Art Matters + Less + Polite Society + more

Neil Gaiman, that wizard of words and feels, has a new book titled Art Matters and it's illustrated by Chris Riddell. For those who love a good deal, this hard cover book with illustrations costs between Rs 299 and Rs 319 (depending on where you buy it online. If you buy it offline, it will cost you Rs 399). Once you get past that little endorphin rush, there's the delight of reading Gaiman.

The Guardian carried an excerpt from Art Matters recently and as my eyes travelled along the lines of the letters and drawings, I could feel the happiness I felt as a kid when I had a book in which to bury my face, bubble up inside me. There’s an innocence to the joy of picking up a book you want to read — no matter how good or bad the book may be — and remaining immersed in it till the end, and that’s what the essay celebrates. There are too few things that can widen your horizons and make you more aware without leaving you jaded.

The beauty of Gaiman's non-fiction writing is that most of the time, his words don't feel like a revelation. Instead, they seem to make real what you've felt and known. It's just a minor detail that he has not just the words, but the perfect rhythm in his sentences, so that when you read his writing, it feels almost like you're breathing with him. In, and out. In, and out. And just like that, in a curious but tangibly real way, thanks to a book that you hold in your hand and the words on its pages, you know you're not alone.

Art Matters is available for pre-order for readers in India. It'll be available at the end of this month.

From Art Matters, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Chris Riddell.

Last month, I went to attend the Melbourne Writers Festival, which meant a 10 and a half hour flight across the Indian Ocean. It seemed to make sense to read Less by Andrew Sean Greer, which takes a set of fabulously-aimed potshots at literature festivals and the publishing industry. I'd started Less some time ago and somehow just couldn’t finish it despite enjoying it tremendously whenever I circled back to it. I don't know if that happens to any of you, but I go through phases when I just don't seem to be able to finish a book. It's not the book's fault (well, sometimes it is, but that's a separate matter). I want to know what happens next and what other little tricks and twirls the writer has folded into the story for me. But no matter how willing the spirit is, the brain goes all diva on me. I imagine it in a sparkly gown, sprawled on a chaise-longue, drawling, "Not now, dahling. I'm having a moment."

I don't actually remember ever feeling these reading slumps as a child, so I'm going to add this to the long list of cons when it comes to adulting.

So yes, even though it's a terrific book, Less was abandoned after a couple of chapters and then re-opened while on a plane, with starlight outside the little window and a plastic cup of cheap red wine for company. Within a few sentences, I was trotting behind failing, flailing and falling novelist Arthur Less. The next thing I knew, there was a grin on my face and I was nearing the end of both book and flight.

Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 2018 for Less, and this is a big deal in a year that had contenders like Sing Unburied Sing and Lincoln in the Bardo. Greer’s hero is Arthur Less, a minor novelist best known for having been a now-dead literary great's lover. He is faced with an unexpected crisis when he is invited to an ex's wedding — he doesn't want to go but neither does he want the speculations that would surround him not being there, so Arthur Less decides to accept every invitation that has come his way in order to skip town. So begins a round-the-world trip that lands Less in one absurd and cringe-inducing situation after another, which Greer uses to mock authors and the world of literary publishing.

Of course all the exotic locations — Mexico, Morocco, Germany, France, Italy, India (he's a writer in residence at a Christian retreat in Kerala) — are stops in the hero's voyage of self-discovery. The slim volume is like hologram: See it from one angle, and it's about escapism; shift a bit, and it's a savage satire. Greer's writing is crisp, clever and very funny, which means that you may well find yourself in the confusing situation of bursting out laughing while nodding in agreement.

Apparently, Less began as a very serious novel that Greer realised would work better as a comedy. The ghosts of that serious novel remain in the descriptions that are often hauntingly beautifully and are all the more memorable because the language soars elegantly before its bubble is burst by comic pin that goes pop! at the perfect point. I hope there’s a good audiobook of it because Greer’s writing has fantastic rhythm ( “‘How did they even know I was gay?’ BEAT He asked this from his front porch, wearing a kimono.”) and read well, this book could be the pick-me-up that all of us need in our lives.

Although Less is bouncing with humour and it isn’t dark or political, it’s not fluffy and inconsequential. Greer is savagely critical of the publishing world and the way it mangles a person's confidence and humanity. At a time when so many are turning to the thinkers and writers in society to stand up to those in power, it's worth remembering the industry that serves as a platform for these intellectuals can be petty and superficial. Still, for jibes, cruelty and absurdity, there is a tenderness in Greer's writing and after torturing Less for most of the book, he offers his crumpled hero (who has a blue suit, if you please) chances to not just redeem himself, but to shine. Less really is more, and this is perhaps most obvious during a creative writing seminar, when he gives his students the best exercises ever. (I'm totally stealing the Lolita one for the next creative writing class I do.) My only grouse with Less is that Greer brought him all the way to India, but didn't let him attend something like the Jaipur Literature Festival.

On the way back from Melbourne, I curled up in my seat with Mahesh Rao's Polite Society. In an ideal world,

one would sit in a sofa as beautiful as the one on the book's cover, but I had to make do with one in a somewhat grotty shade of grey with a back that doesn't recline. If not anything else, it really made me appreciate the elegant furniture described in Polite Society.

Full disclosure: Mahesh is a friend, which doesn't make me more generous or forgiving as a reader. If anything, it makes me more demanding because I'm one of those people who has lucked out in their efforts to surround themselves with talented people. So, I had high expectations for Polite Society, which is Mahesh's modern adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, set in hoity-toity New Delhi.

If you're a Janeite (yes, that's the official term for fans of Jane Austen's writing. It was good enough for Rudyard Kipling — he wrote a short story titled “The Janeites” on soldiers who loved Austen's novels — and has held steady as a term for centuries now), then there are only a few twists in the tale. If you've never read Emma, do pick it up and I suspect you'll have a lot of fun mapping the parallels between it and Polite Society.

The heroine of Polite Society is Ania, the sole heiress to a properly privileged Delhi family and officially working on her novel while meddling in the lives of others. She's beautiful, beloved and charming (or at least thinks she is). When we first meet her, she’s preening after having successfully found a match for her maiden aunt and is about to embark on her second project: Finding a suitable boy for Dimple, a town mouse in the big city, whom Ania has adopted as her friend. As we follow Ania and Dimple, we’re introduced to Delhi’s glittering set whose dazzle has an edge of desperation to it. Everyone wears a façade that is being gnawed at by anxiety and deception.

Polite Society reminded me of a well-made confectionery — it's light, pretty, has layers as well as texture; and for all its delicacy, is richly satisfying. The only thing missing is sweetness. For all the candy tones on the outside, crack the surface and it’s all bitter chocolate. The narrator is omniscient and snarky, ready to nudge you into noticing the absurdity and shallowness of the privileged folk swanning in and out of beautiful rooms. They preen and pose, ready to be adored and entirely unaware that fun is being made of them relentlessly.

There are darker twists, like the story of the British writer named Mussoorie, the secret of Ania's parents' marriage and the interlude in the writing retreat in Italy where Ania meets a famous author. When you get used to canter of the prose, you start seeing how the lightness of Polite Society is weighed down with violations. It's the breeziness with which they're written that makes them all the more distasteful and/ or sickening.

All in all, very entertaining and begging to be turned into a film; like what I imagine Crazy Rich Asians is, but with actual Indians, insight and nuance.

Towards the last quarter of the book, when the story needs to settle down towards an ending, Polite Society felt a bit rushed occasionally. I wish the narrator had explored how the episode with the famous author impacted Ania’s desire to write a little more directly and stayed with her till the end, instead of turning their attention to her father and focusing on his ballooning privilege. Ania does evolve, but she’s also left … hanging in a weird way at the end. The book closes with Ania’s father Dileep who leaves us with the sense that Delhi's polite society is hurtling towards self-destruction, which is all well and good as a social statement but yet again, we get a novel that promises to follow a heroine only to abandon her and let an idiotic, patriarchal male get the last word.

The only thing I missed in Polite Society was tenderness. Austen, for all her judgments, allows herself a little softness for her characters and cuts (some of) them some slack. In Polite Society, however, Mahesh is ruthless with this subjects. Dimple and the largely static Dev (Ania’s Mr. Knightley) are the only ones who have any redeeming traits. Everyone else is callous, cruel and driven by their selfish or self-centred agendas without a blip. Even Ania is hard to love because she's so resoundingly hollow. These are people whom we comfortably observe (and judge) from the outside. One of the reasons Austen remains so popular is that you can still relate with the feelings that push characters to behave in certain ways. Polite Society has a few of those moments, but they’re overshadowed by the contempt we’re invited to feel for most of the characters.

Before leaving for Melbourne, Netflix's To All The Boys I've Loved Before came out and I confess, I’ve watched it three times. Not because it's a great film, but it's sweet, has all the tropes that have made us readers of Mills and Boons happy for decades, and despite the tropes, the heroine is not a blubbering mess. She does need some rescuing and guess what, she’s got herself and a literal sisterhood to do that. Since the film is based on a series of three books by Jenny Han, I gleefully plunged into reading them, hoping for more of the quirk and cuteness that has made the film Netflix’s most recent high score.

I think To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before came out in 2014 and was followed by PS I Love You in 2015 and Always and Forever, Lara Jean in 2017. The series got a lot of love because Jenny Han is the first writer to create a Korean American heroine in regular, mainstream YA fiction. The Korean heritage is an important part of Lara Jean and her sisters’ identity and without being overt about it, the books do their bit to present a modern, mixed-race and mixed-culture normal.

But while I’m more than happy to give the books points for diversity, I don't understand why this series is so popular. It’s not that it’s bad, but that it’s so very pedestrian. The characters are flat, their reactions are eye-roll inducing and there just wasn’t enough of the banter that shows rapport between the different characters. I might also be reacting with horror at the idea of girls being tasked with housekeeping and cooking, age 11 upwards. Context is everything — it’s not an ugly cocktail of child labour and misogyny in the suburban American setting, but the fact that Lara Jean’s inability to manage the house as well as her elder sister is pointed out again and again felt jarring to me. The first book just about held my attention, the second felt annoying because of how flat and dull all the characters were; and when Lara Jean became a half-Korean first cousin of Bella from Twilight in book three, I was eye-rolling like the dying matriarch in the pulpiest ’90s’ Bollywood film.

Speaking of race and identity, there’s a fascinating excerpt from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity on Lithub. It’s about an “experiment” carried out in the 1700s, when a boy from the African Gold Coast was picked and ‘gifted’ to a German duke named Anton Ulrich. The boy was effectively adopted by Ulrich and given the best education that a contemporary could get in Europe. He was baptised Anton Wilhelm and later in life, he would call himself Anton Wilhelm Amo (his Nzema name) Afer (to denote he’s from Africa). He did well in school and then went on to university, eventually studying law and becoming the first black African to earn a European doctoral degree in philosophy. This bit from the excerpt is a particularly well-delivered punch:

“When Johann Gottfried Kraus, the Rector of Wittenberg, complimented Dr. Amo on his successful defense of his dissertation, he began by talking about his African background, mentioning some of the most famous African writers from Antiquity, including the Roman playwright Terence—who, like Amo, had given himself the last name Afer—and Tertullian and St. Augustine, along with other Fathers of the Church born in North Africa. He mentioned the Moors who conquered Spain from Africa. All of these people, as Kraus surely knew, were of Berber or Phoenician or Roman ancestry. None of them would have had dark skin or tightly curled black hair like Amo’s. When Luther lived in Wittenberg, his home was an Augustinian monastery, but no picture he would have seen of St. Augustine would have depicted him as black.
So, if the dukes who supported him were interested in whether an African could be a brilliant intellectual, they already knew the answer: people such as Terence, Tertullian, and St. Augustine had long ago proved that they could.”

This was back in the 1700s. It says nothing for us that in 2018, Amo’s world doesn’t seem like history, that it could be in the present and we’d applaud the Anton Ulrichs of the world for not subscribing to the prejudices — about race, caste, creed etc — that have been normalised. You’d think by now we’d have established a new and better normal, instead of clinging on to the old ones with ghoulish desperation.

Which is why I'm going to sign off with a little help from Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell:

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