ll get to that later.

The book’s un-named narrator falls hopelessly in love with recent widower Maxim de Winter when they meet in Monte Carlo. She accepts his proposal and moves to Manderley, de Winter’s ancestral manor. The very young and painfully diffident bride soon becomes obsessed with her predecessor – Rebecca, who may be gone, but is certainly not forgotten. She compares herself with the earlier Mrs. de Winter, and finds herself falling short every time. Her predicament is exacerbated by her increasingly remote husband, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, whose tangible antipathy threatens to shatter her fragile sense of self-esteem.

The book’s greatest triumph is that it’s most vibrant, dynamic character is the one whom we never see except through the words of others, and the narrator’s tortured imagination. In the fine web that the author weaves, the reader too becomes entangled by the lure of a woman so ravishingly beautiful, accomplished, and mysterious that mere mortals can but quake at her memory. Rebecca not only haunts the Manderley she conceived; her presence imbues the skein of the narrative.

As is usual in the English Manor Mystery genre, there is a brooding atmosphere that gets denser as the story progresses. The tone is set by the eerie beginning, evoking a house whose beauty is offset by a pervading sense of menace.

As for the novel seeming one of the longest that I’ve read – the fault may at least partially be my own. I approached it with every good intention, but just found myself unable to lose myself in it. Perhaps it’s because I saw the movie before I read the book [Hint: the book is better], and therefore I couldn’t enjoy the element of surprise, so crucial to any work of suspense. That wasn’t the only reason however; while the Lilith-Eve angle has a certain literary appeal, the book’s one-dimensional characterization has rendered an archetype into a stereotype. That aside, quite simply - glaciers move faster than the pace of this story.

At the risk of offending its many fans, this is one book that didn’t quite live up to its reputation.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rating: 3 Stars

Early in ‘The Great Gatsby’, the narrator, Nick Carraway, hints that we should reserve judgment. That’s a good thing to remember while reading about the people who populate this story, “…people [who] played polo and were rich together.”

Carraway, who comes from a privileged background, meets his cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan, when he moves to New York. Buchanan is a man of animal physicality, who for a change of pace is trying on ill-founded intellectual opinions for size. Daisy is an apparently fragile woman of extreme affectations, whose appeal is rather baffling. Nevertheless, Nick finds her charming; and her rich neighbor, Jay Gatsby is completely under her spell.

‘The Great Gatsby’, published in 1925, is considered a twentieth-century American masterpiece. It coud be argued that the importance of the book is due less to its literary merit, and more to how effectively it captures the zeitgeist of the Jazz Age. It's a chronicle of an era when the Prohibition made millionaires out of bootleggers, the cinema ushered in a new age of glamor, and America shrugged aside its Puritanical history to openly experience the giddy rush of sexual license.

Despite the book's succinct social observations, it merely depicts behavior without sounding the complexities of human nature. This lack of depth is disappointing.  The portrayal of the fornications of the idle rich may be fodder for a society gossip magazine, but shorn of psychological context, it hardly makes a gripping subject for a novel.



The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien



Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

The challenge in fantasy is in creating an imaginary world that is apparently fabulous, but one that beguilingly draws the reader in. It’s a world that we want to be real. The influence of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) can be seen in works ranging from Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Paolini’s Inheritance books, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, right down to fantasy role-laying computer and video games.

His books highlight that often unsung hero – 'the little guy'. Hobbits, who feature both here, and in the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy are quite literally, little guys – child-sized beings with no remarkable abilities, fond of food, drink, and company. Innocent and mild-natured as they are, it’s their actions and choices which tip the balance of good over evil.

The hobbit in this story, which is the prequel to the The Lord of the Rings, is Bilbo Baggins, a ‘grown-up’ hobbit at the age of fifty. Fond of hearing tales of adventure, Bilbo doesn’t actually want anything so disreputable as to be personally involved in one. That changes when Gandalf, wizard extraordinaire, enters his life. Before he knows it, the harassed Bilbo finds himself neck-deep in dwarves, dragons, trolls, orcs, and danger. Yet, our unlikely hero is not to be underestimated; cautious, pragmatic and unassumingly selfless; Bilbo surprises everyone before the tale is done.

If the plot sounds a little jejune for the sophisticated reader, think again. This is a fantasy written by a very grown-up writer for those who haven’t abandoned their inner child. Though in many ways, surprisingly anti-intellectual (surprising because Tolkein was an Oxford professor, a philologist), a mature sensibility pervades the novel.

Most of the wry, ironic humor is at the expense of the comfort-minded, risk-averse hobbit. Tolkien saw active duty on the Western Front in World War I. The book never loses sight of the fact that in events the outcome of which will impact multitudes, there is no single rescuer striding in to save the world from calamity. Many contribute to the problem, many suffer the consequences, many must come together to find a solution.

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

I’ve always found it interesting to read colonial experiences of Europeans, and have wondered whether they can legitimately be categorized under the literature of the nation in question. In Isak Dinesen’s case, the doubt resolves itself. Out of Africa is very much about the land and the people, albeit as seen by an outsider. Dinesen’s writes with the eye of a painter, and the voice of a poet. The book is a hymn to the allure of Africa. She seems to have the awareness of living on borrowed beauty; in the paradoxical situation of one who may have come to conquer, but stays to be captivated.

Isak Dinesen was one of the pen names adopted by Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (1885-1962). Born into an aristocratic family in Denmark, the young Dinesen received her education in art in Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome. Having married her second cousin, she moved with him to Africa in 1914 to start and manage a coffee plantation in Kenya. The marriage ended in divorce in 1925, but the Baron left Dinesen a couple of things to remember him by – the coffee farm in the Ngong Hills that she managed to keep going till 1931, and the dreaded syphilis that stayed with her for the rest of her life. This book is a memoir of the years between 1914 and 1931. There is very little mention of her personal woes. Rather, it is a collection of slightly dreamy reminiscences of her life in Kenya.

The author comes across as a woman who was both courageous and cultured, and a gracious, hospitable hostess who threw her home open to her friends, most but not all of them, fellow colonials. While recounting the management of the farm, she speaks in no particular chronological order of the animals, people and events that she encountered. She is a clear-eyed observer of characters and customs, but there is in her writing the ambivalence that is probably innate to the colonialist. On the one hand, she is deeply appreciative of everything around her, and ironically refers to the “prejudiced civilized person”. This is however, in marked contrast to the undercurrent of condescension that pervades the book.

Inadvertently or not, she lays bare the ugliness of colonialism, and the willful and malicious harm inflicted by the European race on the people and wildlife of Africa. Her descriptions of big game hunting and the clinical, cold assessment of Africans often seem lacking in human empathy. This in understandable because to those who ventured to ‘shoulder the white man’s burden’, the land and the inhabitants of Africa and Asia were resources to be exploited, and lesser races to be subjugated. Only under such a delusion could colonization be perpetuated. 

Still, we cannot be over-critical of Africa’s past, especially when there’s enough to regret in its present. In the final analysis, colonial literature is itself the best testament to the times to which it bore witness.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Rating: 4 & 1/2 Stars

1961 Pulitzer Prize Winner

'Sakhi' Book Club March 2011 Pick

A Literary Classic has at least four elements – artistic quality, universal appeal, the ability to stand the test of time, and lasting relevance. That’s a textbook definition. ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ certainly has three of the four qualities. However, to say that it has stood the test of time might be a little premature, since it was published just about fifty years ago. Nevertheless, there is something so profound about this book, that we can confidently assert that it will be read for a long time to come. This is a masterpiece of values that are not merely enduring, but timeless.

Haper Lee’s book starts in the most innocuous way. The narrator, Scout (Jean Louise Finch), remembers the events of the onset of her ninth year. Growing up in America’s Depression Era in the Deep South, Scout witnesses the community of her small Alabama town, Maycomb. Her life is a sheltered one - a loving father; a protective elder brother who is her best friend and mentor; and, a housekeeper who tries to keep her in line. Her concerns are typically childlike – apprehension about school, her relationship with her best friend - Dill, and her terrified fascination of the reclusive Boo (Arthur) Radley, who has assumed the form of neighborhood bogeyman in the imagination of Maycomb’s children. Over the course of the next two summers, bigger worries loom on the horizon. Her lawyer father, Atticus Finch, takes on the case of a black man accused of raping a white woman. This agitates the otherwise peaceful little county. The Finch family faces the rancor of people’s objection to Atticus, who is the court-appointed defense: 

“…Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I don’t like about it.”

Atticus Finch has no illusions about the world he lives in, but neither does he have any intention of letting justice be railroaded, without everyone at least getting to hear the real truth, ugly as it may be. The bitterness caused by the case, its aftermath, the climax, and the final catharsis are told in a serene, slightly detached tone that is far more effective than angry rants about injustice.

The story is enhanced by the complete absence of literary bombast. The characters speak in the colloquial, sometimes whimsical cadence that characterizes the best of the Literature of the South, from Mark Twain downwards. The simple but incandescent prose is further illumined by the humor that is such an integral part of this book. Lee’s comic sense and timing is akin to the twinkling of fireflies on a summer evening. Blink, and you’ve missed a glimmer of beauty.

This book preceded the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Fifty years after its publication, America can proudly claim to have made great strides in overcoming racial divides. After all, didn’t we just elect our first African-American/Biracial President? Progress certainly, but the United States is still a young country. It was not that long ago that Native Americans were driven from their territories, and marginalized in the very land of their birth. Not that long ago, that it was considered appropriate and necessary to exploit slave labor, or to inter Japanese-Americans on suspicion of their ethnicity. It took nearly a century after a devastating Civil War to recognize African Americans as full-fledged members of this country. The specter of racism has waned, not vanished. 

However, it's not merely in the political or social context that  ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is as relevant today as when it was first published. While this may be a novel as quintessentially American as apple pie, its themes of compassion, tolerance, faith, family, and community are boundless; beyond the claims of a particular era or nation. We would all be better for a slice of this pie.

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

Rating: 4 & 1/2 Stars 

1932 Pulitzer Prize Winner

Pearl Buck was Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938

Published in 1931, ‘The Good Earth’ won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for its author, Pearl S. Buck, who later went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.

When we first meet Wang Lung, the book’s hero, we see him as an eager yet nervous young bridegroom, who diffidently approaches the debauched House of Hwang, to collect his bride from one of their many female slaves. The book takes us to a full circle of Wang’s life.

Neither saint nor sinner, as good as many, and better than some, Wang is a riveting hero – a peasant farmer with a fire in his belly. A fearlessly hard worker, where some would merely dream, he forges his ambitions into reality through dint of perseverance, and yes, some luck. A proud father of three sons, and a reluctant father to a daughter he comes to cherish above all others; and, though not born a gentleman, he is at his best a gentle man, who surrenders neither his integrity nor his humanity even in the direst of times.

Unlike Wang, O-lan, the former slave who becomes his wife, remains enigmatic till the end of the book - a silent woman whose speech can be startlingly effective. Haunted by a Past that she rarely shares with anyone, taking no joy in herself, and finally faithlessly betrayed, O-lan is a painful figure. She is nevertheless a sympathetic character, not a pitiful one. She can move Wang to alternating bouts of pride of possession, gratitude, guilt, kindness, and cruelty, but alas, not to love.

Wang’s heart isn’t his own to give. Despite occasionally heeding his fleeting infatuations, despite his changing fortunes, and in spite of his innately restless social climbing, Wang can never be distracted for too long from his one abiding love, the land. It calls him home when he wanders away, heals his sickness of heart and spirit, absorbs the labor he pours into it, and blesses his fierce love with a bountiful prosperity. It is the silent witness to the brief passion play that is a man’s existence, before finally enfolding him into its all-forgiving embrace.

Ms. Buck’s writing has the austere and simple elegance of Chinese Brush Painting. There are no literary pyrotechnics, and we don’t miss them. An American born in China, she has the rare gift of writing about an alien culture without a trace of condescension. Whether she is describing the abundance of food seen by a man on the verge of starvation, the contrast between the lives of the rich and the poor, or the devastation of famine on an impoverished people, she manages to bridge the cultural and national divides in a tale that is poignantly universal.

Animal Farm

Rating: 4 Stars

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Orwell’s “Animal Farm” works on both levels – as a simple fable of greed and corruption, and more specifically, a brilliantly scathing satire on Communism.

The animals of Manor Farm in the English county of Willingdon are spurred to rebellion by the visionary white boar – Old Major. Led by two other boars, Napoleon and Snowball, the farm animals with the stalwart shire horse, Boxer, oust the incompetent, selfish farmer, Mr. Jones, and change Manor Farm to “Animal Farm”, henceforth to be governed by the revered laws of Animalism, and its Seven Commandments. However, venality and brute force subvert the high ideals of Animalism, leading to its ironic culmination, which Orwell sums up in the distortion of the final, and most sacred commandment. No spoilers. Read it for yourself.

History buffs will find delightful parallels in the many personifications of past Russian Revolutionary figures, whether it’s Old Major as Lenin; the gifted, inventive Snowball as Trotsky; or, the brutal, cunning Napoleon as one of recent history’s megalomaniacal dictators – Stalin. Then, there’s the litigious, double-dealing farmer, Foxwood as the United States, and the gentleman farmer, Pilkington as England/Europe. Not to be left out is Religion – “the opium of the masses” – as represented by Moses, the Raven, squawking about Sugarcandy Mountain, and the rewards awaiting hardworking animals. Most moving perhaps, is Boxer. His betrayal by the pigs is ultimately the betrayal of the common man, who is the backbone of any nation.

Orwell’s writing style is masterly, never a word out of place. His sense of social injustice and righteous anger never boils over into melodrama, or cheap manipulation. “Animal Farm” is not a story with a happy ending, but history is a very long story. Unfortunately, Orwell died before the end of the Soviet Empire. But perhaps, he saw it coming anyway. No dictator stays in power forever, just long enough to do maximum damage in minimum time.