Described in The Siege of Krishnapur, there is a meal more delicious than I would have expected in British India. Here it is:
"The fried fish in batter that glowed like barley sugar, the curried fowl seasoned with lime juice, coriander, cumin and garlic, the tender roast kid and mint sauce."
Perhaps it's less a meal than a mere list of dishes. But delicious all the same.
I read JG Farrell’s Troubles a dozen years ago and enjoyed it, particularly Farrell’s descriptions of food. All that I remember now, aside from the food bits, is something disgusting in a chamber pot and the main character, in a state of mild and indecisive unhappiness, mixed with confusion - either mine or his - wandering about a lot in the gardens of a hotel, in or just outside a small town in Ireland.
In The Siege of Krishnapur, Farrell abandons the damp decay of rural Ireland in favour of an imaginary outpost of Empire during the Indian Mutiny. Farrell, I think, viewed most human behaviour as folly and, perhaps to ensure the reader understands that the enterprise that is the brief presence of the British in Krishnapur is part of that folly, he begins the book by showing the reader Krishnapur as it is now, long after the Indian Mutiny. His opening pages provide a wonderfully evocative description of what travellers would see when approaching what is left of Krishnapur from a plain to its east. By the time he brings the reader close to the settlement, it becomes clear that Krishnapur is now totally deserted. It “has the air of a place you might see in a melancholy dream”.
Skilfully Farrell moves from this introduction back into a past where Krishnapur is a hub of British activity. He assembles a cast of vivid characters, about whom he seems to feel no particular affection - the two doctors who are opposed in their approaches to treating cholera and one of whom is described much later as “the best of us all. The only one who knew what he was doing”; the phrenology-obsessed Magistrate; Fleury, the semi-intellectual, who is useless and, in his attitudes to women, reminded me of the men in Women Know Your Limits; Harry, the less well-educated soldier, who Fleury “always condescended to think rather dull”, but who turns out to be an infinitely more useful person to have around than Fleury himself; the Padre, who I suspect Farrell intended should be laughable but I found admirable in the circumstances; and, above all, the Collector, a true Victorian, a man who has never forgotten the several “ecstatic summer days” he spent at the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, marvelling at the engineering feats and models of possible inventions on display. Among the things he admired were a model of a train that would lay down its own track as it progressed; and drinking glasses with separate compartments inside them so that somehow a drink becomes more fizzy for the person drinking it.
The Collector’s walls are “thickly armoured with paintings” and among his favourite possessions are a marble bas-relief called The Spirit of Science Conquers Ignorance and Prejudice and a small sculpture called Innocence Protected by Fidelity, “a scantily clothed young girl, asleep with a garland of flowers in her lap; beside her a dog had its paw on the neck of a gagging snake which had been about to bite her.” At the start of the book the Collector compares himself to the Magistrate and feels satisfaction that, unlike the Magistrate, he, the Collector, is a whole man. “For science and reason is not enough”, he thinks, “A man must also have a heart and be capable of understanding the beauties of art and literature.”
For a time, all is well in the little island of Victorian civilisation that is Krishnapur. Not even the faintest glimmer of doubt has entered the mind of any of the enclave’s inhabitants about their mission in India. The Collector, at the pinnacle of Krishnapur society, is the only one who seems concerned by certain small but strange incidents involving chapatis, but not enough to have his faith shaken. He remains in love with statistics - “At the thought of statistics, The Collector …felt his heart quicken with joy…Nothing was able to resist statistics, not even Death itself” - and strong in the conviction that anything and anywhere, including the entire Indian nation, can and should be wrangled into leading a Victorian life.
The story of the book is the story of the destruction of Krishnapur and of its inhabitants’ illusions, most particularly those of the Collector. The Collector is forced to recognise “that there was a whole way of life of the people in India which he would never get to know and which was totally indifferent to him and his concerns.” His beloved sculptures and models from the Great Exhibition - and, indeed, everything material he holds dear - are swept away, some used as reinforcements to crumbling battlements, some simply smashed in weeks of fighting. The accoutrements of civilisation - fine clothing, cleanliness, decent burial - all vanish so quickly it is impossible not to recognise the flimsiness of the edifice in which the faith of the Collector and his companions has been placed.
However, at the end of the book, for most of them, the effect of the experience is more or less fleeting. “It is surprising how quickly the survivors returned to the civilised life they had been living before”, Farrell tells us, “Only sometimes in dreams the terrible days of the siege, which were like the dark foundation of the civilised life they had returned to, would return years later to visit them: then they would awake, terrified and sweating, to find themselves in white starched linen, in a comfortable bed, in peaceful England”.
But the Collector absorbs the meaning of what he has experienced and consequently he does not adjust so easily after the experience he has been through in India. He sees things with new eyes:
“Crossing for the last time that stretch of dusty plain which lay between Krishnapur and the railhead, the Collector experienced more strongly than ever before the vastness of India; he realised then, because of the widening perspective, what a small affair the siege of Krishnapur had been, how unimportant, how devoid of significance.”
Back at home he takes “to pacing the streets of London, very often in the poorer areas, in all weathers, alone, seldom speaking to anyone but staring, staring as if he has never seen a poor person in his life before.”
Meeting Fleury by chance one day, he stops and they chat.
“Culture is a sham”, the Collector tells Fleury, “It’s a cosmetic painted on life by rich people to conceal its ugliness.”
Fleury tries to argue and to persuade the Collector of the importance of ideas.
“Oh, ideas … said the Collector dismissively”.
Farrell ends with speculation about the Collector, speculation that highlights the mystery, even absurdity, of most human endeavour and of life itself, (Farrell's central theme):
“The years go by and the Collector undoubtedly felt, as many of us feel, that one uses up so many options, so much energy, simply in trying to find out what life is all about. And as for being able to do anything about it well … Perhaps by the very end of his life, in 1880, he had come to believe that a people, a nation, does not create itself according to its own best ideas, but is shaped by other forces, of which it has little knowledge.”
Reading these words, I had assumed that Farrell was elderly when he wrote his novels and they were the result of years of experience. In fact, he died after falling while fishing on a cliff in Ireland at the age of only 43. The admirable richness of his imagination is everywhere on display in The Siege of Krishnapur, together with a wonderful skill at telling an interesting story and weaving it with wit and intelligence. I find it hard to discover that he was so young and a missed footing robbed us of more work by him.
There are words that are strangely appealing to writers, even though they should be resisted in almost all contexts except the context for which they were created. Their allure is the allure of shiny things, when what a writer needs is usually not flashiness but clarity of meaning.
“Shard” is such a word. It is, to be fair, not so much shiny as purple, (as in “purple prose”) - or, if not precisely purple, certainly gaudy. It is a peacock feather word, a glossy substitute for “fragment” or “sliver” or “broken bit”. When encountered in a contemporary poem, it is a disappointing sign that there is probably little point reading further. It serves almost always as an indicator the writer has swooned at the altar of their own poetic rapture.
“Liminal” is another current favourite of writers, although more favoured in prose than in poetry. It is a show-off word. It is supposed to tell the reader that the article they are reading is not a bit of tabloid nonsense but something intellectual. It tells me that I am entering the territory of pomposity. I look for something else to read instead.
I am increasingly puzzled by the message I'm receiving from many different organs of authority - government, media, corporations - that I should try to minimise activity that uses electricity or other sources of heat, light or locomotive power (because using those things is likely to affect our planet’s climate) and the countervailing pressure I feel I am under to use: bank cards (reliant on electricity) rather than cash to pay for things; electronic devices to interact with government and almost all organisations (more reliance on electricity) rather than talking to a person face-to-face; and AI (enormous consumer of both electricity and water) to “chat” with, for example, my bank, rather than going in and speaking to someone across a counter.
How is minimising the use of power and water compatible with the move towards making us do everything via a screen?
Until recently I haven't been much of a Kindle reader, but when travelling I have realised an e-reader is a way to indulge my greedy desire to have a vast choice of reading matter without paying extra for luggage or having to deal with heavy cases as I advance in years. And thus, while travelling recently I bought, in a fit of parsimonious jetlag, The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown for 99p.
It was, on the face of it, an odd choice, as I don't read Vanity Fair and my vague impression of Tina Brown was the disgustingly English one that she might be a bit 'pushy' - the 'pushy' label is such a brilliant curb to hold back people who might dream of success. Where does it come from, I wonder? Why, if people have drive, is it considered rather sickening in many English circles for them to openly pursue their ambitions?
I don't know, but one thing is certain - somehow, Tina Brown, although not from the New World, seems to have been oblivious to the notion that she should restrain her work ethic and behave with unpushy decorum. As a result, while still in her thirties she soared across the firmament of magazine publishing, a blazing comet of courage and positivity. While all the way through her diaries I kept wondering whether the goal of producing a glossy magazine was worthy of the ingenuity and constant work she lavished on the task, I nevertheless found the book absolutely riveting. Brown's diaries give a fascinating insight into a particular era and also into what the journey she took as a young English woman in a very competitive field of enterprise in one of the most competitive cities on earth, (New York), was like.
When the book begins, Tina is feeling restless. She is still only in her twenties, but she has already been editing Tatler for some time and she is eager for a greater challenge. When offered the editorship of a failing magazine called Vanity Fair, she grabs the opportunity and hurtles off to live in New York, despite the fact the prospect of the move frightens her quite a lot, particularly as she is leaving her husband behind in London.
What follows is a several stranded story. There is the tale of how she very brilliantly manages to turn Vanity Fair into an enormous financial success, which, at least in her telling, is in large part due to her intense attention to detail, her alertness to the zeitgeist and her ability to spot really good writers and manage them well - plus her obsession with cover photographs, which you slowly realise as the book goes on are among the most important factors influencing magazine sales.
As well as this purely strategic business story, there is the equally intriguing account of how Brown learns to make her way in the higher echelons of New York society (as well as, to a lesser extent, in Hollywood circles), gaining confidence and achieving an increasing understanding of the way the people she moves amongst think. In this context, her comments about America, most especially New York, versus Great Britain are fascinating. On the one hand, she feels that "the work ethic and energy" in New York "hold you up with invisible hands and make you buoyant when you get out of bed"; on the other, she recognises "how terrifyingly tough NYC is, what an hourly battering it is to stay on top". In America, she says, ''everyone comes at you with such velocity". One reason I found these observations especially interesting is that I think they help one to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump. Even though he is no longer young, there is an energy to him that is purely American - and there is also a refreshing energy in the rising generation he has gathered around him. It is an energy that I think people in the old world lack, perhaps inevitably.
Above and beyond these two strands, the business one and the portrait of America, the diaries tell the story of a woman who tries to "have it all". Brown describes with considerable honesty the difficulties of loving your work and your children and trying to keep hold of both without damaging either. She more or less pulls it off, but the struggle involves enormous strain. My heart went out to her as I read. For all our notions of progress, we have not even begun to resolve the dilemma of how brilliant, driven women can have careers and provide the love and attention they feel their children need. Even using the adjective "driven" to describe Brown seems to me to risk casting her in a negative light. Instinctively, many people find ambition in women, particularly women with children, unattractive, even if they don't admit they do. While this visceral reaction might have evolutionary advantages, it makes life difficult for those who are born driven - and it also makes things difficult in the world we now live in, where, to have any chance of owning a place to live, both members of a couple need to work full-time.
In the interstices of the book's three main stories are all sorts of vignettes - Marlon Brando stringing along Brown's husband, (who wants a book out of him), with hours of time in a swimming pool and sauna late in the night, during which Brando recites speech after speech from Antony and Cleopatra entirely from memory; Mick Jagger being hilarious on his motivation for having so many girlfriends; a marvellous scene where Tina and the Kissingers lie on the Kissingers' huge orthopaedic bed watching the start of the Iraq war unfold on television; the revelation that Brown finds Joan Didion rather dull company; glimpses of Robert Hughes while he is writing that work of genius, The Fatal Shore; brushes with Anna Wintour; and on and on.
Strangely, although Brown can see the absurdity of individual situations such as that she describes with the Kissingers, she displays no trace of a larger sense of the silliness of human life. And I realised that this was a huge advantage. To never stop and think, "Is an idiotic magazine really worth draining myself for?" was essential if she was to be successful. If you are unable to take success seriously, you will get nowhere. To be a big shot you need to have faith not only in yourself but in your goal. You can never let yourself glimpse the possibility that what you are scrambling toward may not be worth it - and, luckily for her, that appears not to have been an idea that ever entered Tina Brown's mind.
By the end of the book I admired Brown for her hard work, her drive and her genuine brilliance in the role she chose for herself. However, there is one thing I have been wondering since I finished reading her Vanity Fair diaries and that is: how is Brown today? Most of us moving into our sixties are aware of having little time left in which to achieve the goals we've always had in the back of our minds - or possibly we've come to the realisation that we won't achieve them. What is it like to have met all your targets in your forties? What do you do with the rest of your life?
Perhaps Brown will release some more diaries and then I will be able to find out.
I like this. I don't know why. Putting it here means I can find it again easily, look at it some more & maybe eventually be able to explain why it appeals to me. Probably something to do with how it demonstrates the wonderful diversity of the world and the appeal of looking at things from an unusual perspective.
Of course, I could watch a David Attenbrough programme to be reminded of the first bit. But that would mean putting up with David Attenbrough. I may be alone in this but I don't enjoy listening to him or watching him as he travels around the world. Especially now that, having got to an age where he finds travel too exhausting, he has decided that everyone else should be told that travel is a sin.
I have never been to Turkey before & I was surprised by this announcement on a ferry across the Golden Horn:
"Dear passengers we would like to remind you that smoking is prohibited indoors and outdoors, in accordance with the will of Allah."
We were on our way to Chore church, which Andrew Graham-Dixon talks about very interestingly 6 minutes into the 8th video in this playlist.
Perhaps when I have time I will do a post about our outing. Chore is a wonderful place. It is now a mosque, which means in one of its rooms a fine mosaic of the Virgin and Child presides over shoeless men & no women all day long:
Actually, as I probably won't in the immediate future get around to a further post on the church, I will add a few of my photographs of its beautiful interior:
So beautiful.
