Books Archives - Page 20 of 53 - A Geography of Reading

Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire and the Cartography of a Story

November 23, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 3 Comments

An unexpected side effect of world travel is a complete inability to read for about three weeks. It’s not that I’ve gone blind or can’t actually understand words (I read lots of words for work), but I haven’t been able to sink in and engage with them in any way that feels personally meaningful since I set my book down on the flight from Delhi to Frankfurt (just to get a little sleep) and failed to ever pick it up again. I think my brain has simply been too busy absorbing and processing the trip to do anything else. Still, reading is a major way that I interact with the world and I finally found myself desperate to read something, anything, that I could immerse my busy brain into. So when I found Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean in a tiny used bookstore in Cannon Beach, OR, it was like finding fate.

Like many people, I read and loved A River Runs Through It, and I was hoping Maclean’s special blend of journalistic clarity and lyrical insight would fix my problem. And it did. This book opened up a floodgate of thoughts about the shape of narrative, what makes a voice, and how to achieve greatness in art. Come with me on the journey to Mann Gulch where so many smokejumpers died that day. There’s a lot we can learn from their tragedy, and only some of it is about forest fires.

Young Men and Fire

“A storyteller, unlike a historian, must follow compassion wherever it leads him. He must be able to accompany his characters, even into smoke and fire, and bear witness to what they thought and felt even when they themselves no longer know.” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

On an August day in 1949, fifteen smokejumpers landed in Mann Gulch northeast of Helena, Montana. Two hours later, only three of those men were still alive: foreman Wag Dodge (who survived thanks to a controversial “escape fire” he set), Walter Rumsey, and Robert Sallee. The tragedy was so great and so unusual that it became a part of smokejumping legend. It also tugged at Norman Maclean’s mind from the time he visited to the fire to the end of his life.

The Cartography of a Story

“This is a story in which cartography and plot are much the same thing” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

The story (and Maclean’s writing of it) so pulled at me that it not only reignited my love for reading, it also pulled me to sit down and draw what was happening in the narrative because there is mastery in his construction.

Every story has a heart, but we writers often either don’t know where the heart is or we want to go straight for it. If Maclean had written a linear narrative that started with the question of whether Dodge’s escape fire was responsible for the deaths of his men, not only would it be a very different book (much more report-like), it would also appeal only to an audience who already understood all of the components.

“For a long time, our story becomes the story of trying to find it” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

Instead, Maclean approaches that central question from all of the angles a layperson needs to understand in order to comprehend that the question of Dodge’s culpability is not the only question at all. He lays out the background of the smokejumping program and introduces us to the men who were there that day and how their individual personalities might hint at the reasons behind the outcome. He gives us enough information about the geology to understand that the men were trapped in a gulch with a 76 degree slope. He explains the science of fire and what turns a forest fire into a 2,000 degree blowup racing up a slope.

“In this story of the outside world and the inside world with a fire between, the outside world of little screwups recedes now for a few hours to be taken over by the inside world of blowups” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

Between these elements, Maclean gets far enough into the story to whet our appetites but not to satiate them—at least not yet. After all the straightforward evidence about the conditions and leadup are on the page, Maclean doubles back and explores how the winds racing up canyon could have shaped and directed the fire which changes our understanding of the events. And just when you think you have it all down, Maclean attacks that narrative from one more completely different and unexpected direction—memory—he questions all the accounts he’s already laid out.

Narrative Tension

“[A] forest fire is not all a big roar behind you getting closer—a dangerous part of it is very sneaky and may actually have sneaked out ahead of you or is trying to and doesn’t roar until it is about to close in on you.” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

The result of Maclean’s structure is an incredible amount of tension and richness in the narrative. Some of it is the really hot center of the tragedy and some of it is the sneaky smoldering of a log before it ignites. But not only do we have enough information to immerse ourselves in the story, we have enough to become embroiled in some of the lasting debates about exactly where Rumsey and Sallee escaped and whether Dodge’s fire, though meant to save his men, actually caused their deaths.

The other thing about narrative tension is that it can lead us writers to rush what we’re doing. Here Maclean shows us the rewards of patience in the process of writing. As he was researching the book, he was constantly delayed because of the remote location of the site and because it’s only reasonably accessible in the summers. At one point he writes, “So it had taken us three years to locate two places on the ground.” Maclean was not a young man when he wrote this book, in fact he died while writing it, although it’s so beautifully done you’d never know it. But this book made me realize that allowing the story to emerge in its own time and in its own way is worth every second and every decade.

Stalling Time

“[T]here is no story, certainly no ending to a story, that can be found by communicating with the living who loved the young who are dead, at least none that I am qualified to pursue. A story at a minimum requires movement, and with those who loved those who died, nothing has moved.” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

In the end, this book is the story of a terrible tragedy. It might be the story of whether Dodge is culpable, or it might be the story of something inescapable. One of the things we’re trained to do as writers is to deeply inhabit a tense moment by stalling time with added detail and short side narratives. It’s a way to pull a reader in and to give them the satisfaction of more levels of information while they’re captives of their own interest in the story.

On Veteran’s Day this year, Steve Inskeep shared an interview with the parents of a Marine about what it felt like to be notified of his death. Inskeep remarks that the father seems unable to actually get down the stairs as he keeps taking the story back into Nathan McHone’s childhood and young life.

Writers will recognize this as the stretching of time and use of the reader’s enthrallment in the tension of that moment to pull them deeper into the story that I just described. The father in this recording is both storyteller and story audience as he reminisces about his son. It’s a poignant moment listening to him resist the notification of death as he inhabits the moments his son was still alive. Equally poignant is the sound of the mother’s voice as she rushes him to the part of the story where they open the door and receive the notification.

As a writer, this recording is instructive. Because of course the McHone’s are still stuck inside the recent story of the loss of their son. But when Maclean runs into this when interviewing the parents of one of the Mann Gulch victims, he finds that the father cannot get beyond the story of the loss. He cannot move the story forward. And Maclean could have gone deeper into that story then, but he would have become mired in it. This was an excellent reminder for me that although there are many moments that call (and likely deserve) to be stretched and explored, my job as a writer is to ruthlessly follow the movement of the larger narrative.

The Beauty of Clean Prose and Finding Your Voice

“In retrospect I think the experience of listening to me recite the Westminster Catechism influenced [my father’s] own literary style, and perhaps even mine in later times.” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

As I wrote earlier, Maclean’s prose is what brought me to this book. Though I’ve a tortured relationship with Hemingway, there is something about a journalist who can incorporate lyricism that leads to some of my favorite writing. You can see some of Maclean’s religious upbringing peeking through the language and preoccupations of the following gorgeous sentence:

“So this story is a test of its own belief—that in this cockeyed world there are shapes and designs, if only we have some curiosity, training, and compassion and take care not to lie or be sentimental.” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

This book, and a very important conversation I had with a very good friend this week, haven had me thinking about voice all week. I’m only starting to realize that it’s the tiny “imperfections” in our voices that make them so beautiful. Maclean was a moral man who was not afraid to wax metaphoric about the woods or fire. I’m sure a newspaper editor would have edited much of that out, but it’s also what makes his voice. I’ve incorporated syntax from every language I’ve learned and use that to slow down and speed up my sentences (often without realizing it). And those languages have also taught me to look at the roots of words and sometimes use the one that’s just off from expected.

My point here is that as a writer, I hope you will pay close attention to the voices of other writers, and then come back and learn to appreciate what makes yours uniquely beautiful.

Writing into the Heat

Maclean was haunted by this story because of his history of working on a fireline and later of seeing up close some of the terrible aftermath of the Mann Gulch fire.

For me this book is also personal. My dad flew smokejumpers out of Missoula and then became a forest economist—a profession with an equally important, if less dangerous, relationship with forest fires. The other woodsman in my life, my brother, taught me what a scree slope is and obliges me with lectures on geology whenever I ask. As I was reading this book, I felt like I was coming closer not only to understanding what happened that terrible day and to the components of amazing writing. I also felt closer to my dad and brother. When you write into a story that you feel deeply, that is when you have the power touch someone else deeply.

“Our story about the Mann Gulch fire obviously makes it hard on itself by trying to find its true ending.” – Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

At the end of this book, Maclean does finally offer an opinion on whether Dodge’s fire killed his men. But only then did I realize how little that one tiny fact mattered. The real story of Young Men and Fire can only be understood as bigger than any of the facts. Bigger, even, than all of us put together.

If you want to closely study Norman Maclean’s storytelling or even just learn more about the Mann Gulch fire, pick up a copy of Young Men and Fire from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Predestination and Identity in The Time Traveler’s Wife

October 24, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 4 Comments

I finally picked up The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger as a throwaway book for my trip to India. I’d heard so much about the book and the movie, but I just didn’t think it would be my thing. But reading this book in India had a lot more meaning for me than reading it at any other time would have.

See, I’m on a little bit of a spiritual quest here.

That isn’t why I said yes when my mom suggested traveling to India, but being here has triggered all kinds of memories and desires and spirituality that I’d let lie dormant for a very long time so in the story of Clare and Henry as they encounter each other throughout time, I couldn’t help but think about predestination and reincarnation and who I’m meant to be.

Clare and Henry

First let’s talk about the book. Henry first meets Clare when she’s a little girl. He’s got a genetic mutation that sends him traveling through time at the slightest stress and he meets her many times over the years as she ages. Sometimes he is older when he meets her and sometimes younger, because he’s drawn to moments from different times in his life. There are rules to time travel, though, and Henry can never reveal the future to Clare, the woman who will become his wife.

There was so much set in this book, that I really did start to wonder about predestination. Although Henry sometimes violates the rules a little (with no real consequences), he never veers from the path of his and Clare’s relationship. I liked that to a certain extent, but it also made me feel boxed in. I loved that they seemed to belong to one another throughout time (and would have liked it more had this book veered into reincarnation), but I longed to see what would happen if they started their relationship earlier or changed something (anything) up to see if their lives together could be better or longer (although what I thought was sweetest about the film About Time which is also about time travel and I liked better was the fact that the main character there just wants to relive the best moments of his life).

Predestination in Real Life

So here I am in Varanasi, the holiest city in India (if not the world) and I’m wondering if there is in fact a set path for each of us. I’m traveling with one woman who near the beginning of the trip was waxing lyrical about the good old days when she never wore a bra. It seemed as though she had become more conservative with age, although she had regrets. Then one day she wanted to go swimming and she jumped into the water in her t-shirt and panties and I wondered if she was finding a bit of that person she used to be.

Another fellow traveler was in the Peace Corps in India in the 1960s and I’ve been watching him dig into the languages he used to know (he’s less rusty than I am at any of mine), eat the foods he missed, and even rediscover some memories of trips he had taken way back when. It seems like he’s finding the person he once was too.

As for me, I first fell in love with the idea of India in undergrad as I took some classes in non-western art and architecture. I saw images of Khajuraho. And of Varanasi.

I even made a sculpture that resembles the offerings made to the river. And then life happened and I read books with Buddhist leanings but failed to really investigate those pulls. I ate Indian food occasionally and even visited a Gurudwara when my Indian best friends got married. But none of it was really about finding what called to me about India or who that person was who used to dream of visiting the birthplace of Hinduism and Buddhism.

My Identity

Last night I made an offering to the River Ganges. And this morning I watched the sun rise over her banks. I visited Sarnath, where the Buddha first declared his enlightenment.

And I don’t know who I am yet. I may never know fully who I am meant to be. But I do know that the things and places that called to me so long ago deserve investigation. I owe that to me. And because becoming a fuller person and allowing myself the curiosity to explore the world makes me a better wife, friend, and person, I owe that to everyone else too.

It might be a while before I embark on my next transcontinental examination of self, but someday you will find me doing the following: revisiting the feeling of the mists and butterflies of Iguacu Falls, peering into ancient volcanoes in Africa, and walking the streets of an ancient Italian hill town. With any luck, I’ll get to share all of those adventures and more with my husband. I may not ever know what any of those strong pulls mean, but I’ll never find out from the comfort of my couch.

I’m leaving The Time Traveler’s Wife in India, but I’m not sorry I read it. What experiences have you had with intersections of who you are and who you used to be? I’d love to hear your stories.

Reading Heat and Dust in the Dusty Heat of India

October 15, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

One of the things I was most afraid of in coming to India was replicating the colonial experience. This frightened me because I despise the exploitation of other peoples and cultures and I thought with my oh-so-white skin and complete lack of skill with local languages and norms that I could not avoid being seen as one of those colonizers who expects to be treated as more and better. It also frightened me because I thought I might grow to like it.

As a result, and as I’ve mentioned before, I steered away from bringing along books written from the British perspective (although I’ve read many before). Except one. I brought along Booker Prize winning Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala even though the prize, the cover imagery, and the jacket description all suggested it was England-approved. But the book was thin and I read so few prize-winning books (usually by choice) and I thought I’d muddle through whatever elitist whatnot the book might offer.

I’m so glad I was wrong.

Two Perspectives on India

Although there is one storyline in this book about a bored British housewife, Olivia, in 1923 India, it’s complemented perfectly by the story of Olivia’s step-granddaughter who visits a very different India in the 1970s to uncover the story of how and why Olivia ran away with an Indian royal.

Olivia’s story is actually a tale about a woman who’s questioning all the British convention she encounters as a newlywed who is first encountering British India. She doesn’t like the British society and she’s not afraid to act according to her own ideals. As much as I sometimes questioned her judgment—running off to spend all day nearly every day with a married Indian Nawab (I think this is a prince) without (and without telling) her husband—I admired her spirit—refusing to summer in Shimla just because that’s what the British ladies were expected to do.

As Olivia’s story unfolds, so does that of her granddaughter and here is where Jhabvala displays real mastery, because the two women experience many similar events at similar points in the narrative (from festivals to intrusions of unwanted guests and more) which could become quite cloying. Instead, because Jhabvala has made these stories just different enough, the intersections feel mystical and preordained and as I was reading the book I kept wondering if these two generations would fall into the same trap.

India in Real Life

My own perspective on India is much closer to Olivia’s granddaughter, in part because the India she encounters is much closer to the one I see during the day—the bustling emerging economy that’s making its own rules along the way, the street markets and roaming cows, the people who look as though they can repair anything (many things which an American would throw away), and the people who live in any spare space of traffic median they can find.

“For the first time I understood—I felt—the Hindu fear of pollution. I went home and bathed rigorously, rinsing myself over and over again. I was afraid. Pollution—infection—seemed everywhere; those flies could easily have carried it from her to me.” – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I refuse to judge the country based on traffic that scares me and mounds of garbage swept to the side of the street. It is different, but it should be different, because there’d be no point in traveling all this way if it was the same. I will not drink the water or eat the street food, but there are over a billion people here who are making the country what they want it to be. Don’t we all have some level of pollution or other problem we want to fix?

But that is not all of India. As an American tourist in Jaipur, I am staying in a hotel that used to be the residence of the prime minister of Jaipur where I swim in a large pool overlooked by peacocks and where an enormous staff is employed to cater to any need I might have and then disappear. Olivia’s set, though likely not Olivia herself, would have been at their most comfortable here behind the walls that separate us from the city.

Last night we dined with a local family in their palace in the old town of Jaipur. They are relatives (distant I think) of the Maharajah and their ancestors moved into the home in the 1760s. Nestled deep inside one of the pink blocks of market stalls and small shops, this home with three luscious courtyards houses several brothers and their families along with five dogs and a tortoise. They live behind walls and glass thick enough to block out the market noise in rooms beautiful in their simplicity that are decorated with family artifacts like pictures of the Maharajah and the Mountbattens as well as the skins and heads of leopards and tigers (decor it seemed as though our gracious hosts would not have chosen for themselves, but here family artifacts and history matter).

Today we’ll go into the jungle at Rathambore to hunt tigers with our cameras. I didn’t bring any more books about tiger hunting, so I’ll be reading a spiritual text in preparation for our visit to Varanasi or maybe a detective novel set in Mumbai.

How India is Changing Me

“She began to write to Marcia, but Marcia was in Paris and it was impossible to explain anything from here to there.” – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I’m not sure I’m doing a good job of conveying my experiences, partly because I’m still so far inside of them and things change every day, but I’ll try.

In Heat and Dust, Jhabvala writes, “India changes people,” and I’ve been reflecting on what that means for me. I am aware here of never feeling like I belong anywhere. I don’t know the streets well enough to wander then, and even if I did I’d be an object of curiosity. And the luxurious expat lifestyle (as much as I’m enjoying it) makes this democratic, do-it-yourself girl deeply uncomfortable.

Most of all I feel conspicuous. There are moments I’ve been able to own that feeling of being watched and to embrace what it means to be on display (including the long saunter to the pool where I take a brief swim and then lay and do nothing but be seen). But being in India is making me more and more conscious of how uncomfortable I am being seen whether as an object of curiosity or as a woman. I’m uncomfortable even writing about it here because of everything it implies. Now that India has helped me pinpoint some of the sources that discomfort, I can start to investigate what it all means.

And then there is the spiritual awakening aspect of India. I did not come here for a religious experience, though there are certainly years in my life that would have been my goal. Somerset Maugham wrote of his characters once that he was “a deeply religious man who doesn’t believe in God” and that’s been the case with me for a long time. I flirt with Buddhist philosophy, cross myself like a good little Catholic to ward off the evil eye, and am most at peace when I am subsumed by the power of sitting beneath a large sky in front of a vast ocean.

So when I walk into a temple or a mosque or a gurudwara and feel the immense energies of the places and of the people worshipping in them, I pay attention. I don’t know what is happening and I don’t plan on going home and beginning to worship Vishnu, but I am soaking up the Hindu idea that all gods are one and that we make of them what we individually need. I am attracted to the Sikh vision of equality. I’m even beginning to like the call of the muezzin who wakes us around 4:45 am because of the sincere love of faith embodied in his voice.

I can even feel India affecting my syntax and my gestures. As a mimic—a skill I think I developed to mask the feeling of not fitting in in the many places I’ve traveled—I’m very aware of these things (and have been fighting the change of syntax in this essay), but no amount of energy will allow me to resist those changes.

The one thing I am sure of is that I am not a colonial. At least not yet. So I’ll enjoy yet another sumptuous breakfast buffet where I can eat foods from all corners of the globe while the waiter brings me extra special treats. I’ll relish cool swims in pristine pools. But I will not stop wondering about the social cost of creating a service class or the environmental toll of this kind of tourism on a state with little water. The wheel of the world keeps spinning, but I am not yet ready to accept that “other” or “privileged” is a station I must embrace.

I’m grateful to you for reading along with me as I experience India through books and the windows of a tour bus. I never know when I’ll have access to internet again, so I’m posting these as I go. Sharing the journey with you in this form helps me better understand my days and nights, so thank you.

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

Navigating Diaspora in The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, Kenya, and India

October 14, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

How many book reviews can I write about diaspora? Maybe a lot because the feeling of not knowing where or what home is is something I struggle with. So when I picked up The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji as part of the great India book grab, thinking that because the author’s name sounded Indian, it must be about India, I was making an assumption that shows how much I want life to fit into identifiable little boxes. Instead, I found a story much more similar to my own life, a story of a man living away from his ancestral home and trying to figure out who that makes him.

Stateless in the World

“[M]y fantasy has partly to do with desperate need to belong to the land I was born in.” – MG Vassanji

It wouldn’t be fair to say that Vikram Lall’s life is actually like mine. This protagonist is a third generation Kenyan, but as the grandson of a man who came over from Punjab to help build the railroad, his ethnicity means he will never blend with his homeland. And because the Indian town his ancestors come from is ceded to Pakistan, there is no going “home” again. To add to that feeling of statelessness, the story is told from later in Vikram’s life when he is hiding out in Canada.

“Even now, here in this Canadian wilderness, I cannot help but say my namaskars, or salaams, to the icons I carry faithfully with me, not quite understanding what they mean to me.” – MG Vassanji

My ethnicity means that physically I blend in just fine with my home town in Idaho and my adopted home of Seattle. But my experiences living abroad have stretched and changed who I am in ways I cannot explain. As a result, I often feel like I don’t quite fit in Seattle (or in Chile or Poland or anywhere). And anyway, the Chile and Poland I knew are quite different I’m sure than what they are now even without accounting for the ways the act of remembering those places has shaped them in my mind.

“It has occurred to me—how can it not?—that my picture of the past could well have, like the stories of my grandfather, acquired the patina of nostalgia, become idealized. But then, I have to convince myself, perhaps a greater and conscious discipline and the practice of writing mitigate that danger.” – MG Vassanji

I don’t know what any of this means, really, to me or to you, but it does help explain why I keep reading about people who are shaped by more than one culture—in some ways it is inside those stories that I feel most at home. It also explains why I’m making notes for a memoir about how living abroad changed my life—research that’s much easier to do when I’m once again on foreign soil.

Reading Beyond the Colonists

You’d think that a book like Out of Africa might really do it for me then. Isak Dinesen was certainly stateless as she farmed in Kenya. But there’s something about the colonial spirit that I can never get inside of or fully enjoy. In fact, as I prepared the great India reading list, I did everything I could to balance out the British take on India like Far Pavilions and A Passage to India that I’ve read so much of before.

One of the great pleasures, then of reading The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is that while it starts out in British Kenya, it is not from the point of view of a colonist. Nor is it anti-colonist, as the girl Vikram longs after for all of his life (a childhood friend) is British. But because Vikram is also close with a Kikuyu boy (who is a full, round character in ways that the Kikuyu in Out of Africa never quite achieve), I felt like I was getting a much fuller picture.

Traversing the History of Kenya

“[F]or Indians abroad in Africa, it has been said that it was poverty at home that pushed them across the ocean. That may be true, but surely there’s that wanderlust first, that itch in the sole, that hankering in the soul that puffs out the sails for a journey into the totally unknown” – MG Vassanji

Not only was I getting a diverse series of perspectives, but The In-Between World of Vikram Lall gives the reader glimpses into a wide span of Kenyan history. When we’re learning about Vikram’s grandfather, we may as well be reading Man Eaters of Tsavo alongside it with the insights into the building of the railroad. Then Vikram gets too close to the Mau Mau massacres of British citizens and later we get to read about Kenya under African rule.

Back to India

Although this book is not set in India, there is a certain longing for home culture on the part of Vikram and his family that gave me insight into Indian life. From the fact that most of the girls he’s attracted to have waist-long black braids to the power structure within a family, I feel like I learned a lot. The fact that I was reading about how Vikram’s family approached arranged marriage at the same time our tour guide was explaining arranged marriage only made both more interesting.

I’m in Jaipur right now, a long way from Kenya and an even farther distance from home, but I’m having a good time stretching and growing as I learn about yet another culture. I guess if you’re going to be a citizen of the world, you might as well just dive in and itch the scratch on those soles.

For other perspectives on what I read while in India, read my experiences of Heat and Dust and The Death of Vishnu.

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.