block

I haven't finished a book in a month.

First there was Nicholson Baker's Mezzanine. I loved it. I love it. I'm reading it slowly, taking it by the page, scrutinizing every footnote, taking in the history of every little thing he likes to talk about. But I've been at it for two weeks now, I think. It's not healthy, but it's what it is.

Then there's The Once and Future King, TH White. I've read three chapters, think it's nice, but my aunt whose iPad I was reading it on, took it with her to Uganda for a week. Now she's back, but I haven't had the time to go back to it.

Then there was Em and the Big Hoom, which I've been meaning to read for six months now. Read two pages. Now I don't have the time to go back to it, because everytime I try reading, I read Mezzanine - which takes me on tours of the internet about little, useless things. (I spent three hours on the internet last week reading up about the history of straws.)

Kari, which I've been reading all month just because. 

I also feel the need to mention brainpickings.org. I spend much of my non-work day reading stuff she recommends. Which is fun, but I don't end up reading whole books because they're too dense. I just read sections. Which may be acceptable on other days, just not on days that I look at this blog.

synecdoche, new york

I first watched this film about two summers ago. 

It was a strange narrative, in its own time and more excitingly and interestingly, in its own space. I didn't understand even a quarter of what was going on. I simply didn't get it. I thought about giving it up at least three times during the movie. It seemed to be one of those things that was absolutely beyond comprehension. And it just kept getting more and more convoluted, confusing, self-reflexive. 

At some point, this guy yells at Caden, "It's been seventeen years! Are we ever getting an audience in here?" That's what I was thinking at the time. It didn't seem like a film that was meant to be for an audience. It seemed to want me to be in it, not outside it - it wasn't the kind of film that wanted me to figure out what was happening in it, it looked like it was trying to figure out what was happening to me. (At the same time, it also really didn't seem to care about me. So what if I didn't understand it? It just kept going.) At no time whatsoever did I have to opportunity to think - fucking brilliant! let's applaud! 

I watched it again last night. I started watching it at 2 AM, considerably drunk and terribly sleepy. I don't know why I chose this film. (It was either this or Coraline.) It may have had something to do with wanting to fall asleep midway. 

I didn't fall asleep. I stayed with it. I don't think I understand any of it even now. 

See, it starts off as a regular film. It has all the elements of being a story, a simple plot, something you can just watch. There's a man, a woman and a child. They seem to be a dysfunctional sort of family, but which family isn't. Then she leaves him. And he gets some grant. He wants to do something big with it. Nothing suspicious yet. And then it starts getting bigger. She's painting miniatures, but he's building New York in a warehouse. He's building a warehouse within a warehouse within a warehouse. He has a double who has a double. The double falls in love with the original. 

There's a man who's an actor playing himself - "Walk like yourself, Tom." "Wait! Let me show you, is this okay?"

This man has to be my favorite character. (After Olive, who I don't understand one bit). This man is my key to understanding the film. Not that I have, but if I have to, I think I'll start there. A man in a warehouse that's a theatre set (is it a set?) who's an actor playing himself - asking the director if that's the way the man walks.

And then there's Ellen. If the man who is an actor playing himself is my favorite character, Ellen has to be the most perplexing. Ellen is everything this film is. If the play had to be given a title, I'd have called it Ellen. Because at Ellen, I am lost. Because by the time we come to Ellen, the film has me holding on to the final threads of my seeming comprehension of the film's plot. Because Ellen, oh I don't even know what she is. Or he is. Or it is. Nobody's seen the Ellen that Ellen is playing. (Except in a painting by Adele.) But the actress playing Ellen is the perfect Ellen. Who then plays Caden. And then she becomes Caden. And Caden becomes Ellen, living in the warehouse, living by directions whispered into his ear. 

I am resisting an urge to drawl deeeeeeep and roll my eyes. 

But that's what the film is. Deep. 

And if you understand it, we should sit down and talk about it. 

mezzanine

by Nicholson Baker

I'm three pages in and I might already have a new favorite author.

More later.

xo

god delusion

By Richard Dawkins

Reading Richard Dawkins (God Delusion, Magic of Reality) makes me want to write about my own atheism. Especially because I disagree so much with Dawkins. Not on whether the science argument on the origins of the universe is valid; but on the posturing of the God v. Science debate. 

In an argument I had with a friend about this recently, she asked me the inevitable "so what do you think was there before the Big Bang then?" 

I could have said simply emptiness. Nothing. But that's not what I want to say.

I wanted to instead ask why the origins argument is so crucial. 

I would think that it is a question that reads back into thousands of years of history can not be thought of as a question that is being asked in the context of today. I argued with her that even asking this question in terms of creation of the universe is a predominantly Christian way to think about God (as creator, omnipresent, omniscient and so on) and so the rational scientific answer which then falls back on evolution and the Big Bang to explain away Adam and Eve (or Brahma or whatever else one may believe created the universe) the arguments always succumb to the same trap of thinking about a definite moment of origin to explain the nature of the universe. (Which then would either "prove" whether God exists or not). 

To think about religion on religion's terms would be to think about it in terms of faith, and to think about science on science's terms would be to think about it in terms of reason and rationalism. To apply one's terms to the other is definitely not something that may have merit. Imagine telling a child that you need to believe in the atom just because. I think it's about as ridiculous to try and "prove" or "disprove" God using terms that have been defined for and by science. This is the root of my discomfort with Dawkins.  

What I did enjoy about his writing was the way he outlines and classifies every kind of thought there is on god and religion. This systematic summary of arguments was quite interesting to read. By the end of the third chapter though, all his arguments fall into a similar style of dismissal. He relies on Darwin and the theory of evolution to dismiss the creationist arguments. He regularly makes tongue in cheek comments about things he may not have great arguments for. He repeatedly uses quotes from Douglas Adams' interviews to spice these up. (Somewhere in the middle of Chapter 4, after a long Adams quote, he suddenly says "Douglas, I miss you." At this point I just went AAAAA! very loudly.)  

Says he, "I am not advocating some sort of narrowly scientistic way of thinking. But the very least that any honest quest for truth must have in setting out to explain such monstrosities of improbability as a rainforest, a coral reef, or a universe is a crane and not a skyhook. The crane doesn't have to be natural selection. Admittedly, nobody has ever thought of a better one. But there could be others yet to be discovered."

This quest for "truth" though is a quest that has been laid out in direct opposition to what religion offers as a belief system based on faith (I guess). It makes it boring and uncomfortable for me to argue in direct contradictions, especially because it often results in running around in circles, calling names and in all parties involved feeling like the other's a bit of an idiot. (Actually, wait, which argument doesn't?)

It's a good read though, something I definitely would suggest to someone who is thinking about their own belief system.

Edit.

From Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams. Excerpt from an interview with American Atheists:

"Well, in history, even though the understanding of events, of cause and effect, is a matter of interpretation, and even though interpretation is in many ways a matter of opinion, nevertheless those opinions and interpretations are honed to within an inch of their lives in the withering crossfire of argument and counterargument, and those that are still standing are then subject to a whole new round of challenges of fact and logic from the next generation historians and so on. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

So I was already familiar with and (I'm afraid) accepting the view that you couldn't apply the logic of physics to religion, that they were dealing with different types of truth. (I now think this is baloney, but to continue...) What astonished me, however, was the realization that the arguments in favor of religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the arguments of something as interpretive and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock of trade f any other area of intellectual endeavour whatsoever."

 

facing the mirror: lesbian writing from india

Ashwini Sukthankar (ed.)

(I can't find a copy of it to buy online, but find extracts here: Google Books)

This is a collection of short stories that I read some five years ago. I found it in the library at TISS, borrowed it immediately and swallowed it whole. I don't remember too many of those stories right now to write about the book, but I do remember feeling a sense of amazement and revolution when I read it.  

I'm only making a note of it here because I tried to remember the name of this collection about five months ago but I couldn't. I came across it all of a sudden when I was reading something else entirely. 

If you do find it somewhere, please either buy me a copy or be a pirate and send me a photocopy!

tender is the night

by F Scott Fitzgerald

Close to the end of this book, I got very very sad. It wasn't really a tearing-up kind of sadness. It was a more moving sadness about loneliness, love, age, powerlessness, about loss and failure; but not any of these things by themselves. And then, when I finished reading the book, I did something I haven't done in a long time. I flipped it and started over. I started to read it again, watching for depth where earlier I only read with curiosity.

I fell in love with this book about at the same point at which everyone in the book fell in love with the Divers: at their party on the terrace. But the moments leading up to it, the flirting so to speak, was exquisite. The passage about Nicole in her garden, for instance:

"Along the walls on the village side all was dusty, the wriggling vines, the lemon and eucalyptus trees, the casual wheel-barrow, left only a moment since, but already grown into the path, atrophied and faintly rotten."

And then, the party reached its climax: there were fireflies by the cliff, and the table they were sitting at seemed to have risen towards the sky like a mechanical dancing platform.

There's so many little things that I love about this book.

"Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?"  

It's such a beautiful line. Used in so many ways. Used for so many things. Used for one thing, most of all. Rosemary. The first time I came across it, I giggled a little. It is the first time Dick imagines Rosemary with someone else:

"Only the image of a third person, even a vanished one, entering into his relation with Rosemary was needed to throw him off his balance and send through him waves of pain, misery, desire, desperation. The vividly pictured hand on Rosemary’s cheek, the quicker breath, the white excitement of the event viewed from outside, the inviolable secret warmth within.

- Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?

- Please do. It's too light in here."

(Although my favorite usage is where he says it at the end of a chapter. Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?)

It's very difficult to try and write about a book that is considered a classic. People have read in so many ways that I can't even count, and they've been doing it for the better part of a century. I feel really out of my depth, even trying. The last time I felt like this about something I fell in love with was when I watched Rear Window and Birds. Even before I could think about something to say about it, I was bombarded with hundreds of exciting people saying exciting things about Hitchcock. (I googled Tender is the Night and one of the first things I came across was "Metaphysics of Style and Tender is the Night." Really?!)

I know this is a very fractured post that isn't really saying anything but that's the way I feel about this book right now. I'm very moved, and I really don't know how to talk about it.

Anyway, I'm a bit obsessed with this book and Fitzgerald for the moment. There's that.

bookstores

I love bookstores.

Big, chain ones with outlets all over the country; small, tiny ones in which only one person can actually fit; lovely, comfortable ones that play the blues in a corner; beautiful bookstores for which I am willing to visit a whole new country; bookstores with reading rooms that even F Scott Fitzgerald used to frequent; stalls that sell second-hand books or pirated books; vendors on footpaths with old, fraying books; bookstores whose books only the shopkeepers can find. 

You can gauge reading habits of a whole town from its bookstores, sometimes. 

I know that Landmark in Hyderabad has a horrible collection, but Landmark in Madras is always rich in the books they have. Blossoms in Bangalore is possibly my most favorite bookstore of all time. Bookstores in Delhi are usually eclectic. They have shelves and shelves full of academic books (neatly arranged by printing press) often just behind the section with poetry or graphic novels. They'll have three different translations of Marx or Dostoevsky and depending on how the bookshop owner leans politically, he'll tell you which one to buy. (I've come across very few women who sell books. Barring the Full Circle in GK, I can't remember a single one). Bombay is strange about its bookstores. They're commercial and mindless, except may be Strand when it's in a good mood. I never found a bookstore I liked in all my time in Bombay.

Bookstores are how I find new things to read. They are where I experiment. They open my eyes to new books, writers, genres, ideas, styles like nothing else. I have never made a friend in a bookstore, but I've never needed anybody's company but my own in one. Sure, I buy more off Flipkart and Infibeam these days, but I mostly buy books that I've already looked longingly at in a bookstore or read parts of in a library or borrowed from someone else. But I do it only because the discounts are amazing when I buy them online. (Student, okay?) 

Bookstores make me happy in any shape and form. 

They make me happy because I always end up looking at more books than I can buy. (They make me sad for about the same reason). I have found the strangest, loveliest books just browsing in bookstores. It's how I found American Gods by Neil Gaiman (at Blossoms, was I 15?). It's how I found Kari by Amruta Patil (in Chennai, I was bored), Em and the Big Hoom, Hush, Sita's Ramayana (all in Yodakin while waiting for people to show up). Spending hours and hours in bookstores with friends or cousins, before or after or during coffee also yielded great results. I was introduced to lots of wonderful books like this: Nick Hornby, Aminatta Forna, Sandman (frikkin' Sandman!), Jasper Fforde. Actually, if I think about it, that's how I spent much of my time as a kid in Walden, with my grandfather.  

Bookstores make me happy for the smell of old paper and the promise of a new book. I know it's a romantic thing to say and we're all against the idea of being romantic about bookstores these days, but I don't think I'm going to apologise for it. I love bookstores because I can get lost in them. (Not like a library, where the book isn't yours to write your name in and hide in your cupboard or write little notes in and stick pretty flags in).

Bookstores make me happy, and that's about that.

south asian women writing

Aisi at freeze-dried along with Aishwarya S has started a challenge called the South Asian Women Writer's Challenge where they've asked participants to read and review books written by South Asian women.

I've signed up for Level 2 which is read 6 and review 3.

This month, I've already read Adi Parva by Amruta Patil and Love Stories by Annie Zaidi. I definitely want to write about the very beautiful, very evocative Adi Parva (every panel of which I want to own as a poster or a print). On my list for next month is Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. Kuzhali Manickavel's Insects Are Just Like You And Me Except Some Of Them Have Wings has been on my list for more than two years now. I just haven't gotten around to it out of sheer laziness.

I can't think of more writers I want to read just yet.

From Bangladesh, I have only read Tahmima Anam. I haven't read any fiction from Sri Lanka at all (whether written by men or women, unless Ondaatje counts). From Pakistan, I've only read men: Mohammed Hanif, Mohsin Hamid, Daniyal Mueenuddin and Hanif Kureishi. It's not something I had thought about before now. 

Suggestions as we go are welcome.

Also, please go and sign up for it if you can!

reading is bliss

In a week that I've been thinking about how integral reading is to my life, Maria Popova's literary jukebox threw up this:

"Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss."

-  Nora Ephron in I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

:)  

Mixtape

by Praveen K, Devaki Neogi, Archana Sreenivasan, Manoj A Menon, Tina Thomas, Sachin Somasundaran, Jasjyot Singh Hans, Pratheek Thomas, Prabha Mallya.

Manta Ray Comics.

(Buy here.)

I remember when I first read Hush. In a tiny bookstore that was discretely playing some blues, I sat on a stair just looking at the first couple of pages. Eventually, the pages started to turn. Page after page, I kept thinking that I must put it back in the bookshelf – That if I read anymore of it, I’d be teary eyed and awkward in an almost cramped public place. But I read it anyway, because not reading wasn’t much of a choice.

I say “read”, because I am not sure what the better word for it would be. Obviously I bought it before I left the store. I needed for it to stay in my cupboard, even though I couldn’t say if I would really read it again. (Not because it wasn’t beautiful. It was. It’s just not the kind of story that I can bear myself to, again for the lack of a better word, experience for a second time)

When I got an email telling me that they were coming out with more of these comics, I was curious. Curious, because I had assumed Hush was what it was because of what it was dealing with. In its own way, it was a silent story about silences. But the very concept of whole stories being told without words, it was something that I was really excited about. So on the first weekend since the email that I had to myself, I bought the book.

Mixtape is, quite literally, heart-wrenching. But this time, I was prepared. I locked the door to my room. I made myself a cup of cocoa. I put on an extra pair of socks and snuggled into my blanket. And the book, it didn’t disappoint. (Even if it got over quicker than I wanted for it to).

It opens with Silver Spider, a story about a boy who does the sort of thing boys do and a story about a spider that doesn’t do the kind of thing that spiders do. I thought it was brilliant and twisted and dark and (yes, it’s true) funny! Stoopidkidsalwaysthinkingtheycangetawaywithstuff. Ha.

And then, well, and then. I was sitting there all pleased and stuff. I drank some of my cocoa and turned the page. I would have said that some warning would have been nice. But in all honesty, I was warned. Just a look at the cover would have been warning enough. The second story, Rather Lovely Thing. I don’t even know what to say about it. It took my breath away.

I wish I could say that I did justice to any of the stories that followed. I wish I could say that I was as moved by them.

I was clearly more impressed by them: Voyeur, worked a fun, sexy plot. I loved the irritation and rage on the man’s face. I loved how you’re expecting some sort of showdown. I’d like to think that I was the real voyeur. And I can’t say it enough, twisted and funny.

‘My Beloved’ seemed a little out of place. The art itself, for starters, was so much more full of detail than the rest of the stories. I’m not yet sure if I liked it. I feel like, as a plot, it had much more potential. I thought the first half was working up to something entirely different.

This little book packs quite a punch. I like the direction that it is taking Indian comic books to. I like that we’re growing up from Amar Chitra Katha, and Kari is not the singular standalone piece of work that was doing something amazing and downright brilliant. I like that I can look forward to things like Mixtape on a regular basis. (May I say, that Twelve in my head is already awesome?)

So go. Buy it. Make a cup of cocoa. Read it. If you don’t fall in love with it, I’ll give you your 55 rupees back.