Mao II - Don DeLillo

Images, both static and moving have been a recurrent motif with Don DeLillo. (In many of his works you have a character seeing the grainy images on TV with the volume turned down in a dark room) .In 'Mao II', he combines them with the themes of cults, crowds and creates a disturbing and unsettling work. Bill Gray, author of 2 acclaimed books has been living as a recluse for the last 20 odd years. Working on a uncompleted novel the whole time, never satisfied with his output, living in a secluded place in anonymity, a place haunted by words, Bill himself is possessed by words that occupy his entire existence but seem to elude him the more he tries to grasp them to make sense of his novel and indeed his life. One of his pet peeves about the position of novelists in society is
There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists.Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.
Living with him are Scott his assistant who was a restless wanderer until he read Bill's works and managed to track him down and Karen, a former member of a religious cult, now deprogrammed. All 3 of them are restless in their own way and have formed a curious bond that enables them to live together in anonymity. This spell is broken when Brita a photographer whose mission to photograph as much writers as possible, is allowed to take photos of Bill. During the photo session she passes on a message from Bill's old friend which sets of a train of events which results in the unraveling of their lives, including Brita.

DeLillo's works are as much about ideas as they are about the characters and their motivations, indeed in some cases the ideas are what drive the novel. Here he brings together visuals, crowds and cults which may seem disparate at first glance but  are actually linked closely together. When one talks of cult whether it is religious, terrorists, or sports based, they are all recognized by a leader. What better way to imprint the leader into the consciousnesses of the cult members other than photos or television images. Once the images are imprinted, the cult swells and becomes a crowd and there is a loss of individualism. 

DeLillo shows us searing images of huge crowds, whether it be in the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini, or at Tienanmen square, the mass wedding in the prologue or the thousands of homeless at a park that Karen sees each of them has the power to shift our perspectives. An to prove the power of visuals, the crowds at the Khomeini funeral and Tienanmen square are see in the television, but they still have the power to move you and as Karen wonders

..if millions watched, if these millions matched the number on the Iranian plain, doesn't it mean we share something with the mourners, know an anguish, feel something pass between us, hear the sigh of some historic grief?"
These words published in 1992, makes even more sense now when we feel a pain shared with the mourners of school shooting thousands of miles away from where we are. 

In novels like these where ideas play a predominant role, it is easy for the novelist to go overboard and the entire book and it's characters to become a playground for his rants and pet peeves, but Delillo avoids these pitfalls. Make no mistake, you can sense his voice throughout his novel, but not in a way that puts you off the book and that's because he gives his characters enough emotional heft to be visible to us and make us feel for them as much as we feel for their (Delillo) ideas. Whether it be the restlessness of Bill, his anger at the downgrading of the importance of novelists (as he sees it), his doubts about own work, afraid where the work is leading him to are all as important as his ideas. Like when Bill feels
"He had a foreboding, the little clinging tightness in the throat that he knew so well from his work, the times he was afraid and hemmed in by doubt, knowing there was something up ahead he didn't want to face, a character, a life he thought he could not handle."
we get an idea of  the fear that a writer feels when he thinks that the book or a character is getting away from his control and  taking a life of it's own, wanting to live on it's own terms rather than that of the creator. And when Bill goes off on a dangerous attempt into a hostage situation it makes sense in view of his earlier comparison about novelists and terrorists and hence it doesn't come across as something that has been put in the book just for effect. Similarly  we empathize and understand (or try to) Scott binding himself with Bill, his obsession with organizing everything to make Bill's work as easy as possible so that he can concentrate on his writing alone. That's why when Scott stays alone in their house after Bill and Karen leave, working on meaningless organization of the house and papers is as poignant as the experiences of  Karen where there is a whole chapter devoted to the homeless community living in a New York park, a multitude of crowds living in destitute, an old lady even living under plastic covers.  

DeLillo's writing is nuanced and it's not just the imagery that he conjures that takes our breath. He can also take a mostly ignored fleeting moment and give it a concrete form, like when Bill is waiting for Brita and Scott to come, the house is completely silent and
"When they got out and walked to the porch steps he went to the door of his workroom and listened to them stamp their feet on the mat and come in downstairs, mingled voices, the ruffle of people entering a house, shaking of coats, making all the incidental noises of transition, the sigh of the full body, homeyness and deep relief, the way it seemed a danger and a lie."
All of us have experienced this moment, when we open the door and enter a silent house, the murmur of voices and the manner in which the house seems to wake up after a deep slumber. But it takes a DeLillo to point it out to us. A line or a phrase to elevate a thought and realms that we never thought was possible or even existed. Take what Britta says about New York
"Sick and dying people with nowhere to live and there are bigger and bigger towers all the time, fantastic buildings with miles of rentable space."
Now this is a standard line where one points out the inequality in society. I am not disputing the validity of the statement but it's something most people could write. Now read the same paragraph with the line that follows.

Sick and dying people with nowhere to live and there are bigger and bigger towers all the time, fantastic buildings with miles of rentable space. All the space is inside. 

The last line throws a googly at a us and creates a seeming paradox. Theoretically there is space everywhere, it is infinite and we occupy space, but DeLillo says that all the space is inside. Which is true when we take space to only refer to a standard human habitat suitable for living and not 'space' as a concept. From that point of view, we see that millions are homeless (i.e) without space while the space for living is all inside the homes.

The novel ends with Brita travelling to Beirut to take picture of Rashid, a revolutionary leader there, but it's like the novel is starting again. Rashid a leader of people (cult, crowds) is to be photographed (maybe after a long time just like Bill) and this photo would perpetuate and imprint his memory into the minds of his followers  (cult, crowds), even if he is no more. This novel requires your patience, to make sense of the imagery, the characters, the prose which is subtle enough to be ignored if we are distracted for even a bit. At no point does the novel opens up to us from the readability point of view, there is no concession given to us and we have to be relentless in forging ahead keeping our eyes (and ears) open for what DeLillo will tell us next. This is not your ideal first DeLillo book, that would be Americana. This book is to read when you have an idea of his works and motifs so you have an idea of what to expect. 

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

Slackers in fiction are a much loved lot, though the general perception they give is one of a life of laziness. The main reason is that slackers offer a vision of a lifestyle of general lazing around without doing any work but somehow managing to get by and indeed seemingly having a lot fun.(though it's obvious that in real life a slacker life would be one of difficulty rather than fun).  This (fictional) lifestyle is something that most of us can only dream of but do not have the guts to follow up on. In a way we live our lives as we want to through the slackers in fiction.  Even India, where we are supposed to treat work as worship has it's own lovable slacker August. However slackers need not always be about fun alone, in some cases they are a reactionary force to the times in which we live, for instance one of the greatest slackers 'Yossarian' in 'Catch 22' is a hyper hysterical reaction to the times of World war II,a symbol of opposition to the destruction of war which is couched in the slacker mode  and that's what makes him so enduring even today. One such beloved slacker is 'Ignatius J. Reilly' in 'A Confederacy of Dunces' written by 'John Kennedy Toole'.

Ignatius is 30, unmarried (probably a virgin too),unemployed , living with his mother (Irene Reilly) and needless to say sponging of her. He is a modern day Don Quixote in that like Quixote he is tilting at imaginary enemies while his mother tries to make ends meet. If Quixote saw false nights in windmills, Ignatius has decided to wage war on the entire cultural scene of America. Wherever he sees, there is only depravity and decadence and it's up to Ignatius to set things right. However there is a major difference between Quixote and Ignatius. While the former genuinely believed in his ideas and was almost delusional, the latter is shrewd and cunning enough to know when he is in trouble and has no qualms about making another person suffer for his activities, like how at the beginning of the novel he makes poor old 'Claude' suffer for his altercation with a police man. And he is hypocritical enough to even justify it and also enjoy the same movies, actress while decrying them as being depraved. 

Irene is the typical mother proud of her son's supposedly great intellect (he is the apple of her eye), but who is realistic enough to know that intellect alone will not feed people and that he has to go out and work. Torn between admiration for her son's intellect and reality, she puts up with him until an incident happens and she has no other option but to force her son to work.  Ignatius's lazy lifestyle is shattered  and his worst nightmares come true as he now has to work. The rest of the novel is about Ignatius working in some places and the various characters that he comes in contact with disastrous consequences for both Ignatius and the characters. 

Humor in a book can be either in  the characters in it, or the crazy situations in which the characters find themselves in or in the writing itself. This is a book where there is mix of all there. The characters are weird enough like the Levy couple, with Mrs.Levy in particular who experiments her psychology studies on poor old Miss.Trixie. There is the inept policeman 'Angelo Mancuso' who though is conscientious, is bullied by his superiors because he avoids any confrontation and is always wanting to please others. He is the antithesis of Ingatius. There is also Lana lee, owner of a bar and involved in shady deals,  janitor of the bar 'Burma Jones' who seems stoned most of the time and 'Darlene' the stripper there, both of whom are being exploited by Lana.  Each one is distinct in his/her craziness. Incidents like Ignatius trying to take over the factory, him trying to sell Hot dogs propel the story along. The best part however is the humor in the writing. Even normal conversations are given a funny spin by Toole's deft touch, like the sarcastic back and forth and one-upmanship  between Lana and Jones. Though under the thumb of Lana, Jones gets his own though his repartees and even has the final laugh. You can have incredibly crazy characters or incidents in your book, but if the writing doesn't back them up all the jokes are going to fall flat. This is where the novel rises a few notch above most other novels in this genre. That's why even 'Myrna Minkoff whom we get to know only through her letters until the end becomes such an engaging character. Amidst all the fun though, Toole takes a stab at the pseudo-intellectual posturings of people through characters like Mrs.Levy's false kindness towards Miss.Trixie which is but a front for her treating Miss.Trixie as guinea pig, Myrna's radical orientations which are only a mask for the tendency of youth to be an iconoclast and finally even Ingatius himself whose rants against modern society is not a reactionary one like 'Yossarian' or completely delusional like 'Don Quixote' and is probably only the escapism of a lazy slug. That makes him even more enduring to us. 

Any mention of this novel will not be complete without mention of it's sad publishing history. Rejected by many publishers it was published in 1980, 11 years after the author's untimely demise (suicide at 31) which was no doubt precipitated by the rejection of his work from all quarters. It's surprising, even shocking that it didn't find any publishers given the fact that it is a very engaging work and better than the innumerable crap that gets published every year. And though this is a zany work it's in no way a groundbreaking having several precursors,  so one cannot assume that it was ahead of it's times and hence people failed to recognize the potential in it. I guess it's one of those inexplicably cruel and sad situations that people have to go through in their life. I just wonder what other works would Toole have produced if only his work had been published during his lifetime, if nothing else surely he would have lived longer.  Toole's life is also a reminder of how failure and rejection can haunt a person ultimately resulting in self-destruction and how art can be a dangerous thing in that it can consume the artist himself. To add insult to injury, the book was awarded the 'Pulitzer' on publication. The hilarity of the novel becomes poignant when contrasted with what happened in Toole's real life and it has always bothered me even during re-reads. Even without considering the publishing history and becoming emotional about wanting to like the book (which can happen), this remains a genuinely hilarious work.  A final mention should be made of Toole's mother 'Thelma' whose steadfast belief in her son's work and determination made it possible for the book to be published. Toole would have been another forgotten wannabe writer but for her quest to accomplish her son's dream. The best tribute one can pay to Toole (and indeed his mother too) is to give this book a try, not just for him but for all such authors who due to the vagaries of life haven't got their recognition or did get it belatedly.