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The Death of Vishnu and the Realities of Life in India

October 11, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

As preparation for this trip to India that I’m on, I gathered as much Indian literature around me as I thought I might be able to carry. I planned to read the books along the journey and then to leave them or share them with other travelers on the way. But one book, The Death of Vishnu called me to read it before I even left for the US and I’m so glad I did.

The Quiet Death of Contemporary Literature

The reason I stopped reading most literary magazines and why I’m very careful about what books I spend my time on is a trend toward complete lifelessness in much contemporary fiction as one character (usually a thinly veiled stand in for the author) contemplates his or her navel as not much happens. It’s all meant to be portentous or something but usually the connections are only in the author’s mind and not the page and the readers are left flat.

The flooding of the literary market with these kinds of stories and books leaves me adrift in a sea where I’m looking for meaning in all this quiet contemplation (a state of being I deeply love) but because the meaning is not actually processed enough to be communicated, most contemporary quiet fiction makes me feel desperately lonely and disconnected from humanity.

The Death of Vishnu is the exact opposite of that experience. Instead, the story of an impoverished man dying on the steps of an apartment building as the building’s residents go about their daily lives is rich in social commentary, quotidian detail (of the informative type), mythological importance, and even humanity. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

Life in India

Mind you, I’ve been out of the enclave that houses the world’s embassies to Delhi for almost one full day, so everything I purport to know about real life in India is deeply flawed, but having read The Death of Vishnu before arriving, I feel like I understand everything better.

In The Death of Vishnu, the households of the apartment are supported by a range of people from the cigarette walla (who brings cigarettes) to the ganga (who brings milk) to Vishnu, the man who washes the families’ dishes. During the few days Vishnu is dying on the steps, we get to know two Hindu families (who are quarreling over such things as the amount of water they can pull from the kitchen they share), a Muslim family (whose son is carrying on a Romeo and Juliet type romance with the daughter of one of the Hindu families and whose father has been exploring enlightenment in other religions), an older man (who lives entirely wrapped in the memory of the woman he loved), and Vishnu (who may or may not be the reincarnation of the god Vishnu).

The details of life I encountered in this book, from the petty squabbles and keeping up with the Joneses of a ladies’ poker party to the way the ambulance system functions (where first the ambulance needs to be paid for and then the payment of resulting medical services guaranteed before the patient can even be removed from the premises) were astounding. I couldn’t believe the way the author packed so much life into so few days. And yes, the story overall is quiet with its petty squabbles and small joys, but the way the author fits the entirety of these characters’ lives into these few pages becomes an amazing reminder that all of these small things are the entirety of life for most of us, no matter where we live.

Halfway around the world from where I belong, I’m finding those small details of the lives of others completely fascinating. From the way the young, thin rickshaw driver pedaled my mom and me around a small section of Old Delhi yesterday—displaying an assuredness that showed how well he could navigate any system and made me imagine how he could (if he would want to) break out of what seemed to me to be a life of hand to mouth existence—to the ingenuity displayed by a group of young men when our bus was blocked into a tight curve by a car—they rocked the car to the point that it was moved out of the way—I feel like there is so much to learn from careful observation of life—both abroad and at home.

Yesterday I saw crazy amounts of wire strewn across tiny streets. I saw crowds of people gathered around watching us watching them. I saw couples on motorbikes and goats staked to the side of the road before they would be eaten. I also saw that this is a country in which things are still repaired rather than being replaced and how many people are employed to do a job that in the US we’d ask one to do. That last bit made me wonder if full employment, or at least the sharing out of some work, doesn’t make everyone happier because the responsibilities are shared and each person in the system is valued. I saw people begging on the streets and hawkers selling everything from washcloths to coconuts in traffic.

Making Meaning of it All

I don’t have the answers to what any of life here, or life in the US, means. And I don’t want to pretend here that I do. But one of the things I learned from reading The Death of Vishnu is that by providing enough pertinent detail, readers can make their own meaning. So when I think that life is missing from much contemporary fiction, maybe what I mean is that detail of experience is missing. Or that we’re so busy listing what’s in a character’s bedroom (a common writing prompt) that we fail to then let him experience life outside of that bedroom—something that would make all of those previous details have import.

Mythological Underpinnings

One thing the author of The Death of Vishnu relies on to add richness to this story is a relationship to the Bhagavad Gita a sacred Hindu text. And I feel like there are aspects of this book I would have cherished all the more if I were at all familiar with that text. But the author does a wonderful job of weaving in enough information that I could follow along, even if I missed a majority of the allusions. I miss this kind of writing, where one story is leveraged on another, older story. It’s something I tried to do in Polska, 1994 by tying aspects of Magda’s journey to moments in Christ’s life. I don’t think most readers will take that from my book, but for those who do, the meaning will be even greater.

On Being Vague in Book Reviews

You’ll notice I’ve named only one character here and not even the author. That’s the perils of being without my books. I made notes somewhere about all of those things so I’d have them with me, but it’s the middle of the night here and I’d probably wake my mom if I went looking for them. Oh, and I don’t have much internet access, so I’m forced to rely on the (not-so) trusty memory bank.

What I hope for you is that if you’re at all interested in life in India or if you want to know how to make a quiet story read loud, you’ll open this book and discover its characters and all the life therein for yourself. I promise it will be worth your time.

Leave of Absence

While I’m very glad that I read The Death of Vishnu in the US and have the book at home in my collection to read and re-read, I’m now back to reading the novels I had little enough confidence in that I thought I could leave them at home. If I get lucky and find enough joy in one of them (and an internet connection to boot), I’ll share them with you here. And if not, I’ll see you all in November. Thanks for sharing books, and the world, with me.

For other perspectives on what I read while in India, read my experiences of Heat and Dust and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall.

Exploring the Extraordinary with The Calcutta Chromosome

August 31, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

I started reading The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery by Amitav Ghosh because I’ll be traveling to India in just over a month. The book had been in my to-read pile for ages and I’d heard good things about it, I just wasn’t ready to read it… until now. And what I found in those pages made me glad I waited to read it, because if I had read this book at any other time, I would have missed what became the central lesson of the book for me: thinking beyond the expected.

Blowing Apart Genre

I have to admit, this book was really slow going for the first half. The first chapter feels like it describes a semi-dystopian future where Antar is scanning relics of the past. He soon recognizes an ID card of someone he once knew in India. Then we are plopped down in 1995 where a man named Murugan is on the trail of a British scientist from 100 years before (which felt like a nonfiction account of curing malaria). Then the story flashes to that scientist. Then we hear of another scientist at the same period (whose subplot feels like a mystery novel). And a writer (ghost story).

There are some connective threads between these stories–it’s not like I had no idea where we were going–but I soon found myself wondering why Ghosh strung these stories together. Each was interesting on its own, but I found the disconnection exhausting and couldn’t read more than one (short) chapter a night.

“You also have to remember that she wasn’t hampered by the sort of stuff that might slow down someone who was conventionally trained: she wasn’t carrying a shit-load of theory in her head, she didn’t have to write papers or construct proofs… She didn’t care about formal classifications… She was working toward something altogether different.” – Amitav Ghosh

Somewhere in the middle I saw those threads start to form a whole and I realized it was my expectation of this book that was standing in my way. I didn’t understand the genre because it was unlike any genre I’d read before. It was many genres woven together to form this one new way of telling a story that was perfect for this book. The mishmash was intentional and had I been more open to the novelty of experience, I might have seen what Ghosh was doing earlier. Either way, I’m glad I didn’t quit reading.

I absolutely will not tell you more about this book because I feel like the discovery is part of the joy. Just know that to best enjoy this book, I hope you will surrender to it earlier and with less fight than I did. Love it for what it is.

The Extraordinary in My Own Life

Bloom: I can’t wake up next to another stranger, who thinks they know me, or even wants to know me, cause I don’t know – who – I’m thirty five years old, and I, I’m useless, I’m crippled, I don’t, I’ve only ever lived life through these roles that aren’t me, that are written for me by you.
Stephen: Tell me what you want.
Bloom: Why? So you can write me a role in a story where I get it? You’re not listening to me. I want a real… thing, I wanna do things how I don’t know are gonna work out, a-I, want, a…
Stephen: You want an unwritten life.

In The Brothers Bloom (which happens to be one of my favorite movies), Bloom tells Stephen (his older brother who had been scripting cons for them throughout their lives) that what he wants most is an “unwritten life.” That phrase has stuck with me ever since 2008 when I first saw the movie, because it captured something I longed for so desperately but could never name.

My parents would tell you that I was always going to live life on my terms. Whether it was going to preschool in my grandmother’s pumps or the clown costume I frequently wore for years after that. My decision to become a teen rebel at 12 (something I turned right around to become conservative at 17, just when one group of friends was only starting to rebel). They wouldn’t know about the day I stood on an unremarkable street corner in Poland fingering the passport in my pocket and dreaming of running away to create a new, anonymous life in Paris. But they shook their heads and supported me when at 19 I decided I wanted to buy a house. So when I started my MFA in creative writing, I’m sure the only thing that would have surprised them is if I wasn’t surprising them.

But inside, where it counts, and in clutch moments where I feel like I have the choice to follow an extraordinary life, I feel like I panic and then fail. Part of my problem is that always being on the outside of expectations is exhausting. Part of it is that at times I find myself living in opposition to expectation rather than figuring out what I really want to do. And part of it is that deep in my heart I long to be normal, too. I want a husband and a house and a dog. I want to have kids and a beach house and to be able to afford all of it. But I still want that sense that I am following my own path.

This struggle has come into sharp relief lately when I’ve come to a place where, after a few years of just trying to make it day to day, I actually have some choices. I have a job that I can in many ways make whatever I want. I have a literary career that could possibly flourish if I don’t let it languish. I am married to an artist who understands how important it is to nourish that crazy burst of inspiration in my soul. And still I feel like I am failing myself.

I cannot tell you how many times recently someone has suggested that I could make a go of it as purely a novelist–kind people who would be thrilled to see me follow my dreams. And my answer is always that I can’t. Not because I don’t want to but because I don’t want the pressure. I want to write without having to worry about sales or what people think. And so I limit that dream because I know how much I need to be me, even if it’s in a private way that only I see.

But the pressure to be extraordinary on the outside–to make my own rules and just move–is building inside me.

What Happens Next

I don’t know what happens next. I leave for India–a country I’ve dreamed of but never thought I’d get to–in October. I will continue working to pay the mortgage on my house. I might even take a few risks and see how far I can actually stretch the definitions of that job. And I will go back to writing–the thing that nourishes me and I’ve neglected for far too long.

Perhaps at Sarnath I’ll have some Buddhist revelation. Or I’ll have a Lovecraftian moment that will change the entire future of the world. Whatever happens, I hope I have the strength to start to do things in my own way again and to love myself the way I am. Because I don’t know what an extraordinary life means to me yet, but I do know I’ll gladly settle for an unwritten one.

If you want to dig into this world, pick up a copy of The Calcutta Chromosome from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Layers of Linguistic Meaning in Empire of Signs by Roland Barthes

December 8, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA 6 Comments

I’ve been writing long enough to notice some patterns in my process. Recently I’ve been in the “read big thinkers because you’re ready to take a big leap” phase. It has something to do with the morass that my second novel has become over the last three years. Enter Empire of Signs by Roland Barthes.

As a literary theorist and semiotician, Barthes writes a lot about signs, and reading his work always gets me excited about the ways we as writers, readers, and humans construct meaning. So although this book contains interesting observations about Japan, it was the meta-level reading that really interested me.

Layers of Meaning Across Languages

One of the first things I noticed when opening this book, is that it had been heavily annotated by its previous owner, Nobuko Yamasaki, a Japanese student at Cornell. What should have been clean white pages with black type were instead highlighted in yellow and underlined in various colors of pencil and pen. And there were notes scribbled in the margins. In Japanese.

As I added my own notes to the pages, all I could think about was how much Barthes would love this. Here was a book about Japan, written in French, translated to English, and then Nobuko translated some of the more difficult words back into her language. In three separate language we are using characters to assign meaning to words that then assigned meaning to a culture. And Nobuko’s notes were making me reconsider not only Barthes’ observations and the translation, but my own language as well. When she circles “infinite” and writes “So many negative words,” I see a prefix I had never even considered.

When I found reproductions of Barthes’ own translational notations reproduced inside the book, I felt a kinship for him–that Barthes, Nobuko, and I were all on equal footing in this world as we tried to make meaning and expand our understanding of the world.

I thought about the connotations of words that would be lost and gained as they were translated across all these cultures and languages, and the richness of that experience made me happy. Of course some meaning would be lost along the way, but an equal amount would be gained. A real linguistic nerd (I’m only a pseudo nerd in this area) could tell you about how the imprints the writer, translator, and readers left as we transformed objects into language are affected by our respective cultures. It’s a conversation I wish I could have with Barthes.

On Japan and Japanese Culture

Living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, I feel like I am surrounded by Japanese culture and that I understand it. Aside from Narita Airport, I haven’t actually been, but I am surrounded by friends who have (my mom just got back from Japan a few weeks ago) and the imprints of Japanese culture from decades of immigration on Seattle abound. Reading this book, I realized that I wasn’t actually as familiar with Japanese culture as I thought I was. By looking at the country through the eyes of a Frenchman, I realized I was only familiar with other people’s interpretations of the culture. I’ve traveled enough to know that cultural understanding grows with time and direct experience, and I was grateful for that reminder.

Of course, Barthes can only recount the Japanese culture through his own eyes as well, but I found from reading his thoughts on everything from Japanese architecture to the way gifts are packaged and exchanged, I learned more about my own slanted and limited views.

Haiku

“Haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that! with a movement so immediate (so stripped of any mediation: that of knowledge, of nomination, or even of possession) that what is designated is the very inanity of any classification of the object… in accordance with the spirit of Zen” – Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs

Haiku is a form I’ve been increasingly interested in as I write more poetry. By looking at this form from a linguistic perspective, Barthes helped me understand the construction and how to write better. He showed me that I was trying to express deep emotion in a form that might not be suited for it. That doesn’t mean I won’t try, but it does change how I will play with the language.

Because of the inability to strip out our inherent cultural views, I did find myself doubting some of Barthes’ interpretations, but it doesn’t matter, because I can learn from the way he approaches the subject. I simply have to remember that we all have our cultural frames that we bring with us and not blindly accept the teachings of others as I sometimes want to do.

I realize I have told you little of the book itself. That is intentional. Although I think Barthes would have enjoyed the idea of the extra layer of meaning a reviewer adds to the work by interpreting it, I also think I’m too far from the text. Although the meaning would not get watered down (one thing I’ve learned from Barthes is that meaning like energy doesn’t dilute, instead it changes). I can signify the book, but I cannot represent it.

If you want to return to the source material, pick up a copy of Empire of Signs from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Road Home Asks: Who Are We On the Inside?

September 29, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I understand why we use stereotypes. They are easy shorthand in a world where we don’t want to take the time to look deeply at the people around us–beyond their clothes and their gender and the color of their skin. But running around judging each other based on these exterior factors means we miss the richness of the lives around us. Rahul Gandotra’s short film The Road Home beautifully exposes this paradox.

The film starts with a young boy running away from boarding school in the Himalayas. And it’s easy to assume from his brown skin that he belongs there, but his blue polo and nattily knotted sweater stand out. It soon becomes clear that this boy, Pico, doesn’t speak Hindi at all and he’s running home to England. He hires a local cab driver (Kuldeep) to drive him to New Delhi but Kuldeep hassles him about not knowing his heritage so Pico decides to walk the rest of the way. Along his journey, we start to see how out of place Pico really is–both in India and the world.

“But I Don’t Feel Indian Inside”

Director Gandotra is a true third culture kid having grown up in eight different countries and the screenplay (co-written by Gandotra and Milja Fenger) captures that feeling of being from everywhere and nowhere.

That third culture kid feeling (or as Pico Iyer calls it, The Global Soul) is one I share but not one I talk about very often because I feel like there are so few people who truly understand it. My family is white and I was born in Idaho, but I spent time in Chile growing up and my brother learned to read in Spanish before English. I crave hard white rolls from a certain German bakery and when I say Neruda speaks to my soul, I mean something slightly different than a lot of people do. When I read Isabel Allende’s memoir of exile, My Invented Country I felt that I too had invented Chile, at least in my memories. And then there’s the time I spent in Poland…

I am an American and I mean that in the richest possible way. And sometimes I feel like I have more in common with the Somali girls giggling in the mall in their half-traditional, half-American outfits than I do with the woman at the pretzel shop. But I suppose I don’t know her story either. I never thought to ask.

What Does “Worldly” Mean to You?

In The Road Home when Pico has to be taught how to eat daal by a French woman named Marie, I felt for him and how out of place he was. Then we learn that Pico’s father has sent him away so that he’ll have the proper credentials to get into the London School of Economics and later Harvard so that he can become an international businessman. There was something so elite about it all and yet it rang true. Pico’s experience abroad was a check box for admissions, but he wasn’t ever going to be expected to mix with the locals just as we sometimes travel abroad and have drinks at the Hilton where the bartender speaks our language.

I thought for a moment that I hadn’t aimed high enough with my own admissions process, but I didn’t want to see the world from that pinnacle either, I wanted to be part of it.

When Pico runs into a British couple on holiday. They assume that he’s local and the man tries to speak to him in Hindi. It’s only when the woman addresses him in British English and Pico replies with an accent that’s much more posh than hers that we see he doesn’t fit in in England either–at least not where the couple comes from. He is out of place everywhere.

“What’s So Wrong With Being Indian?”

As I’m writing this, it’s been barely a week since the first Indian American Miss America debacle. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just imagine a group of people who can only see “other” and how that must terrify them. Poor knowledge of geography and racist comments aside (not that it’s easy to ignore either), these events reminded me how one-dimensional we ask the people around us to be, and I wonder how far we can really get as a world when we fail to see the richness of experience and heritage in other human beings.

So when Marie asks Pico, “What’s so wrong with being Indian?” and in return he asks, “What’s so wrong with being English?” what’s important is that Pico isn’t either. He’s both, and the beauty of this film is how he starts to find that unique blend of his own identity. I’ve spoiled most of the major plot points for you, but this film isn’t about what happens, like the best literary fiction, it’s about how the moments are portrayed. Go watch it. You might be surprised how much you can learn about yourself in only 23 minutes.

Exploring The Global Soul with Pico Iyer

June 23, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

Readers of this blog will know that I almost never write about nonfiction, but in reading My Bookstore, I fell for the writing of Pico Iyer and I wanted to know more about his jet-setting lifestyle. The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home did not disappoint. In fact, the book, like the very best literature, helped me understand something fundamental about who I am. More on that later.

What is the Global Soul?

Iyer posits that globalization is turning us into transnational villagers. It’s certainly true of him, a man of Indian descent, born in England, raised in the US, and living in Japan. Plus he travels widely. What Iyer seems most interested in are these amazing confluences of culture like LAX where not only do peoples from all nations exist at one moment as they travel through, but it’s also a place where Ethiopians from opposite sides of a civil war can find themselves working together.

Iyer is also interested in how travel and motion are breaking down the traditional national barriers. He introduces us to his friend who rests in Hong Kong but seems to live in transit between European, American, and Asian offices.

All of these people are global souls, according to Iyer, but I wondered often what was the difference between them and my Ukrainian and Welsh great-grandparents who came to live in America. Certainly travel is faster now, but this mixing of cultures is not new. But either way, the sociologist in me enjoyed his stories of how cultures come together and how the way people look is no longer a good indicator of where they come from.

My Global Soul

“I begin to feel increasingly at home in big cities… Perhaps because big cities have become the place where people of different backgrounds tend to congregate.” – Kazuo Ishiguro

Born in Idaho, I lived in Chile for all of second grade. I remember thinking before we traveled there that everything was going to be exactly the same as at home, except for upside down. I was neither wrong nor right about that. In Chile I met people who were like me but not and I learned another tongue. Because I was with my family, it all felt like home. I did feel somewhat different in that I was blonde and we were privileged under the dictatorship by our American nationality.

“Almost any immigrant who arrives today at the place he’s hoped for will find it’s become somewhere else.” – Pico Iyer

Later, when I lived in Poland on high school exchange, I also felt at home even though I was with a new group of people in a new country and speaking a new language. This opportunity to see people in their own cultures made me accept a wide variety of norms instead of looking at them as alien. I learned to observe and interpret instead of judge, something that I pride myself on now.

“A true cosmopolitan, after all, is not someone who’s traveled a lot so much as someone who can appreciate what it feels like to be Other.” – Pico Iyer.

I settled in Seattle and we’ve chosen for a lot of reasons to stay here for now. Sometimes the world calls to me and we travel, but I have this sense that home is inside of me. I was talking with my dad about it as he visits this weekend and about whether home really is where the heart is, but some of my closest friends live in Asia or Australia or Europe or the Middle East. The people I love live in Seattle. They also live in Moscow and Boise, Austin, DC, Denver, Rochester, Portland, and somewhere in Maine. You can even find one or two in LA, Boston, and Richmond. So I can’t say that having my people around me is what makes a home for me. That would make my home the Internet, but I don’t accept that. I really do think that home is a sense of self and that can be on any continent or even in transit.

“One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory.” – Pico Iyer

Bodies Rest and Motion

That said, we are in constant motion and I wonder whether that activity more than anything keeps us from feeling restful and settled. I read portions of this book in Cal Anderson Park and in the Frye Art Museum. I turned some of the 300 or so pages in various rooms in my house, on the bus, and in the car (nasty habit I should stop). Even as a fast reader, I couldn’t find a few hours of peace to just read this book in one place. I realized as I started counting the locations I read this book how important those solid blocks of time are for me, no matter what continent they are on. Some of the best moments of my life were walking through Rovinj, Croatia with my husband when we had nowhere to be.

“The unhappiest people I know these days are often the ones in motion, encouraged to search for a utopia outside themselves.” – Pico Iyer

I learned from this book about how much home is inside of me. I learned about other cultures that share values with me that don’t quite conform to American norms (particularly the Japanese sense of private passions and public face). And I learned that I like my life.

The book is a bit dated, it was written in 2000 and the Hong Kong he visited was British Hong Kong, although not a lot had changed when I visited eight years later. But a lot of the principles of the book hold true. We are still in motion. We are still converging, even if we always were. I am grateful that our lives converge, dear readers, in person and over the Internet. I’m glad that we can share our love of books.

I think you’ll enjoy reading about how Canada is striving for a mosaic rather than a melting pot. You’ll be intrigued by the parallels between refugees and businessmen and perhaps concerned by shopping malls that contain so many facets of daily life you never need to leave them. You might even find a mini essay on what makes Ondaatje so enjoyable.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Global Soul from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.