Through the Language Glass + The Right to Sex + more

’Tis the season of round-ups, but if you’re hoping for a “best of 2021” list from me, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. This business of December round-ups doesn’t sit very well with me. In theory, the nostalgic glance at the year past seems like a sweet indulgence, but somehow, these things almost always end up feeling vaguely competitive.

As the pat-on-my-back posts start tumbling in, it can feel as though those of us who haven’t read enough books or didn’t watch the talked-about films and shows, or missed hearing the breakout podcast or album, that we’ve somehow failed. This is not true. The small victories are the biggest ones —like sneaking the December newsletter in on the last day of the month; and remembering that this is not 2020, but 2021 and as of tomorrow, it’ll be (egad!) 2022.  

Every year, I see the summaries people put up in end-December of their year and invariably, I’m reminded of that final scene from the play Arms and the Man, in which Bluntschli is told that as a mercenary soldier, he’s neither posh nor rich enough to propose to Raina, the woman he loves. So Blunstchli provides evidence that he can provide Raina “a first-class establishment”.

BLUNTSCHLI: How many tablecloths have you?
SERGIUS: How the deuce do I know?
BLUNTSCHLI: Have you four thousand?
SERGIUS: NO.
BLUNTSCHLI: I have. I have nine thousand six hundred pairs of sheets and blankets, with two thousand four hundred eiderdown quilts. I have ten thousand knives and forks, and the same quantity of dessert spoons. I have six hundred servants. I have six palatial establishments, besides two livery stables, a tea garden and a private house. I have four medals for distinguished services; I have the rank of an officer and the standing of a gentleman; and I have three native languages. Show me any man in Bulgaria that can offer as much.

More often than not, the end-of-the-year lists remind me of Bluntschli’s catalogue of tablecloths, bedding and cutlery — impressive to some, ridiculous to others. (In case you’re wondering, Bluntschli owns 4,000 tablecloths and 10,000 knives and forks because his family runs several luxury hotels.)

Which is not to suggest there’s anything wrong with listing out your achievements. More power to all of you who have been productive. Let it be known that I’m raising a toast to you in my kaftan. Just know that if the past year has felt to you like an infinite loop of doing nothing, you’re not alone and more importantly, it isn’t the end of the world if you’ve lost the last 12 months. There are 12 more coming.

December’s been a month of excellent non-fiction for me. Thanks to an Amazon sale, I got my paws on Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages at an absurdly low price. It’s worth every penny of its actual price though. Author and linguist Guy Deutscher’s fascinating book is about the curious ways language impacts the way we see the world around us (literally), focusing particularly on how we perceive colour and translate it into language.

You can hear Deutscher talk about one aspect of this subject in this Radiolab episode (one of my all-time favourites), but don’t let it stop you from reading the book because Deutscher has a lot of stories to tell and trivia to share. For instance, it turns out that our colour vision seems to have co-evolved with a certain class of tropical trees that bear yellow or orange fruit too large to be carried by birds. It’s as though the trees nudged us to notice yellow so that their seed would spread.

Another excellent read was The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, a collection of essays by Amia Srinivasan. More than half of this book is made up Srinivasan’s notes and bibliography, which gives you some sense of how robustly researched this book is. The five essays don’t flaunt Srinivasan’s erudition and make an exhibition of their academic gravitas. They’re engagingly written, with an ease and fluency that makes you feel as though Srinivasan is simply talking to you about the history of feminism, the ways in which pornography has challenged feminist thinkers, the questions raised by the way #MeToo and sexual harassment cases are perceived and treated by our societies, etc. One of my favourite parts of the book is where Srinivasan talks about sexual harassment cases in academia.

“To insist that the power differential between professor and student precludes consent is either to see women students, like children, as intrinsically incapable of consent to sex — or to see them as somehow incapacitated by the dazzling force of the professor. And which professor is really that good?

But that is not to say that genuinely wanted teacher-student sex is unproblematic. … Is it too sterile, too boring to suggest that instead of sleeping with his student, this professor should have — teaching her?”

Ms. Srinivasan, you have. my. heart.   

Whether you’re one of those people who doesn’t care two hoots for feminism or someone who has devoured the debates and conversations that have come up since #MeToo erupted online, Srinivasan’s essays will make you think about gender and the way this influences how you make your way through the world.  

I thoroughly enjoyed The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback. Author Yashaswini Chandra is a geek — a horse geek, to be precise — and flies the geek flag high with this book. Beginning with Hindu mythology and travelling all the way to colonial era, Chandra goes through north Indian history with her eyes peeled for equine details that reveal political intricacies and cultural insights. Horses, particularly those imported from Persia, have had regal importance for centuries in India so it’s not surprising that Chandra is able to talk about kings, politics, Rajput self-image and court intrigue. However, Chandra goes beyond these elite spaces to explore the role horses have played for marginalised communities, many of whom traded and bred indigenous horses or worked as leather workers. There’s also an interesting section on women horse-riders.   

A book I picked up on a whim — because it cost a princely Rs 67 in another Amazon sale designed to crush writers’ hearts while encouraging bulk-buying from bookworms — was Elisa Gabbert’s The Word Pretty. Gabbert’s volume of essays are on books, writing and reading. They’re all very personal — Gabbert is present in first person in all of them — and even if you have nothing in common with Gabbert, you may well find little bits of yourself in her descriptions. I loved the way Gabbert used tangents in her essays. Just when you think she’s gone completely off-topic, she finds what feels like a secret path back to the original point she was making. Not every essay is equally powerful, but at no point did I roll my eyes at The Word Pretty or feel bored by Gabbert. I particularly enjoyed “On the Pleasures of Front Matter”, “The Art of the Paragraph”, “Aphorisms are Essays” and “Bedroom in Alcatraz”. As might be obvious from these titles, this is very much a collection of essays for a book nerd.

My love for Olivia Laing remains unwavering after reading Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency even though it’s not as beautiful or moving as The Lonely City. Funny Weather is a selection of Laing’s writings from the 2010s, mostly about art and literature. Laing believes art has the potential for both “resistance and repair” and the columns and essays she’s included in Funny Weather are her answer to the question of what art can do in times of crisis. Some of the essays are a bit of a forced fit, but they still make for engaging reads. One section of the book is biographical essays, which I was ready to speed past but these turned out to be the most memorable part of Funny Weather. Each biographical essay is like an installation composed of carefully-selected details from the artists’ lives, arranged with meticulous grace to create portrait of the artist and the times in which they worked. I would strongly recommend turning to Aunty Google each time Laing mentions a work of art or an artist. Partly because not all these names may be familiar (some were totally new to me), but also because the way Laing describes the artists’ work makes you want to linger with the art for a while.

Like I told you earlier, I’m not fond of the look back and neither does the finality of “end of the year” make much sense to me, especially since this whole business of 12 months in a year is a completely arbitrary setup. But I do like the opportunity for a reset that the ‘new’ year brings with it. There’s something hopeful in the idea of a beginning that isn’t a blank slate, but a palimpsest that contains traces of all that you treasure of the past.

So here’s to rebuilding and resetting, to newness and old habits, and to remembering that it’s not 2020, but 2022.

Let me leave you with a poem by Sridala Swami, from her new book Run for the Shadows.

There will be a later.

There will be a later that holds hope
the way the screeching kite
         is held aloft by all of the air.

When the time comes
even fledglings move from
         effort into lightness

And you, for whom
I still dream of flight
when the time comes
         though you are now tightly held

when the time comes
         may you be slowly released

when the time comes
         may you rise into hope

when the time comes
         may you find the world
         in that vast kindness.

Take care, stay safe and thank you for reading.

Dear Reader will be back soon.