Reviews

Title: Hangman’s Journal

By: Shashi Warrier

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“They call it the drop. The warders have a little table for it, to tell you what distance the condemned man must fall with the noose around his neck, for him to die cleanly…” Seven years ago, I read the first lines of Shashi Warrier’s Hangman’s Journal and felt a small chill run up my spine. Warrier had interviewed Janardhanan Pillai, last hangman of the king of Travancore, and found he couldn’t get Pillai’s story out of his mind.

It finally emerged in a quiet, accomplished and unfairly neglected gem of Indian fiction. Hangman’s Journal has two voices—the voice of the writer who is struggling to understand the fictional hangman’s life and work, and the voice of the hangman himself, survivor of the many executions he has performed. The hangman is the king’s sword; but he must grapple with the knowledge that what he does for a living is to take life. And there is a second struggle that Warrier outlines deftly, the question of whose right it is to tell the story of any man’s life, shaping it in different ways through that telling.

The story of the 117 executions, of a man held in respect and fear in his village, unfolds slowly, a quietly told but gripping journey into the heart of life and death. “When I see the rope quiver like this, I wish I had refused too… Forgive me for not refusing. I did it to feed my children.”

Title: Memento

By: Christopher Nolan

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It’s sometimes dismissed unjustly as pretentious, but English writer-director Christopher Nolan’s Hollywood debut, the head-trip Memento, remains a film experience that disturbed and astonished me.

Leonard Shelby (a relatively unknown Guy Pierce looking haunted and tortured) plays a man whose wife has been raped and brutally murdered. We’re not sure by who, exactly how and even when. And this is because the movie unfolds from the point of view of Shelby who suffers a hit to the head during the murder that robs him of his episodic declarative memory. In other words, he can only remember things for a brief period of time (minutes) before they are gone from his memory.

So determined is he to track down his wife’s killers that he deals with this problem by creating his own personal information management system. He leaves notes for himself – in a diary, on post-its, on the back of hurriedly taken Polaroids and as words tattooed on his body – often desperately before he forgets again.

There are two narratives in this movie but the one that does the heavy lifting is filmed in short episodes going back in time. In essence, Nolan robs us of knowing what comes before, binding us to the turmoil created by Shelby’s short term memory loss. As the story back-spools, we come to know of the events that have just faded from Shelby’s memory.

Title: Plastic Man: Rubber Bandits

By: Kyle Baker

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The creator of Plastic Man, Jack Cole, introduced him in 1941 and immediately set him apart with stories filled with slapstick humor and experimental structures. But since Cole’s departure as overseer, Plastic Man has been on the fringes of the DC Universe (he was even replaced by another character called Elongated Man briefly).

The question recent writers have grappled with is: how does one reinvent Plastic Man? Should we fill his life with pathos and wring the irony out his smiling personality? Or do we go back to the Cole era and mine Plas for off-kilter laughs?

In Plastic Man: Rubber Bandits, the second of his two Plastic Man graphic novels, writer-illustrator Kyle Baker hits on the right formula. He makes Plas an all-out comedian and surrounds him with genuinely funny, diverse characters that allow him to exploit myriad situations creatively. He infuses his work with zany humor reminiscent of Mad Magazine satires from the 70s.

Along the way Baker stops to smell the roses – or rather step all over them. In a hilarious sequence he takes the pants off DC luminaries such as Batman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman and Superman.

A lot of Rubber Bandits is drawn in paper cutout style. The backgrounds are minimalist – often a brush spray provides some texture. It encourages a fast read – allowing Baker to keep the energy in his stories.

Title: About Alice

By: Calvin Trillin

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What can you say about a 63 year old lady who died? That she was kind, generous, pretty, optimistic. That she hated cigarettes and waste. That she took an active interest in other people and was never afraid to engage or provoke in the pursuit of her beliefs. That she survived cancer and died of a bad heart.

All this and more is the subject of About Alice, New Yorker staff writer Calvin Trillin’s touching tribute to his wife and muse of 36 years. Writing about a lost loved one is always tricky – one risks being both self-indulgent and overly sentimental. Trillin is neither. Delicate with humor and sweetness, About Alice is a delicious andante of a book, a careful miniature of memories that is both a glowing portrait of the person Alice was and a celebration of the marriage that she and Calvin shared. Trillin keeps the focus very much on his wife, and talks relatively little about his own feelings, but the bond between them is there on every page – in the tenderness with which he writes about her, in the descriptions of the trials and triumphs they share, as well as their small moments of intimacy, in the sheer aching beauty of Trillin’s writing. As love stories go, About Alice is the real thing.

There’s a point in the book where Trillin describes how everything he wrote in their years together was written for Alice – to impress her, make her laugh. It is the sincerity of Trillin’s dedication, his manifest awe at having found someone so special to share his life with, that makes About Alice a moving read. We should all be so lucky.

Title: Humboldt’s Gift

By: Saul Bellow

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The first time I started Humboldt’s Gift, I gave up halfway through; Sven Birkerts’ rapturous essay in Reading Life brought it back to my attention and this time, I managed to complete it. (Further proof that wisdom comes with age). 

Bellow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the travails of writer Charlie Citrine and his relationship with the doomed poet Von Humboldt Fleischer (drawn from Delmore Schwartz) can be seen as another triumph of the author’s voice – one that is intelligent, voraciously well-read, colloquial, ironic and often arcane. This, in fact, is what keeps one reading, despite the many exasperating digressions and the clearly white-male-Eurocentric viewpoint.

It’s as much about what living in Chicago does to your sensitivities as it is about the commodification of culture and the writer’s struggle to keep head above water. And, lest you imagine that all this makes it dark and pessimistic, it’s often very funny, too. I wonder what I’ll make of it when I re-read it years from now.

Title: Indian Idol

By: Sony Entertainment Television

It’s fashionable to look down on reality shows, but I love Indian Idol. I’ve sat engrossed through its first two seasons, and with the piano rounds for the third season beginning today, will be unavailable for dinner on telecast days. My cellphone will be switched off.

At one level, I love the reality. Yes, I know the reality in reality shows isn’t quite real: The participants know they’re on camera. And yet, even this faux-reality reflects something true, for we know they know, and we know they’re acting for the camera, and in baring how they want to portray themselves, they reveal themselves. And they’re just like us! It’s India’s middle class on that show, with all its dreams and fears, and it’s like looking into a mirror. Immense empathy comes.

At another level, it’s about opportunity. Singing is part of Indian culture, and Bollywood is just a reflection of that, not a reason. In every village and town of this country, young men and women sing in front of mirrors, dreaming of being the next Kishore or Lata or Asha or (God forbid!) Himesh. Ten years ago, they wouldn’t even have dared to dream. Indian Idol gives them a chance.

And yes, there’s some wonderful singing on the show. But it’s not the singing that moves me, it’s the stories.

Title: Who I Am

By: Alice Peacock

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I’ll admit to being partial to hometown talent – that means anyone from Vadodara (how could anyone in their sane mind leave Irfan Pathan out of the team? Huh?!) and Chicago. A few years ago Alice Peacock transplanted herself to the Windy City to hone her skills as a live musician. And her efforts yield noteworthy results on her second, country-tinged, folk collection (and first in collaboration with a major label – Universal) Who I Am.

“In the ways of life and art,” she tells us on the titular track “I trust the wisdom of my heart.”

There are two things that strike you about Peacock when you listen to her. One, she sounds a lot like an amalgam of popular folk and rock artists – Shawn Colvin, Sheryl Crowe, Emily Saliers. On the sweeping, gorgeous “Love” she reminded me of Liam Gallagher. And second, she really knows her way around a mid-tempo hook.

Who I Am is full of catchy, warm little pleasures. Peacock’s album doesn’t cover a lot of diverse musical territory, but her eclectic tastes in music—jazz, country, 70s rock, R&B and classical —allow her subtle variations that make her songs delectable. Her lyrics evoke a person who glides gracefully through the peaks and valleys of life.

Title: The Birthday of the World

By: Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula K. le Guin’s book of short stories, The Birthday of the World, reminds us of how flexible and inventive science fiction can be. The stories here are minor pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that forms the world of the Ekumen, where Hainish Mobiles report on other worlds and their customs.

This gives le Guin an opportunity to do what her parents – both anthropologists – must have done: piece together the life of a community over decades, measure their values against the received wisdom of a dominant culture, and constantly question the objectivity of the narrator. That all the communities we see happen to be figments of le Guin’s imagination does not make the book less powerful.

One story in particular stands out for its complexity: ‘The Matter of Seggri’ is a collection of five reports made by several Mobiles over a few generations. Seggri is a world, as the name indicates, where the men live separately in castles, playing competitive sports and fighting for honours. The women run the world and go to fuckeries where they choose desirable men to mate with. With the coming of the Hainish, this segregation becomes a tale of slow but painful integration. How can we merely observe and not bring change or be changed by what we see, le Guin seems to ask.

Title: Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance

By: Atul Gawande

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It’s no secret that medicine is full of drama (just take a look at the prime time schedule of any US TV network). When I was single, I often gnashed my teeth as the doctor in the crowd monopolized the women with enthralling stories at parties. But I was able to put that residual resentment aside and still have a great time reading Atul Gawande’s collection of loosely connected essays Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance.

A general surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, Gawande seems fascinated by the art behind his science. He is curious, open and honest about a number of things that lesser doctors would have issues committing to print.

He covers a diverse set of topics: the dilemma of surgeons in Iraq, a polio mop-up operation near Bangalore, the different sides of malpractice suits, unique innovations in child-birthing techniques, Indian surgeons battling overwhelming odds.

All through, Gawande keeps his touch humane. He goes wide and then selectively deep – carefully presenting numbers, occasionally pausing to provide historical backdrops.

Innocuous stuff suddenly becomes fascinating – who would have thought that a chapter on surgeons washing hands could end up being such a page turner?

Title: Sharp Objects

By: Gillian Flynn

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One of the most exhilarating reading experiences for me is to pick up a debut novel and be completely surprised by it – in a very good way. Gillian Flynn is a resident of Chicago and chief TV critic at Entertainment Weekly. I’ve enjoyed her witty, playful reviews for years. None of her work prepared me for her first book – a mesmerizing thriller that slowly builds a vibe of dread and without any overt force, almost effortlessly unravels the reader.

Sharp Objects is written in first person and tells the story of a reporter, Camille Preaker, who is sent on assignment by a second string Chicago newspaper to Wind Gap – a small Missouri town – to cover the killing of a little girl and the disappearance of another.

Flynn eschews the formulaic trappings of a thriller – there are no cliffhangers that end each chapter, no page turning tricks. She brings each character into the story in slices and uses an impressionist way of describing them. “She was so insubstantial, I could imagine her slowly evaporating, leaving only a sticky spot on the edge of the sofa.”

She is assured enough to piece together the puzzle for us well before the final chapter. Although she submits to one mass market somersault in the end – it easy to forgive her. Because, by then, she has delivered a stunner.