Shantaram

This is a huge book, both in terms of number of pages and popularity. Almost everyone seems to have read it, and it’s also being made into a film. It deals with the true story of Gregory David Roberts/Lin, who goes to Bombay/Mumbai while he’s on the run from prison in Australia and ends up living in a slum and then gets caught up in some other stuff with the Bombay mafia, and then some other stuff happens and some other stuff happens during the rest of the story. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, or at least not more than is on the back cover of the book.

It’s collosal in scope – it deals with crime, guilt, redemption, friendship, betrayal, forgiveness, revenge, love, death, drug addiction, poverty, disease, ingenuity, torture, religion… fuck it, everything is in there. And it’s even more impressive when you consider that Roberts apparently wrote it twice while in prison and had the drafts stolen and ripped up (after the events described in the book, he was arrested and imprisoned for the crimes he’d been originally sent to prison for).

And it is good. Maybe it isn’t as good as a lot of people say – but a lot of people say it’s one of the best things they’ve read. But Roberts has a real gift for describing people – and that’s what the book is about, the people he knew – and does a decent job of describing the action that he saw and what he heard about. On ocassions, it can all be a bit overwraught and the prose can tend towards the purple in places, but that didn’t detract too much from my enjoyment. Sometimes, too, Lin is spectacularly naive, especially as he’s supposed to be a convicted criminal on the run after a few years in prison, but as it’s a true story, we’ll take Roberts at his word that he really didn’t see some things coming.

I was going to say something here about how I heard that Johnny Depp was being cast as the main character and how wrong that was, but it’s not relevant, so I won’t get into it. Should be Russell Crowe, obviously.

See also:

Hari Kunzru The Impressionist – about India and foreigness, although it’s not as long.

The Darjeeling Limited - I actually have no idea how similar this might be, as I haven’t watched it.

Phrase of the day

Punt in the chuff

Sample usage:
Dude A: This dude is making us look like freaking morons.
Dude B: Yes, I agree.
Dude A: He needs a punt in the chuff.

Bonus feature: sounds much ruder than it is.

Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

Let’s get the bad bits out of the way first – I couldn’t quite work out the chronology at the start, and I’m not entirely sure that’s intentional. Also, this does have the appearance of being two books stapled together, which I think is alluded to in the epilogue. Finally, something that Conrad admits himself in the author’s note at the end – it does rather strain belief that the whole story is related in one evening after dinner. But it is fiction, so we’ll let that pass.

That out of the way, this is a really good book, dealing on the surface with the tribulations of Jim, a young English gentleman gone off with the merchant navy to seek his fortune and somewhat let down by a lack of intestinal fortitude in the middle of the Indian ocean, who then goes off to find redemption in the ports of the far east, fails, and then acheives something special on a tiny island somewhere, only to run into another spot of terminal bother. It delves into Jim’s psyche as he swings between the highs and lows and highlights the contrast between his own self-image (he believes he can deal with pretty much anything that’s likely to befall) and his actions (leaving a shipful of pilgrims in the hold to sink when their ship is crippled – an action that it takes forever to reveal, frustratingly). Who hasn’t done something they’re ashamed of and then rationalised their behaviour afterwards, after all.

It’s narrated by Marlow (who also plays Martin Sheen in Heart of Darkness, I discovered recently), although he only turns up a few chapters in, which is a bit confusing, but there we go. Quite how he understands so clearly what’s in Jim’s head isn’t explained, but he has spent a lot of time around young seamen (stop sniggering) so maybe that’s it.

But also, perhaps more, it’s a meditation on the weakness in the heart of the colonial project. Jim represents the British themselves, who will let down the people they are trying to improve, feel a bit guilty about it, do some good things and then let everyone down again. Until they get scragged by the natives. At which stage, end of project, although I don’t think Conrad quite predicts that. The book does get to what I think was the heart of colonialism, which was not exclusively about exploiting the material richness of the less advanced (and better-tanned) peoples of the world, but genuinely did want to improve their lot, and bring them up to the standard of a well-regarded underservant, or favourite horse. It’s shocking to see the accepted level of racism from only 108 years ago. It makes you wonder what the world might be like in another 108 years.

Most impressive for me, though, is an aspect of the writing which makes Conrad stand out from a lot of so-called classic authors – his capture of voice and character. Every person in the novel has their own voice, accent, phrases and interests. Together they weave together to provide a fully-rounded picture of the late 19th century far east company world.

See also:

Flashman in the Great Game – also deals with colonialism and uppity natives. Although Flashy escapes with his kin more or less intact.

Crime and Punishment – also deals with the effects of guilt on the mind of someone who believes himself to be something rather special.

How to be Free – Tom Hodgkinson

So this was a re-read. I think I was looking for a bit of lighter reading after some big thought reads.

Not that this doesn’t have plenty of thoughts in it, and it’s especially topical now that those greedy bankers (grrr) have had to admit that all the money they pretended to have in the banks didn’t exist (although I’m pretty sure the money they all have stuffed under the mattress is still real). Anyway, that’s slightly beside the point.

This book is about how to live a life where you are not beholden to anyone or anything, where pleasures are simple and not 40″ plasma-screened and where things are done better. And basically, that’s it. It’s full of suggestions for things to do. Learn the ukulele (it’s on my list, once I’ve nailed Sweet Child on the electric guitar). Bake bread (I have a loaf proofing/proving now). Grow your own food (I’m planning to plant my chilli pepper seeds this weekend – I know you’d struggle to live on chilli peppers, but I do get through quite a lot of them, and I’ve only really got a windowsill).

Some parts I’m not so sure about. I don’t think Mr. Hodkinson is entirely correct to suggest that life was much better during the middle ages – a little bit too much premature death, a little bit too little intellectual freedom for my liking, from what I’ve read of it. But there are certainly a lot of ways to improve the way we live, even in a stinky city like London, and they are both cheaper and cheerfuller.

See also:

a park: go outside and play, or something

How to be Idle: the prequel

The God Delusion

My copy is signed! How cool is that? Well, probably not very cool if you are a frequent or regular God-botherer. Dawkins has very little time for you at all.

And let’s face it, the arguments for believing in God are pretty weak. “There must be something” or “It doesn’t make sense that this [or that] could happen”. I’m sorry, but there mustn’t be anything, and yes, it does make sense if you think about it. The only bit of the universe that science can’t really explain is the very start, and it doesn’t add much if you imagine that some dude with a beard did it. (There are quite a lot of bits that science can’t explain properly, actually, but they don’t seem to make much difference to the way most of us get on with things, unlike chemistry or sensible-sized gravity, say.)

Anyway, Dawkins goes through most of these arguments and destroys them, then gets to the problem with religion in the world: it encourages sloppy thinking and terrorism. “God did it” isn’t much use as an explanation (Incidentally, I’ve always wondered why people like to ask “what would Jesus do?” as a way of deciding how to act. What Jesus did ended up with him nailed to a fucking cross, guys. Unless you are confident of surviving this, it might be an idea to do what Jesus wouldn’t do.) unless you also ask “how?” and then you’re basically ignoring Him anway.

But what really riles Dicky (besides being called Dicky, I imagine) is that it isn’t possible to argue with religious people – their faith isn’t open to debate. But because of this, it’s possible to hold some pretty nasty beliefs without being held properly to account for them, and the logical extension of this is religious warfare and people blowing themselves up in shopping centres.

And he has a very good point. But there is clearly something out there that makes people believe in something, it seems to be an important part of our psychological makeup for a good reason, so just shouting about it won’t make it go away. On the other hand, shouting about it does make people pay attention to what they’re thinking, and that can only be a good thing in the (probably very, very) long run.

Also, I want to go on record and say how dismayed I am in a recent study that shows that half of Britons do not accept (it’s not a matter of belief) evolution. For shame, Britain. FOR SHAME.

The Plot Against America

OK, so it’s a long-ass time since I finished this one (November 11), so my memories of it might not be perfect.

The basic idea is that instead of opposing Hitler (in a non-confrontational way) towards the end of the 30s and in the early 40s, America voted against Eisenhower and for popular hero and (possible) Nazi sympathiser (proud owner of an Iron Cross, or some such trinket) Charles Lindberg.

It’s a counterfactual autobiography! Philip Roth casts himself as a young Jewish American from the east coast whose family is ghettoised and so forth. His aunt joins Lindberg’s administration as part of the imagined group of Jewish collaborators which causes some tension, I can tell you. And his beloved older brother also joins up, after spending some time working on a farm in Nebraska (or somewhere, I’m not looking it up). The Roth family is then reassigned to some other backward-ass American town, and we all think we know what that means: death camps! In America! Who would dare?

Well, it quickly backs away from that. Lindberg is finally opposed by someone other than the scared Jews, and then JUST DISAPPEARS while campaigning for re-election. His much more Nazi-sympathising Vice President is impeached, Eisenhower is elected in a landslide and America joins the war a year or so late and saves our Limey asses as normal. Or something.

Lindberg’s not to blame either: it turns out Hitler kidnapped his baby and was threatening to… do something to him if Lindberg didn’t stay out of European business and set up his own mini final solution, which Lindberg never quite got round to because he had the heart of a true American, god bless him.

So what starts out looking like an exploration of Fascism in America might look like quickly runs away and says “but it’d never really happen, we all know that.”

Weak.

See also:

Farthing – Jo Walton – more or less the same thing, but in England.

The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick – what if the Allies lost the Second World War?

Kings of Albion – Julian Rathbone

I’ve misread my reading diary – irony? – and I skipped a couple of books. It doesn’t help that my reading diary is also my doodle diary, and features scribbled sketches of whatever is passing through my mind when I pick up my pencil at the end of the day, with notes on books consigned to mere marginalia.

This is the sequel to The Last English King which I bought at the same charity booksale. In for a pound, in for two quid, I say. It’s better odds than penny-pound.

The Kings of the title are the protagonists of the Wars of the Roses, a period of English history of which I was completely ignorant. I’m not much enlightened now, to be honest, though. The story this time is told from the point of view of a few eastern visitors to Albion’s fair shores during the fifteenth century. They’re not from Norfolk, no. There’s a merchant type who was trading coffee in the east of India, but not making any money, a monk who turns out to be a randy female buddhist/Kali-worshipper/thuggee, and the younger brother of a prince of an Indian kingdom whose older brother they all go to rescue from Manchester. The book takes forever to set this group up, for reasons I don’t really understand, except it was probably quite good fun to write.

They reach England in the form of Calais (this is back when the King of England also had substantial holdings in northern and western France) and are promptly shocked by the squalor, cold, brutality, and general lack of quality of life in western europe when compared to the life of an eastern prince. They attend some banquet held by Lord Somerset (I think) and it’s wall-to-wall drinking, horseplay and pissing in the straw on the floor of the hall. Or Friday night, as we call it round here.

Anyway, it seems that some of Merrie Olde England has infiltrated the ruffian pyschopath aristos that William brought over in the conquest, so hurrah for that. And then… and then something happens. They go to London, and they get split up, and their tales are told separately. And a few people want to be King, I’m pretty sure of that. And London wants one of them, and someone else wants a different one. It’s not really clear. It may be because it’s a while since I read it, but I suspect it’s all a bit too complicated to be summed up in the knockabout way Rathbone wants to.

The fight scenes are good – with fully plate armoured warriors going at each other in the rainy English countryside, splattering gore and mud around in equal measures. There’s a nice bit where a couple of the observers are doing a football commentary on one of the battles, it’s really very droll.

But there are two main problems I have with it. One of them is the lack of clarity of what’s going on, who’s on what side, etc. He did this really well in English King so I was a bit disappointed here. Maybe it’s because I didn’t know the story beforehand. And the second problem is the characters telling the story. They’re supposed to be different, but they sound exactly the same. Admittedly, the monk/randy thuggee(-ess) does shag most of the principal men in the book, and clearly takes great pleasure in it, but that’s about it.

And, incidentally, there’s another longish discourse on Buddhism (I think this is the monk educating the merchant) which repeats a lot of the same stuff as is in Mishima’s Temple of Dawn. Although, I did read this one first, and it’s a bit more light-hearted. I wonder if Rathbone was reading the same textbooks as Mishima (probably not, although he may have been reading Mishima himself…)

In conclusion – some good fight scenes, some pretty good sex scenes, but overall, disappointingly written, and I didn’t learn much.

See also:

The Last English King – obviously

London by Edward Rutherford. I’m pretty sure there’s a small bit in it about the Wars of the Roses, and it’s probably easier to follow. Although it won’t deal with much outside of the city walls.

The Temple of Dawn – Yukio Mishima

First – a confession. I’ve been away writing my novel for November. Only I didn’t get it finished. I abandoned it with a week to go, 20,000 words from completion. I am going back to it. Eventually.

In the meantime, I’ve got to catch up on writing about my reading. This one is book 3 of 4 in Mishima’s Sea of Fertility cycle. I didn’t realise this when I bought it, but decided to read it anyway. So I was immediately at a further disadvantage than when I read the first book. In between the end of Spring Snow and the start of The Temple of Dawn, Honda has completed his training as a lawyer and had a career as a judge, from which he has now retired. He’s also got married to someone.

During the middle book, I’m not sure which one it is, Honda befriended or adjudicated on another lost young soul who I think ended up committing suicide in prison. There are several references to this, but not knowing anything about the story, I didn’t understand them.

Anyway, Honda at the start of The Temple of Dawn is in Bangkok on business – he’s involved with some long-running case and it requires him to go to Thailand for a jolly. He visits the eponymous temple, and thinks a bit about reincarnation. It’s clear to him that the boy in the second book (can’t remember his name) is a reincarnation of the boy from the first book (can’t remember his name). But he doesn’t seem to have spent any time thinking about reincarnation before, what with his logical legal training and all that. So he finds out a lot about it. A lot. It doesn’t help much that the entire history of Buddhism involves a lot of Indian words and names, but it’s pretty dull reading. And historical Buddhists seem to have spent a similar amount of time arguing about pointless details as historical Christians. And probably all religious types. It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t.

Anyway, also in Bangkok is a Thai princess who’s six years old, and claims to be Japanese really. Because Honda knew the Thai princes from their visit to Japan in Spring Snow, he is granted an audience with her. She is clearly the reincarnation of the two boys from the first two books. Excellent stuff.

So then the second world war happens, and Honda is sad. Then he becomes immensely wealthy because the Americans have changed the law and the case he’s been working on finishes and so he decides to build a house. And there’s a bit of allegory, with a wealthy Japanese woman and her (strong, virile) American boyfriend and a number of other characters which is very enjoyable. And then Honda starts watching people having sex in bushes. And… wait – what? Why? Anyway, it’s important because he builds a special hole in the wall of his new study so that he can spy on people having sex in his guest bedroom.

At some stage the Thai princess comes to Japan, having grown a preposterous pair of breasts. Honda builds a swimming pool in the hope of inviting her to go skinny dipping. He’s so fumingly in lust with her, it’s by far the best bit of the book. And he invites her to stay one night with a rather “aggressive” young man; she rejects his advances and runs off to the neighbours. Somehow, Honda misses this. Then Honda has some more parties and it turns out she’s a lesbian who falls in love with a poetess.

And then she goes back to Thailand and drops dead instantly. Or something.

Clearly, the characters in these books are not supposed to even vaguely resemble genuine people, except accidentally. The whole watching people having sex thing is deeply odd. Anyway, from what I’ve figured out, Honda is the observer and the continually reincarnating young men/women are the spirit of Japan going through a turbulent century. Other characters represent the various aspects of Japanese society – artistic, aristocracy, the mercantile class, the American occupiers, etc.

Reading it like that is very interesting, although obviously I might be some distance off with my characterisations. But reading it as an actual story involving people interacting one-on-one is very disappointing. I think if you’re going to use this trick, it has to work on both levels. I’ll definitely read the other half of the cycle at some stage, but it will be as a Japanese history, trying to ignore the characters as much as possible.

See also:

Spring Snow – obviously.

Cryptonomicon – also deals with the second world war in Japan and the rebuilding (among many, many other things), although from an American perspective.

Starship Troopers – Heinlein

Very interesting this, because I am quite (OK, over-) familiar with the film version with Denise Richards (and some other people) which treads an uneasy line between being a satire and a celebration of fascism. That is intended by Paul Verhoeven (who in the commentary track on the DVD – I know – reminisces about eating tulip bulbs in the wreckage of his family house in Holland during the Nazi occupation) as a satire of stormtrooper/Hitler Youth propaganda movies, but updated to the space age.

This doesn’t appear to have any such intentions. As far as I can tell, it’s a straight-out utopia, where the right to vote is determined by Federal Service (not necessarily in the armed forces) and no one who hasn’t served has any right to participate in government, although they are free to run businesses and make stacks of cash, so that’s OK.

I think the book attempts to describe everything that a Citizen would have to go through to achieve this honour, from boot camp, where they are relentlessly bullied and broken down, but also rigorously trained to the peak of physical fitness and fighting perfection; to officer training, via combat missions against the enemy. There’s a constant thread of “this is hard, painful work, but it gives you a real sense of camaraderie, and self-confidence without arrogance” (troopers trust their training will help them survive, and know that any mistake will be spotted and punished by their loving and all-seeing superiors). Anyone who does see out their service has really earned the right to participate in society, and equally, anyone who doesn’t, hasn’t.

Written soon after the second world war, filled with the “look what we can do if we all work together” ethos of the time (well, in America, anyway, not sure that Germany or Japan felt quite the same) it’s a simplistic utopia – I find it hard to argue with. On the one hand I’m not entirely convinced that everyone should have the right to vote merely by having failed to die over the first 18 years of their existence, but then Telegraph readers are always banging on about the need to bring back National Service, which makes me very wary of the idea.

Heinlein’s central argument appears to be that voting influences the lives of so many people that you shouldn’t be allowed to do it until you have proved that you are capable of supporting others under extreme conditions. He mentions that there are alternatives to military service to become a citizen, but spends no time at all discussing them.

He does spend quite a bit of time discussing the efficiencies of the Mobile Infantry – everyone fights, no one quits. If you refuse to “drop” you are busted out and can never be a citizen. This means that the army is capable of running itself with much lower overheads in terms of auxiliary and command staff. All really quite tedious.

He also goes into qute a lot of detail about the Trooper’s power suits, which are more interesting, but familiar enough to anyone who’s ever watched any Japanese sci-fi. I don’t know if Heinlein invented the concept, although I doubt it. I could be wrong, not going to bother looking it up.

The casual sexism is quite amusing. Females are useful as pilots, apparently, due to their superior reflexes or something. So the Troopers hardly ever see them, especially not the grunts. It’s apparently good enough for a Trooper to guard “bulkhead 30″ – beyond which lies the female quarters and imagine the girls on the other side “what we fight for”. It’s a stark contrast to the film, where the “everyone fights” motto extends to the fairer sex, and everyone showers together. Heinlein’s Rico would have exploded, I reckon. What a weird bunch they were in the 50s. Also, Rico’s conflict with his father is undermined in a rather ridiculous way in the book, I much prefer killing him off without resolving anything, as Verhoeven does.

Comparing the film and the book in total, it’s easy to see why the intended satire by Verhoeven was missed by so many critics – I think it’s due to the strength of the utopia imagined by Heinlein in the source material, which won’t quite wash out in the film. I was quite surprised how close the two were – apart from the love triangles, and the fact that the second half of the book is ignored (it would have been irrelevant to a film about blasting the legs off giant insectoids).

The film has a better story, and better special effects and you cannot beat Denise Richards in a pilot’s uniform, but the book is a very thought-provoking read.

See also:

Starship Troopers (the film) – did I mention it’s got Denise Richards in it? I would steer clear of the sequels, though.

Not really relevant, but interesting as a comparison: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima also give insights into post-war America, but from rather oblique angles.

Joshua Spassky – Gwendoline Riley

Ok, write what you know, yes, very good. But really? Written by a young female author about a young female author who is having some kind of dysfunctional affair with a young male playwright. Where do you get your ideas from, Gwendoline?

According to the back of the book, they eventually come to a surprising understanding. That they are in love. Wow.

How they decide this, I’m not sure, because they don’t really do much apart from drink, shag and talk elliptically. Anyway, I don’t think it’s really relevant to the story. Why? Because there is no story. This book is like finding a box full of polaroids in your flat that the previous tenant left behind. Some of them have the same people in, sometimes there are different people, but it doesn’t really matter who they are because they’re never in it again, and that’s it.

There’s a few scenes that could go straight into the Guardian Guide’s All Ears column. Not that they aren’t brilliantly observed or anything, just that they are utterly irrelevant to anything else between the covers of the book.

Not to say that the quality of the writing is bad – there are some lovely pieces, and if there was a plot, it would be a very good little book.

Fortunately, it’s not very long.

See also:

Mills and Boon – just cut out about 40% of the pages and you’ll be close.

Self-absorbed trendy people who you don’t know and probably wouldn’t like anyway