A book with gazillion reviews doesn’t need another one to tell what to expect from it. So why bother?
Let's get straight to the pointWinter is coming.
A book with gazillion reviews doesn’t need another one to tell what to expect from it. So why bother?
Let's get straight to the point.
This is described as epic fantasy firmly grounded in historical realism, which means the reader should be able to identify an outline of the period(s), the peoples, and the sociopolitical milieu upon whose ruins the edifice of the invented world of GoT is erected. Luckily, this is not difficult to find out, even though most readers, if my impressions are anything to go by, are not interested in the social, political and cultural roots of this world. I am, however, and here’s why.
Martin has taken bits and pieces from here-and-there of history to put together a glittering collage that is as much fascinating as it is revolting. This world is conveniently medieval-ish. Westeros and its seven kingdoms, as the name betrays, is The West or Old Europe, broadly speaking. On a smaller level, Westeros doubles as Great Britain. In the north lies the dreary, grey-blue, cold waste of Winterfell (Scotland), populated by weather-hardened, thick-skinned, honourable if a little humourless House Stark. In the south we have King’s Landing (London) as the capital of Westeros. Lannisters are invented after the wily olde English folks: Machiavellian, power-hungry, loaded with lucre, forever scheming to take the Iron Throne and assert their supremacy over other houses and kingdoms. They have crimson banners adorned with a roaring loin for a sigil. No speculation. Anybody who has watched Braveheart, or read a little of the history of symbols and contemporary popular imagination, can immediately tell it's a painless borrowing with little imaginative work behind it. .
The so called Narrow Sea separates Westeros in the east from the other half of Martin’s world. It consists of a few Free Cities and, a bit further, the wasteland of Vaes Dothrak, home to a ‘savage’ community called Dothraki Horselords. Beyond that there are unknown and mysterious lands outside the borders of civilisation. Here begins the orientalisation of GoT.
[An interactive map of Westeros and the Resteros is HERE]
Dothraki Horselords are fashioned after the Mongols (Khal Drogo = Khan Genghis), who already suffer from an excessively negative image created and popularised by the Orientalists as a brutal murdering horde whose only purpose in life was to loot cities to the last dime and burn them to the last house. Quite a sham of a theory, if you care to investigate. But here Martin panders to the popular imagination by portraying them worse than they are supposed to be.
It may be said that it’s just an invention to serve the purpose of a fantasy story; that it may not necessarily bear resemblance to a historical people or their reality. I don’t think so. We have seen Martin is not interested in being very original, except when he invents fantastical creatures. All human communities are taken from history and as long as this is the case, it would be difficult to excuse reinforced stereotypes under the license of creative freedom.
Worse, Martin borrows language and ideas about racial categories that bear striking resemblance to what has come down to us through the most racist of Orientalist writing. Here medievalism changes gears into colonial superiority complex so familiar to us. Someone explains to the poor Westerosi princess in exile:
The Dothraki mate like animals in their herds. There is no privacy in a Khalasar, and they do not understand sin or shame as we do.
Early Orientalists have used these lines to deculturize Eastern peoples, so that some ‘civilization’ could be rammed down their throats, for their own good.
Another:
All these savages know how to do is steal the things better men have built.
and...
See, the savages lack the wit to understand the speech of civilized men. This was said when the Dothraki failed to understand the “Common Tongue” of Westeros – the same “Common Tongue” in which the book is written.
It may be argued that these depictions represent the ignorance of the Westerosis about lands and people alien to them, faithfully reflecting the views of so many generations of Westerners, and that Martin is just reporting, not framing. This would be a solid argument had the author balanced it with a different (and more humane) perspective on the people he had had his Westerosi characters attack ad nauseam. But this does not happen. They remain a warring savage tribe with no settled towns and hamlets to return to, sleepfighting on the path to self-destruction in their internecine civil wars, right till the end, with no redeeming qualities except bravery; but even their bravery’s ridiculous, crude and rash. And the lands east of the Narrow Sea remain shadowy, mysterious places, not understood but accepted, something to work around and get out of as soon as possible. The perspective of the Targaryen princess, our Westerosi exile, is projected on the whole of region and accepted as true.
…Dany had always heard the East was different. It was said that manticores prowled the islands of the Jade Sea, that basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night. Why shouldn’t there be dragons too?
To dispel my doubts I sat through two episodes of season 1 and then clicked through a few clips of Dokhraki speech. An amusing surprise awaited me. Here Mongol-Dothrakis were given a fictional language that sounds nothing like how Mongols or Central Asians speak; instead, it betrays phonetic resemblance to Semitic languages, and which language might that be? Of course not Hebrew. Here the savage Mongol meets the savage Arab, in a perfect match-and-mix of neo-Orientalist projections.
Now, my rating-reviewing principles do not allow me to rate down a book solely for its objectionable sociopolitical content. Fair or not, I’m a stickler for writing, imagistic richness, wit and humour, invention of style and all that stuff. There’s enough to admire here. The sheer scale of the invention means the reader constantly grapples with lots of characters and their peculiarities, shenanigans and endless intrigue, that give it an illusion of fast-paced, action-packed narrative, which it is.
Towards the end when I think back I realise not much has happened in the whole span of 800 odd pages; the story is very basic (and unfinished) if reduced down to its essential elements. This must be owed to the fact that what I have read is less than one fifth of the whole story, even less than that if Martin defies age and starts working on installment #7, so characters that appear stunted or underdeveloped will perhaps come into their own in the later installments. But of those who have been ridden down in the first installment both Eddard Stark and King Robert Baratheon are stereotypes. Lord Eddard is a cold, grey, gloomy, unsmiling, predictable Northern who wears honour on his sleeve. Despite his stoic wisdom, his faultless do-gooder philosophy makes him a defenceless plaything in the hands of the sly and the scheming, for which he pays dearly.
King Robert likewise has lost his marbles after decade-and-a-half of power: couldn’t-care-less, drunkard, hunter, whoremonger, a typical idle-minded stereotype of a king blind to the Lannister plots hatched right under his nose whom even a friend as old and loyal as Eddard can’t make see. Seven hells, they are not the complex characters Martin is so famed for. Perhaps living ones carried over to the next books will flesh up as the story progresses. In any case, if I were to name my favourite character of Got #1, it would be Tyrian Lannister hands down - the imp, the endearing and intelligent dwarf!
So…
Do I like the thing? Affirmative.
Do I think it special, extraordinary, unique? Seven hells no.
If someone described the publication of this book as a money making racket I would find it hard to criticise.
Even if the senile author had been manipIf someone described the publication of this book as a money making racket I would find it hard to criticise.
Even if the senile author had been manipulated into acceding to its publication, the kind of money that was growing on the trees would make it a mere peccadillo. But I suspect had Mr Finch been fortunate to live as long as his creator-author, he'd have taken umbrage at the moral failure on the part of the agents and publishers no?
Be that as it may, this novel couldn’t have appeared at a worse time. Atticus Finch, the regressive sophist of this sequel, now retired and redundant, yet full of intellectual charm, has made his reappearance in the year when American streets are in the grip of a renewed racial rebound; the reality that once ironically hid behind rainbow songs that envisioned a colour-blind society has bounced back with its glaring contradictions and shoddy equivocations, while those who wield power have resorted to all manner of chicanery to suggest all is well.
By that I mean there are countless people around still blaming the victims of racial framing who are vindicated by Atticus’ intellectual (and inexplicable) metempsychosis from a young lawyer fighting for justice for the oppressed race to an ornery old man who is unsettled by the “slow pace” at which the blacks are making “progress.” Sounds familiar? Yes, the judgments are still in the coming; yes, the black community must still get a certificate of progress from their previous oppressors; yes, now that they have stopped treating them as subhumans, by opening an equal playing field before them (in theory), they want them to be quick to dissolve the weight of the past and join in the patriotic song-singing and nationalistic flag-waving, to live happily ever after, till kingdom come.
I did not think much of the first installment. Its flattened prose aside, its symbolic cardiac arrest apart, I have some strong objections to how it is conceptualised. In my opinion the character of Atticus Finch is an exhausted moral allegory for a tormented racial conscience that offers a saccharine palliative to assuage the collective guilt born of centuries of atrocities inflicted upon the "lesser races.” Yet at the same time he so plainly and obviously symbolises an internalised thought process social theorists have labelled the “saviour complex.” So Mockingbird series is not about human rights and equality for black people but something else entirely. I tried to look at it differently but couldn’t ignore the fine print even though my emotions had been manipulated into applauding the great “moral message” floating on the surface of the novel.
Mockingbird has failed me and I have failed the Mockingbird. Dear Harper Lee, I beg your pardon.
If books were pills, Alchemist would be a sugarcoated placebo with no real effect. Let's call it a feel-good homily. I have never read a book as meretIf books were pills, Alchemist would be a sugarcoated placebo with no real effect. Let's call it a feel-good homily. I have never read a book as meretricious as this one. Many reviewers have pointed out the problems with this 'celebrated' novel so I'd rather not expend any more words. Suffice it so say that this is a good example of portentous writing that is best avoided if your benchmark is quality literature....more
We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us....but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it wasWe look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us....but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it was the first prominent novel, when it came out back in the 70s, that poked fun at the raison d’être of British rule in India; maybe it was a pioneering attempt by a [British] writer to show the absurdity of colonial superiority by laying bare its own inner inconsistencies through well-crafted British characters battling their own civilisational demons; and maybe it was the first of its kind when a writer penned something about the Raj without stooping down to the level of a twinkle-eyed romantic suffering from nostalgic cramps for the lost "Jewel in the Crown."
To this end Farrell is quite successful. This is whence all rating stars come. Through the drama that unveils during the long summer months of siege at the Krishnapur Residency, the confined British officials and civilians come to a slow and painful realisation of the fragile state of their own civilisation they in their hauteur thought was invincible. Primary among them is the Collector who sees the futility of the great advance of science and art when, for the sake of survival, he is forced to use artifacts as cannon fodder when ammunition runs out; Drs Dunstaple and McNab, who were proud of the superiority of modern medicine, get into a bitter conflict when they fail to agree on the most appropriate treatment for the epidemic of cholera amongst the besieged; the ladies eyeing one another in disgust when they are put together into one big hall in complete disregard for their social rank; through the figure of the cynical Padre who, instead of providing a moral-religious support, sweats over inconsequential doctrinal debate going on in Germany – a superior civilisation shown rattling at its base when for once they were forced to confront the tragedy of life at point blank. Yet despite this there is stubborn refusal to admit to the real reasons of the Rebellion. It is ingratitude – worse, indifference - on the part of the native towards the fruits of ‘civilisation’
…the collector was overcome by a feeling of helplessness. He realized that there was a whole way of life of the people in India which he could never get to know and which was totally indifferent to him and his concerns. ‘The Company could pack up tomorrow and this fellow would never notice…And not only him…The British could leave and half India wouldn’t notice us leaving just as they didn’t notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them.’
Irony is very well done but other than that, though it carries some flashes of fine writing, as all prominent novels do, it’s lacking in style. It is also lacking in interesting drama which a story set amid such an animated year of history shouldn’t have to be said about; and there are stretches of flat and uninteresting prose that, well, just didn’t do it for me.
This novel is described as a fictional account of the War of Independence / Sepoy Mutiny / Rebellion / What-You-Call-It of 1857. The reading of the novel makes it hard to justify this descriptor without qualified comment. Yes, it’s set around that episode of Indian-British history but the scope of the historical setting is so limited as to fit in a preface; what follows after that bears little resemblance to that momentous year. Which is to say it does not make you feel you’re really reading about 1857 but a long-winded random tale of heroic defence put up by a bunch of brave Brits against odds, against an army of anonymous native shadows.
My edition is 375 pages long. One would think in a novel of this size there was ample space for the inclusion of native point of view, a few characters who could be portrayed talking, walking and brooding like their British counterparts, even if to enrich the story if not to actually represent their point of view. But there is none of that save a half-baked caricature of a lowly crownless ‘prince’, named Hari and his mannequin-like ‘prime minister’. This Hari has had elementary British education, speaks ungrammatical English, and has taken to amassing bric-a-brac of art in imitation of the British masters. He is a dimwit and a lecher – two traits of the Indian character British chroniclers of that time didn’t tire of recording. Oh and there are three more natives who are mentioned more than once – all three serving the Company Bahadur faithfully during the siege, sharing its travails and just being true to their salt. They are Ram, Muhammad, and a burly Sikh named Hookum Singh (no Nanak Singh unfortunately) – and they don’t utter a word throughout the story, just follow orders. How convenient!
The Collector, the official in charge of the British administration in the fictional Krishnapur, gets a timely vision of their eventual success. Consider this symbol of the native seeking liberty:
Suddenly, a shadow swooped at him out of a thin grove of peepul trees he was passing through. He raised a hand to defend himself as something tried to claw and bite him, then swooped away again. In the twilight he saw two green pebbles gazing down at him from beneath a sailor cap. It was the pet monkey he had seen before in the shadow of the Church; the animal had managed to bite and tear itself free of its jacket but the sailor hat had defied all its efforts. Again and again, in a frenzy of irritation it had clutched at that hat on which was written "HMS John Company" . . . but it had remained in place. The string beneath its jaw was too strong.
Book subtitle: I will write down everything I know about a certain family of Bengali immigrants in the United States by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Immigrant anguisBook subtitle: I will write down everything I know about a certain family of Bengali immigrants in the United States by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Immigrant anguish - the toll it takes in settling in an alien country after having bidden adieu to one’s home, family, and culture is what this prize-winning novel is supposed to explore, but it's no more than a superficial complaint about a few signature – and done to death - South Asian issues relating to marriage and paternal expectations: a clichéd immigrant story, I'm afraid to say.
Gogol’s life, and that of every person related to him in any way, from the day of his birth to his divorce at 30, is documented in a long monotone, like a camera trained on a still scene, without zooming in and out, recording every movement the lens catches, accidentally. A final picture emerges in which nothing in particular stands out; and twists that could have been explored more deeply, on a philosophical and humanistic level, such as Gogol’s disillusionment with his dual identity or the aftermath of (Gogol’s father) Ashoke’s death are touched upon perfunctorily or rushed through.
Some cultural comparisons are made as though to validate the enlightened United States at the cost of backward India. This is a familiar line in immigrant success stories: to justify their decision to migrate to the West by heaping scorn on the country or culture of their origin.
But even that's not done intelligently. E.g; Maxine’s mother wears swimsuit on the lakeside; Gogol thinks his mother would never do that. Maxine’s parents don’t bother when Gogol moves into their house and have sex with Maxine; Gogol's parents would have been horrified! It is almost in these words the comparisons are made. Well, of course. We get it.
However, on the bright side, I liked the trope of public vs private names – Nikhil aka Gogol - and how Lahiri relates this private, accidental double-naming to the protagonist's larger identity crisis as an American of Indian background. But this is also wasted and in the end you are left with a lot of impatience welling up inside you.
To Kill a Mockingbird has become such a potent cultural symbol in the Western world, especially in the United States, that you risk being seen as an iTo Kill a Mockingbird has become such a potent cultural symbol in the Western world, especially in the United States, that you risk being seen as an insensitive cynic (view spoiler)[or a heartless bastard (hide spoiler)] if you sound a dissenting note. From a moral standpoint it attacks institutionalised racism against the black people in the United States back in the day when it was common to treat them as subhumans. This is a noble goal, but judged on criteria of literary merit, I contend that there's not much in the book.
Flannery O'Connor called it a "children's novel." She did not intend it as a compliment. The novel suffers from a saccharine dose of sentiment, and it is fair to label it as a black-and-white cliché, literally. I found the characters two-dimensional, singly pursuing their idea without meaningful conflict that could have lent them some humanity. Atticus Finch, a morally upright man and gentle father, is the author's moralising mouthpiece who, supine and misty in the early stages of the story, is catapulted into action when he takes upon himself to defend the black man. If there's more to Atticus, I'm sure to have missed it completely. There is an oft-quoted famous line that goes like this:
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.
A bit of Captain Obvious wouldn't you say? It would have been illuminating if Ms Lee could make the reader climb inside the skin for a walk.
You can split the book into two separate novellas, neatly, like a cake; so big is the disconnect between the first half which reads like an interesting ghost story and the second half which is no more than a reportage on the proceedings of a criminal case in a court of law where a black man is facing (false) charges of rape. Through these court proceedings Ms Lee tries to paint a dismal picture of the times when hapless black people didn't stand a chance once a white man accused them of wrongdoing.
If one is to judge a work of fiction, one is to judge it for the style of its narrative method and what the writer has attempted to do in it; but there's a common fallacy, as I'd call it, of judging art's worth based entirely on the subjective moral urgency of its social content. This is not to say that I do not understand the need to incorporate minority voices that had been suppressed into mute existence for many centuries (But this story, unlike Toni Morrison's novels, is written from the white man's perspective). Quite a few famous post-colonial novels fall in this category: thin on literary craft but still appreciated for their social or political import. So I can understand why an average novel like this one spoke so strongly to the changing zeitgeist and struck a chord with millions of readers.
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