Book Reviews by Paramendra Bhagat

Book Reviews
Paramendra Bhagat
September 14, 2002

Gorbachev, Mikhail. On My Country And The World. Translated from Russian by George Shriver. Columbia University Press. New York: 2000. I started reading this book. This is the work of a convinced socialist turned apologist because of the changed circumstances. His side lost and he never really came to terms with that. Still nothing changes the fact that history will judge him one of the towering figures of the 20th century: if it were not for him, the Soviet Union's collapse would have been much uglier and further delayed.
Naipaul, V. S. A Bend In The River. Random House. New York: 1979. Naipaul is a writer I feel close to in terms of cultural background. He is an ethnic Indian born in Trinidad whose father's side of the family might be from Nepal. He describes perspectives and sights and sounds that I can claim as my own. It helps that he went on to win the first Nobel of the new millenium. A Bend In The River is India, Arabia, Africa and the West brought together. The followers of the "naked fakir" - Churchill's racist words for Gandhi - talk of the "bush people." The novel is a page-turner, like those works of the commercially successful writers who will never bag a Nobel, but there is not one page where the author can not lay claim to the immediate and the universal. To me the most valuable aspect of Naipaul is his perspective, even when sometimes coming out of fictitious characters, and the legitimacy he provides them by dropping them into the mainstream. For that he is a sheer delight, a symbol of ethnic pride if the Global South is an ethnicity, who has never come across as provincial. The novel is primarily the story of a post-independence African town as seen through the eyes of an ethnic Indian merchant. Cultures clash inevitably. The "bush" acts out its revenge. Modernity arrives and departs. The President of the country has mood swings. The narrator of the story chances into a sexual encounter that awakens him from his experiences with "anonymous flesh." With an eye on detail, a lavish story is told, cover to cover. Gripping.
Perret, Geoffrey. Jack: A Life Like No Other. Random House. New York: 2001. Numerous books have been written about John Kennedy. This latest biography makes an attempt to be definitive, a cradle to grave story that reads like a folk story, aptly so for the man turned into a legend when he was fell. I doubt this will be the last JFK biography but where this one stands out is it goes out of its way to provide context for facts from JFK's life that have long been widely known. A sickly figure of a voracious reader, a frustrated athlete, someone who had recreational sex the way some people play tennis or golf, a President who got only a thousand days, the "young man in a hurry" who was habitually late. His style as well his achievements are above ordinary. With him politics made a fundamental departure. Some credit him with having created the modern campaign.
Smith, Roff Martin. The National Geographic Traveler: Australia. I read the introduction and the part on Brisbane. The writing is informative and the pictures are in color.
Riech, Robert B. The Future Of Success. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 2001.
Lingeman, Richard. Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street. Random House. New York: 2002. I started reading this book but had to return it. I did not know he was the first American to have won the Nobel in Literature. I read to the part where he is about to go to college. He was already a legend in town for having supposedly read every book at the local library. But one wonders if the legend did not get created after he attained his successes.
Cassidy, John. dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. HarperCollins. New York: 2002.
Mudrooroo. Us Mob History, Culture, Struggle: An Introduction To Indigenous Australia. HarperCollins. Sydney: 1995. I read a few select chapters. The whites have been in Australia 200 years, the locals 50,000. The fair adjustments have not been made yet.
Broome, Richard. Aboriginal Australians: Black Response To White Dominance 1788-1980. George Allen & Unwin. Sydney: 1982.
Worsley, Peter. Knowledges: Culture, Counterculture, Subculture. The New Press. New York: 1997.
Jacobs, Jane M. Edge Of Empire: Postcolonialism And The City. Routledge. New York: 1996.
Welch, Jack with John A. Byrne. Jack: Straight From The Gut. Warner Books. New York: 2001.
Naipaul, V. S. Half A Life. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 2001. Naipaul continues here with his fascination with India, England and Africa, though this is an inferior book to A Bend In The River: the author sometimes comes across as formulaic, and taking short cuts. In some ways he is always writing about Mr. Biswas. The comic effect jumps out of astute observations of cross-cultural confusions. And there are all the sex scenes, of people fucking outside of the social formalities of boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, and the absurdities of restraint. The main character seems to get reminded after each "dip" of the lack of the sex lives of his parents, chances they never took, pleasures they did not know in the land that gave the world the Kamasutra. The whirlpools of inter-caste and "international" marriages are on display. The details are frank, almost brutal, vulgar. But then he is an established artist. And Africa is not a country.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Chronicle Of A Death Foretold. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 1983. All hell breaks loose when the groom finds out the bride is not a virgin, and the murdered lover is only a figment of the drama. There is much before, during and after, and the final scene is memorable, like the dripping blood in One Hundred Years Of Solitude that climbs staircases. And it is the unique Garcia Marquez narrative that is the real attraction. Gushing, oozing, gripping, knocking things over: equal doses of imagination and insight, and floods of details, sensory onslaughts. In a curious way the novel reminded me of hte royal massacre in Nepal last year starring Dipendra Shah, only the novel is about one town, and no drugs and automatic weapons are involved. We all participate intimately in a murder, the character's mother and us readers included. This is the work of an outstanding author, a storyteller in a league entirely his own. He is the best.