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Have you read Oryx & Crake yet? Well you have until September 22 to pull your head out of your ass and digest it. And while you're at it start taking survival courses because, if civilization continues to head in its current direction, we'll all be needing them. Atwood's near future feels a lot like the one whose soundtrack was written by GodspeedYou!BlackEmperor.
The coasts have drowned, deserts have expanded, urban zones have devolved into ghettoized brownfields and the upper echelons of society dwell in fear behind the heavily-surveiled walls of scattered corporate compounds. Governments are no longer relevant, if they even exist. Here, in the compounds, the brains work towards creating a plasticized, genetically-altered "utopia". To anyone who has read Oryx & Crake this landscape and the horror of the book's finale is all too familiar.
While Jimmy and Glenn (of O&C notoriety) play out their destinies in the compounds, out in the "pleeblands"—the decimated, near-anarchic urban wastes—the tales within the Year of the Flood are being fleshed out. They reveal, over the course of twenty-five years, the first-person accounts of several people affiliated to various degrees with God's Gardeners, a religious sect whose leader, Adam One, has perfected a sort of squatter-punk synthesis of deep ecology and gnostic christianity. The gardeners are trying to preserve an unadulterated human relationship with nature and its mysteries, however misguided it may at first appear, though they may be the last hope when the technological world collapses.
Margaret Atwood, being Margaret Atwood, is going to make you think and at the same time make you incredibly uncomfortable with your own beliefs. Think religion is a sham and a waste of human energy? Prepare to loathe Adam One for his blatant hippie charlatanism whilst agreeing with some of the more radical tenets of the gardeners and the revelations of their theology. As an atheist who makes solid attempts to live in an ecologically-sound manner, this all gave me fits.
Fits are all well and good, but what about the causes of this near-future societal and natural collapse? Humans are clearly to blame, but not necessarily for the reasons so many would argue presently. Sure, warnings about climate change went unheeded as did those of overreliance on technological innovation to solve human problems. The main culprit of our problems has been an inexhaustible hubris; that we think we can outsmart and manipulate nature as we study its ways. There is clearly value in learning, studying and admiring nature and its processes, but it's when we begin to think we can control for an outcome we desire that the hydra appears.
Just as today too many people have an uncomfortable—if not downright hostile—attitude towards the presence of chaos in nature, Atwood's future of the "waterless flood" (which is better understood if you're already familiar with Oryx & Crake) is a security nightmare on account of this obsessive-compulsive disorder, much like if the first world suddenly plunged into the third. Frankly, the scenarios outlined here don't seem that far-fetched because there's no reason why it won't happen. Do-gooder organizations are constantly trying to plan for this type of future, but this future cannot be planned for and that is THE problem to which humanity has to acclimitize.
The easiest thing to do, of which I'm certainly guilty, is to laugh and shrug off the corny pseudo-religio-environmental spiritualists because most of their philosophies are half-baked and specious. However, as is clear with God's Gardeners there is merit in such philosophies (hence a major reason why religions are still around) because they allow people to act even when they don't fully understand why they're acting. If this makes sense then it should be clear why I was having fits and yet loving this book at the same time.
I'm not sure the last time I felt so completely intellectually challenged by a book that, simultaneously, so fully entertained me. There is constant action—often with disgustingly violent outcomes—and the ending never gives itself away, suspense building until the finale. This "review" does so little justice to a book that I hope receives major plaudits when it hits shelves. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy at work and I took my time reading it because I didn't really want it to end. I just read Oryx & Crake a few months ago and that blew me away. Now this arrives as a sort of companion volume. I'm not sure how they're going to market it, but it stands alone as a novel and there doesn't seem to be any indication that it will be marketed in connection with O&C.
So mark your calendars for September 22. I have to stop rambling because this will just get more and more disjointed if I continue. Margaret Atwood, you are an absolute genius. The type of genius that crushes my spirit by writing the best goddamn book (fiction or poetry) possible that, yet, inspires me to wrack my brain for something 1/10 as worthwhile and hope it means something to someone. Bravo. Again.
This year's Man Booker Prize-winner is Indian-born debutant novelist Aravind Adiga. The simplest summary of The White Tiger will tell you that it's the story of entrepreneur (and murderer!) Balram Halwai; a tale that reveals the conflicts underlying contemporary Indian society as it strives towards 21st Century technological and economic superiority. But of course that's the nutshell version.
Adiga has produced a panorama of modern India in the foreground of which narrator and protagonist Halwai "rises" from a lower caste to become a successful businessman. I qualify the term "rises" because it is a conflicted and controversial notion in a multifaceted nation still mostly understood in the West according to aged stereotypes. This isn't the crunchy India of spiritual enlightenment and millenia-old cultural tradition. Those attributes are present, of course, but any discussion of India today is incomplete without recognition of South Asian political realities and the tension between social classes; the entrenched and rigid markers of status that have been slowly breaking down over the past half-century. Adiga brilliantly displays the conflict—particularly salient among the lower classes—between adhering to family and tradition (the social world found here in "The Darkness") and attempting to create a life as a successful individual in a technologically advanced democratic society.
The India that the narrator inhabits is disgustingly corrupt, bigoted and backward-looking; characteristics highlighted ever more by the growing influence of American-style malls, pristine Bollywood shlock and the remnants of English colonialism. For Indians like Balram Halwai who attempt to supercede their anonymous (his parents actually don't bother to name him, simply calling him "boy") upbringings in "middle" India, there is almost no trickle-down of wealth from the upper strata of society. Halwai really only achieves success because he is an adept observer and learns how to undermine his bosses and understand the proper etiquette of corruption.
What makes the tale of the White Tiger ever more salient to a Western reader is not so much how Adiga portrays the many facets of Indian society for the uninitiated, but how he is able, as a child of both East and West (he spent some youthful years in Australia and attended university in England and the US), to critique modern democratic technological society as a whole. Adiga has not focused his criticism solely upon his native, growing India; the more abstract targets are supposedly "democratic" societies that tout their cultural breadth, scientific prowess and economic advancement as proof of their superiority. The past eight years of the American experience have demonstrated the fallacy of such beliefs. Adiga has situated his novel in a "new" India, but the themes he presents are as salient in modern America (and probably the UK, France, etc. as well) with our extensive poverty, crumbling infrastructure and corrupt—however hidden—politics.
After the electoral events of this past week, this novel only becomes more curiously topical. While detailed explanation of what I mean would be far too long for me to present here, the short of it revolves around the idea that the future is "browner", "darker" than most would have believed before November 4, 2008. Obama's Presidency-elect is a marker of future directions that Mr. Halwai hints at in his letters to the Chinese Premier that frame the novel's narrative. The era of White/Christian/Western (read as conservative, traditional Aryan Hindu in the novel) hegemony is coming to a close, though its effects will continue to be felt for some time and the actual changes that will occur in the world are impossible to predict. Halwai's "liberation" in the novel is one manner of portraying how these changes may occur, but as the author has stated, it is still fiction. Social upheavals have their newsworthy markers, though the tangible effects are more often arise through slow, painful, ambiguously moralized rendings. I'm not positive if this is what Mr. Adiga intended with this brilliant work, but it's the sea in which Balram Halwai's eventual prosperity left me floating.
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addendum: In light of what I wrote above, this article in today's NYTimes Week In Review presents an interesting snapshot of Mumbai. While The White Tiger takes place in Delhi, Bangalore and several small villages, the details here give a good bit of context for Adiga's story.
Just to make sure I'm never lacking in projects I could/should be working on instead of procrastinating, I started up with a couple sites that I will eventually link to when I get the ball rolling. However, those all being within my favored realm of "non-fiction-esque" ramblings, I've also started up a place to publish more fictional type things. That site is named Quietly Take To The Ship and I've placed a link over in the sidebar lest you care to visit and see what my imagination is up to on any given day.
Did I realize that both my blogs have the word "ship" in the title? Yes, yes I did. I did that on purpose, thank you very much.
I'll just go ahead and say it: Rushdie's latest is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. It just might be the greatest I've ever read (though I'm not keeping score). Equal parts historical fiction and illusionary dreamscape, I found myself as enchanted by this read as those inside were by the Qara Köz (Lady Black Eyes).
The Enchantress of Florence weaves together fictionalized accounts of the lives of the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great, Niccolò Macchiavelli, Antonin Argalia (Argalia the Turk) and Amerigo Vespucci's cousin, Agostino. Extensive research was conducted to delicately place each of these men in space and time—Renaissance Tuscany and Mughal India—so that their historicity provides the backdrop upon which the existence of a mysterious lost Turkic princess unfolds. While it undoubtedly takes talent to develop complex characters who exist only in the imagination, to breathe life into long-passed historical figures is an even more noteworthy accomplishment.
Recent readings in eastern philosophy (by way of modern physics, no less) illuminated more of this text than I think I would have otherwise discovered. The ancient vedic concept of maya plays a major role in the story of the Mughal Emperor, Akbar. The Western translation of this word as "illusion" tends to lose the nuance of the concept; as opposed to, say, a figment of the imagination, maya should more accurately be viewed as an outlook that deceives reality. Sure, Akbar's most beloved queen is certainly imaginary, but she is as much a part of his conception of the world as any actual physical entity. Our eyes play tricks on us and we interpret the world through our senses. Senses can be deceived and what constitutes "reality" may be far more than what our senses perceive.
Concepts like maya have not been a part of Western philosophy at all, and so when our reality deceives us we have often blamed them on the work of some outside actor instead of seeing them as a natural part of our universe, our human existence. Pre-Enlightenment Europe was continually privvy to witch-hunts and inquisitions that sought to find the living causes of our own misfortune and fate. The mind/body divide is present in Florence, but not in the seat of the Mughal Empire, Sikri.
What Rushdie is able to do in this novel is demonstrate the same-ness of these two approaches to understanding our existence. Though others may purposefully deceive us, just as often we are to blame for deceiving ourselves in our feeble attempts to explain what evades. However helpful human religious outlooks may be in navigating daily existence or providing meaning for events, the answers are always illusory and deceptive. The rogue traveller and storyteller Niccolò Vespucci—the Mogor dell'Amore, the "Mughal of Love—endears himself to the emperor, Akbar, with his near limitless ability to understand his environments and intellectual uncanny. Ultimately, he is undone by his own tale, for he has an important fact wrong and Akbar knows the truth. Of course, even this truth hides another story.
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Literary themes aside for a moment, I just read the review in the NYTimes and thought the critic totally missed the point. Then again I'm a complete fiction novice and thought the magic and imagination quite charming. (full paradox disclosure: I play D&D and I loathe Tolkien) Anyway, for a rationalist non-fiction reader to be so enchanted by such a book must mean something, right? Well, even Mr. Gates concedes that it helps to be in the right mood to enjoy this, so presumably he was in a foul mood. Naturally, as a student of history I was caught up in the settings and historical figures and didn't let any "claptrap" bother me. What can I say, sometimes I'm in a good mood and this book helped keep me there.
Gary Shteyngart, The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Now it's not often I stray from my beloved non-fiction pop-science geek books, but tore through this thanks to what I must say was a great tip. Since I wasn't a Lit major nor an avid fictioneer, I don't really know how to discuss such books. (Really, anyone who reads this knows I don't actually know how talk about much of anything, but damn if I don't try). That means I haven't the foggiest about the plot arc or allusions to other works or any of that crap. What I do know, however, is that this book kept my attention and had a lot of funny jokes in it. I've also been to Prague, the basis of his fictional city of Prava, which added a level of familiarity to the proceedings.
On a more serious note, I'll say that this book was a fantastic antidote to all the bullshit ravings about "quarterlife" that have been floating around the media lately. I'm 26, have been fairly directionless for the past few years and, um, whatever else "qualifies" someone for a "quarterlife crisis." Oh, having a decent level of neuroticism helps, too. Anyway, before youtube and facebook and all the rubbish self-promotion/self-pity party started folks just went about their business figuring out what to do with their lives without fucking crying about it to whatever gullible anonymous strangers would pay attention. Shteyngart's story here is a product (and a marvelous one at that) of that post-college wonder/wander-ment and there isn't any unwarranted crying over spilled milk.
Now that I've completely butchered another review of something I really enjoyed, I'll recommend this book and look forward to reading his follow-up, Absurdistan.
