The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds

A breezy book, easy to read and a unique and enjoyable style. I really hope he wins the Booker. I finished this book last tuesday and have not had a chance to write at all since then.

Well it is about this poet – John Clare, who is in a mental institution. Tennyson arrives in the neighbourhood with his brother and admits him in the same institution. (Yes! I mean the poet Alfred Tennyson. The author has beautifully blended the fact and fiction.) The paths of the two contemporary poets never cross really. But their lives are interwoven with the rest of the characters.

Perceptions are created and dispelled by the author. The hue of John Clare’s character has several variations throughout the book. One begins to empathize with him towards the end. Whereas Tennyson’s life is as amorphous and as dreamy as Tennyson himself. The Doctor’s (Dr. Mathew Allen who runs the institution) daughter falls in love with Tennyson and expresses herself to him. I love the way he has subtly dealt with the subject. Tennyson’s non-reaction explains it all. He simply does not understand that girl in the state of mind he is in.

In fact, the entire story is filled with subtleties. Margaret, an inmate, who thinks she is actually Mary, John Clare who thinks that Mary (his childhood sweetheart) is the one he is married to and not his own wife and the event that brings them together. Yet, John Clare yearns for his freedom to live with his real wife and kids. Also the part where Tennyson is preparing for his nobel prize is beautifully written. It is mind blowing the simplicity with which the author engages you in the scene and fires your imagination.

The author has intricately drawn a contrast between the good and the bad and the ugly (forgive my cliche!).  The man i.e. John Clare is incoherent, thinks he is Lord Byron, yet can see that the Caretaker of the inmates is abusing his power and is taking undue advantage of Mary. He gets out of the institution and also saves the girl whom he earlier thought was Mary (the childhood sweetheart) with the knowledge that she is not a part of his fantasies and desires. The supplosedly sane individuals like the caretaker, have crooked minds filled with evil as is demonstrated by the one incident which the author describes.

The title is apt. The Quickening Maze – is that which John Clare believes is engulfing him pushing him to ingeniously procure his freedom – the very maze that Tennyson is unable to see.

The Holocaust – An Essay by an Ignoramous

“It is as if, after a night of terrible dreams, one looked around the world, defeated, helpless.” – Imre Kertesz

One definitely cannot imagine what the victims of Aushwitz would have gone through. Of course, there is abundant literature on the subject and we get different views in each piece of work. I am going to outline the various things I have read or seen in that connection and may be reflect on the subject.

My first exposure to the Nazi treatment of Jews, obviously apart from word of mouth, came from The Odessa File by Fredrick Foresyth. He is, of course, a master story teller and the book recounts through the diary of one person who commits suicide and the horrors that the concentration camps were. Of course, then I was too young to understand the concept of mass killings or genocide. Let’s just say my sensitivities weren’t that developed.

There was one movie titled “Life is Beautiful” which put a positive spin on the gory past. It was about an intelligent Jew who refuses to let his son despair and manages to convince him that all this was but a game and if they won, they would be rewarded with a big tank. The bleak and horrifying situation around the concentration camp is turned into a game and despite everything, we can not help but smile at the antics of the Protagonist. The child ultimately is freed and one can’t help but feel joyous.

Then, years later I saw Schindler’s List. The movie moved me in many ways and I got a glimpse of what a horror the whole situation actually was. The abuse of power by one man as an example of all the Commanders of the concentration camps who device ingenious ways to torture people. Strangely these persons/German commanders find ways to benefit themselves in the midst of all this. Of course, we see how Schindler manages to let several escape and the historic list actually is the reason for the survival of the entire Jewish community.

Then I watched (not read) Sophie’s Choice. It is an intricate story of a young polish woman who was sent away without reason and without any explanation with her children. Towards the end of the story we learn that Sophie’s choice really relates to her having to make a choice between her two children – to be killed. She ultimately loses both her children and comes to be cared by a mentally challenged person.

An extremely varied perspective is that of “The Reader”, from the eyes of those who were part of the regime, and wish to continue a normal life. The trial, the embarrassment of the protagonist and her experiences at the time. She got little children to read to her before she sent them away! Was she postponing their destiny or was merely arbitrarily using her powers to put an end to their lives? No one can really tell.

I started writing this post in February and then shelved it. However, for some reason I saved it. Yesterday I watched Valkyrie, the movie. This was another perspective. Well, more than a perspective it was an example of hope. It is touching what some German Commanders and Generals tried to achieve for their Germany, who were sensitive to the obnoxious ways of Hitler.
They almost had him. But Hitler was not to be deceived and each of the members of the Valkyrie Operation was shot dead or hung to death.

Of all that I have read and heard of the Holocaust so far, Imre Kertesz’s one sentence (supra) summarises the anguish perfectly. It is difficult to say whose anguish it is – the sufferers, the people who caused the suffering, the silent witnesses or the generation that abhors the silent witnesses.

I wonder what was the command Hitler had over the people. Can a mass of people really, truly believe in the extermination of an entire race? Hitler’s antipathy towards the Jews is really indiscernible. Today, can a Hitler pull something off like that?

Today, possibly we are too factionalised for something like the Holocaust to happen. My only question is, are we today protected against such tyranny were it to be perpetrated by another mad man. Is it even today a possibility? I shudder to think, yes. Only it is a different set of people with a different agenda. Can we protect ourselves? Can we protect our next generation?

I shudder when I think, another holocaust is not impossible.

Coetzee – My favourite author of 2008

Of all that I have read and all the new authors that I had read in 2008, the one author who took me by surprise and affected me most was Coetzee.  The first book that I had occasion to read was “The Life and Times of Michael K.”

It seemed to me that the book was Michael K’s autobiography.  The book is a about a simple SouthAfrican/ African man and his attempts to live a life of freedom, choice and respect. Coetzee’s choice of words, the prefect description were the highlights of the book. Reading it was like walking on a stream of water. The reader is aware of the fluidity of the stream below him, yet the firmness of the surface allows him to tread over it. Over all it was a great experience.

Immediately, after “K” I picked up “Youth”.  I was amazed at the distinction in the language, descriptions of the setting and the people involved. This book is about a young man, a boy who has unfulfilled aspirations and in the end comes to terms with it. Coetzee suddenly transforms himself to an immigrant in London. I am not sure if any other author could have written a similar plot that would interest me.

After a break, I read, the “Master of Petersburg”.  The novel is of course based in Russia, Petersburg more specifically and Coetzee takes you to Russia with him. He spins a romantic story, that of a father and son. He builds a plot and as you watch in amazement, leads the protagonist to his fate. I am not sure whether the story is biographical. All I know is that it perfectly fits his mysterious hero – Fyodor Dostoevesky.

That the same person could write so beautifully three absolutely different novels in three unconnected settings is a display of his genius. I discovered a genius. I discovered creativity. I discovered all of this in 2008.

IMMUNITY FROM REASON?

“Science is not for the benefit of scientists, but for the benefit of humanity.” – Louis Pasteur (1870)

The above is what Pasteur tells his wife who worries that once his vaccine is seen to be successful, he will have no respite. Little did she know that the resistance to change especially of a set of beliefs comes much after the empirical evidence provided by the experimenter is established beyond doubt. We do not acknowledge our saints before we have burnt them at their own stake. Until then genius is met only by scorn.

When I had heard the condemnation of Pasteur by the French monarchy, I cannot but draw an analogy with Ibsen’s play – “An Enemy of the People”. Both lived around the same time period. In fact, his play is a parallel of the life of Louis Pasteur. Ibsen wrote the play in 1877 just a decade after Pasteur was condemned to leave Paris and settle down in the village of Arbois (where he experimented on the first vaccine for Anthrax). Dr. Stockmann was scoffed at for suggesting that their baths were polluted, just as Louis Pasteur was condemned for suggesting that the doctors who did not rid themselves of germs were actually killing their own patients! The concept of an organism which was a ten thousand times smaller than the humans could not affect humans!

In this age of virus, vaccine and antibiotic we have come to accept that we live in a world full of microbes, the very concept that was scoffed at as late as 1870s. The genius was driven to exile. Shaw follows Ibsen’s streak in believing that all genius is misunderstood and the imbeciles often decide public opinion. Ibsen also proves to you that the multitude is always wrong and science should not suffer at the hands of the common multitude. Shaw’s Joan of Arc meets her tragic death where she was burnt as a heretic. Shew preached exactly those sentiments that run all over the world – nationalism.

It brings us to the postulate – “No man is understood in his own times”. I understand Shaw and Ibsen’s disillusionment with the masses. For every genius existing, it takes another to recognize him, otherwise he will be scorned. However, Pasteur was recognized in his own times. The obstinate and proud academy of science succumbed to his genius. The chemist became a doctor! Though I understand the disillusionment of Shaw and Ibsen, I do not agree with them.