Skip to main content

Eco and Kunzru

Years ago, I started to intersperse reading two to three books of different genres in parallel as an interesting diversion. Over time it has become a necessity. I no longer enjoy reading a book in isolation unless completely riveting. Then there is also the matter of time being scarce.

The latest mix has been On Literature by Umberto Eco and The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru. Not a very fortunate combination as I was to realize soon.

Eco's book has a chapter Wilde: Paradox and Aphorism. Reading A Picture of Dorian Grey in my teens had left me mesmerized by Wilde. Lord Wotton's wanton aphorisms and paradoxes seem as witty as they did years ago. Eco's reversals lend them several new meanings.

"Sin is the only real color element left in modern life" is reversed to "Virtue is the only real color element left in modern life" by Eco.

The most intimate chapter in this book is the last one - How I write. Eco offers a fascinating insight into what goes into the creation of his novels.

"First Of All Construct A World"

The fact is that I believe (or at least I now understand better, after four attempts at fiction) that a novel is not just a linguistic phenomenon.

He talks about writing The Name of the Rose when he spent a whole year without writing a line "Instead I read, did drawings and diagrams, invented a world. This world had to be as precise as possible, so that I could move around in it with total confidence."

"From The World To The Style"

Once the world has been designed, the words will follow, and they will be(if all goes well) the world and all the events that take place in it require.

"Constraints And Time"

Constraints are fundamental in every artistic operation. A painter who decides to use oil rather than tempera, or a canvas rather than a wall, is choosing a constraint; likewise the composer who opts for one tonality at the outset (he may then modulate it all he likes, but he has to return to that opening tonality..

And do not think that avant-garde painters, composers and poets- who seem to avoid those constraints - do not construct others. They do, but you may not be obliged to notice them.

And finally on "Joy and Sadness of writing Eco says

The beauty of writing a novel is not the beauty of the live match, it is the beauty of delayed transmission

Trying to go back and forth between Eco's luminous wit and erudition and Kunzru's slack, faltering quasi-epic was tiresome to say the least. There are more unnecessary and unmemorable characters in Kunzru's four hundred odd page book than there are useless bric-a-brac in a Dollar General store.

He has moments of inspiration when he shows depth of perception and excellent facility with the language. The book is hurting sore for a good editor. If pared to the fundamental story line, trimmed of distractions and volume halved, the Impressionist may leave a half decent impression.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

thoughtraker said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
1:23 PM
thoughtraker said…
imho, The Impressionist belongs to the curiosity-killed-the-cat category of books - i bought it out of curiosity, and it sure had me dead by the end :P

eco, on the other hand, is a read once, re-read forever author - he's a treat!
1:25 PM
Heartcrossings said…
SSM - I must be just that right ? I will desist the urge to mix and match at random :-)

YA1 - totally agree !!
4:15 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more