Some S L O W Literary stuff. O! Man!

Book Review: Slow Man By J.M.Coetzee

In most of J.M.Coetzee’s novels, descriptions and emotions are abbreviated. His lean words seem to be an escape from all that conventional novels provide. His novels are bereft of the excessive detailing that usually fill up page after page. One critic recently pointed out that it was hard to recall even a single Coetzeean line. Yes, perhaps that’s true. But more than his words and lines, it is the shadows his words cast- that make the complex Coetzeean narrative. It leaves an unsettling impression on the mind.

In his latest offering “Slow Man” the protagonist oldish Paul Rayment meets with an accident while riding on his bike. What entails is the amputation of his leg in the hospital. Efficient doctors and nurses care for him, but “Efficiency” is an impenetrable and unsympathetic carapace. And his “new” life commences with all the shadows of gloominess and misery of life with a stump. He imprudently falls in love with a very healthy and married Croatian home nurse Marijana. In the midst of this one -sided love, the narrative is interrupted by Elizabeth Costello. Now Who is that?

Elizabeth Costello is the protagonist- writer in a previous Coetzee novel. She is working on a book now and Paul Rayment is a character in her book. Costello takes up residence with her character. It becomes absurd as Costello plays God, irritatingly interrupting Rayment’s thoughts and actions. They are trapped in an almost irrevocable relationship. Coetzee explores relationships between humans, between the writer and the character and on a higher plane there are the allusions to the mystical marriage-trap between Man and God.

And the recurrent line that runs the through the book is “God alone knows” why things happen.

Comments

Book Review: An Autobiography Of A Sex Worker by Nalini Jameela

I am 51 years old. And I would like to continue to be a sex worker.” This is how the candid and defiant opening statement in Nalini Jameela’s autobiography in Malayalam, Oru Lymgika-thozhilaliyude Atmakadha, goes. It at once throws a challenge at society’s double standards — harsh on prostitutes and soft on the clients. Nalini Jameela, who is the coordinator of the Kerala Sex Workers’ Forum, reveals her sordid story with no trace of compunction. Nalini was a 24-year-old widow when she entered the profession to feed her two children. At that time she did not think about the repercussions of her act. She writes, “I was earning Rs 4.50 at a tile factory near Trissur. My mother-in-law served me with an ultimatum to either give her five rupees a day to look after my children or leave the house. I recounted my woes to a friend, who introduced me to Rosechechi. Rosechechi promised me Rs 50 if I spent time with a man. The first thought that came to my mind was that my children would be looked

Kochi Muziris Biennale: Whorled Explorations

London-based artist Hew Locke was in for a bit of shocker when he reached the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014 site, Fort Kochi in Kerala. His installation, Sea Power , was apparently crafted from his imagination of what the historical kingdom of Cochin would have been. Indeed, he had yoked his imagination to that of a 17th century German printmaker. The printmaker had in turn conceived the kingdom of Cochin based on the tales of another. “My work is imagination based on the imagination of an image that was perhaps real. It was double fiction and I thought the prints were elaborate romantic imagery...but I discovered when I arrived in Cochin that this double fiction has elements of reality. People still wear lungis and walk around bare-chested,” says an amazed Locke. Hew Locke’s beaded frieze of mythological and historical figures that gently sway in the wind is a response to the biennial theme, ‘Whorled Exploration’, and suggests blips in the seminal movements of history. Whorled Exp

SnooTea: Just My Style

(Photographs by Minu Ittyipe) It began on a lark to spiff up my morning cuppa. Oh well, I just wanted a change from what I had been drinking all my life. I am not complaining about the faithful brew that I stir up with tea dust, it does merrily improve with two extra spoonfuls of sugar but I was just plain bored with the regular. My concept of a cup of tea was corralled in the traditional Indian style- coppery coloured liquid topped with plenty of milk and sugar but now there was in me this undeniable thirst for a more delicate bouquet. Tranquilitea, Coonoor Curiously, though grown in our own backyard, few of us have heard of the orthodox leaf tea, forget the Silver Tips, Golden Tips and the White Tea etc.. that quietly find their way to the export market. To make a foray into this relatively unknown terrain, I headed for Tranquilitea, a tea lounge in the Nilgiris, for a cup of “Tippy” tea. On a sober note, you are cautioned not to confuse “Tippy” with the more commonplace “Tipsy” for

Krazy Kochi

Search This Blog