Where good writing goes to die
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P.S. I’m not for you |
Karma and Other Stories is such an egregious example of advocacy lit, I barely made it through the book (sorry, Jai). It’s the literary equivalent of Gurinder Chadha. At every point, the author subverts any semblance of good writing in favor of educating people about classical Indian culture in the most stilted language possible. Every passage of plot is saddled with three of cultural exposition. While Vikram Chandra rejected infantilizing italics and staved off a glossary until the paperback edition, this author embraced them. The book is a glossary, a warmed-over version of the Wikipedia entry on Hinduism. Here’s the steaming pile of curry you have to wade through to get to the decent couple of stories at the end:
She held his arm and smiled at him, to let him know she was pleased. How strong he looked, like a Hindi cinema hero. Already he had overcome the trauma of his trip to Hyderabad one month ago, where he had set the torch to his father’s funeral pyre. Venu would be a good son and care for her now. He would not disappoint her.
He put down a suitcase filled with Indian sweets, coconut oil for her hair, homemade mango pickle, and white saris. In the old days, white was the only color a window would wear. So it would be with her… Arundhati was relieved that her grand-daughter spoke Telugu so easily; she herself understood only a few English words.
In another story
, a woman’s not just rebellious, she has a ‘Sorry I skipped church, I was learning witchcraft and becoming a lesbian’ bumper sticker (not ironically) and purple hair. Every uncle and auntie is written with a thick Indian accent translated from Telugu literally and badly. Every other plot point deals with arranged marriage or arguing with your parents. Save for the last three stories, which finally come up with some surprises, the tales telegraph intentions up front. You know within thirty seconds the rebel is going to end up in an arranged marriage with a pharmacist, so heavy-handed is the writing.
Every exasperating Venkat McStereotype makes you long for the relative subtlety of cool, blue-toned Jhumpa. The book narrow-mindedly focuses on classicism rather than mashup, on cardboard cutouts rather than treating people as people. As a somnolent audio tour through bharatanatyam, it faces a different century than Zadie Smith’s raucous White Teeth. There’s a whiff of desi lit circa ‘88 about this book; kissing a white person (oh no!) qualifies as a major moral crisis.
When this kind of stuff is put out by the NYT, we roll our eyes. But when it’s nicely printed on rough-cut pages between a Hindu-inspired title and a vaguely South Asian cover, we applaud politely and call it genre lit, where good writing goes to die.
The most unfortunate part is that people I respect thought this was a good book. This is not a good book. It is the opposite of a good book. It’s exhibit A at Iowa Writers’ Workshop 101: Hey Dickhead, Don’t Do This. Like Lahiri’s Å“uvre, it’s about a single ethnic community in Boston and more about the author’s parents than herself. That’s what sells. But then you probably gathered that from the title. You figured out the market is suburban soccer moms from the publisher’s slightly desperate, Oprah-ish author interview which clutters up the last sixteen pages like a circular from the dollar store.
In sum, get it free from a friend, check out the last three stories (’Karma,’ ‘Devadasi’ and ‘Lord Krishna’), and let’s pretend the rest of this book never happened.
on Thursday, January 17th, 2008, 2:34 pm in Literature › 
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Lay down the law and tell it like it should be told. Good words for this pap, Manish.
Now console yourself with this tiny extract from Hanif Kureishi’s new novel:
http://www.granta.com/extracts/3140
Ahh… unicorn chaser.
Devadasi was my favorite story of the lot.
Hi Manish
What has prompted me to respond to your post is the reference to Gurinder Chadha. To the chagrin of a legion of their admirers I call this the “kadhi chaval” genre so totally embodied by the likes of Chadha, Mira Nair (in the movies), evidently even Rishi Reddi although I have not read her, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and I am afraid even Jhumpa Lahiri (in literature). While I am happy they are able to hoodwink clueless western critics, the more discriminating among us ought to know better. Nair and Chadha know as much about filmmaking as Divakaruni/Reddi/Lahiri know about literature.
Cheers
Mayank
Where I grew up there was no one to kiss but white people.
Zing!
And is Gurinder Chadha the diasporic equivalent of Oliver Stone?
(Tries to keep a straight face) That must’ve been so difficult for you.
Is Kama Sutra the desi Alexander?
Nothing like an honest review, my dear…
I say you start campaign against this kind of lit.
I am adding Brick Lane to your hit list…
It was hard, not difficult.
OK, I’ll stop.
Didn’t the US (hardcover) edition of Sacred Games have a glossary?
AFAIK the UK hardcover did not, the US did.
I was glad for the glossary at the end of Sacred Games as my Hindi is lousy. Learned some great cruse words.
Hey, I grew up in Bombay and STILL needed to look back to the glossary in Sacred Games from time to time. There’s a lot in there that never made it to the delicate ears of Nice Middle-Class Young People - made me feel like I had really missed out.
By popular demand, here’s Chandra’s primer in swearing in Marathi and Bambaiyya.
Ebooks will make vocab unobtrusive– as on this blog, hover over a word for the definition.
The point surely isn’t to understand every single word, but to feel the book…
I love a little tapori in literature. Who knows what the hell it means most of the time, but it spices up the text.
Tension nahi lene ka. Bindaas…