Running in the Family

  I simply adore Michael Ondaatje. His novels are like liquid poetry in prose, and his poems are like sparse, fragmented short stories. His favourite of mine is Anil’s Ghost, though –  I haven’t read ‘The English Patient’ yet, for fear of disappointment (it seems to me that expectations almost always fall short with novels of great reputation). I picked up this copy of Running in the Family about a year ago, when I wanted to read something by Ondaatje, but his new novel ‘The Cat’s Table’ hadn’t been published yet.

In the opening pages, Ondaatje describes how his ‘bright bone of a dream’ became the seed for: first, a trip to his native Sri Lanka, and then the starting point for this memoir.

I had mixed reactions. On the one hand, it encapsulates everything that I love about his work. It’s poetic and fluid and wonderful to read, as always. A lovely form of memoir which seems intimate and raw. The sentences are pure Ondaatje – fragmented, lovely, concise. In fact, it’s more like a writer’s notebook that’s filled with bits and pieces of memory, portraits of family members, impressions of his visits to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) than a polished piece of literature. That, I loved. Yet I can’t help but agree with what Noriko Nakada has to say:

Readers tend to love or hate Ondaatje depending on their tolerance for meandering, character-driven plots and how far a few beautiful lines of prose can propel you through a text. And not only does he break the rules of pacing and plot… but he also fictionalizes, fills in scenes; takes liberties with truth.

And now a passage from the book itself:

Truth disappears with history and gossip tells us in the end nothing of personal relationships. There are stories of elopements, unrequited love, family feuds, and exhausting vendettas, which everyone was drawn into, had to be involved with. But nothing is said of the closeness between two people: how they grew in the shade of each other’s presence. No one speaks of that exchange of gift and character – the way a person took on and recognized in himself he smile of a lover. Individuals are seen only in the context of these swirling social tides. It was almost impossible for a couple to do anything without rumour leaving their shoulders like a flock of messenger pigeons.

Nakada seems more sympathetic to Ondaatje’s work than not, that ‘every perspective can provide only a limited view of the past and reminds the reader how elusive truth can be.’ But I wonder. ‘Fictionalizes, fills in scenes; takes liberties with truth….’ This is the part that gets to me.

It is one thing to write of one’s impressions, to capture subjectivity and emotion and feeling in a memoir. But it is another thing entirely, to use one’s imagination to create the semblance of fact out of a string of elusive, lost stories. That’s fiction, with a factual inspiration/basis.

The role of truth, of authenticity and honesty in memoir? It is everything. Otherwise, the bond of trust between reader and writer is utterly and completely destroyed, and we are left wondering which parts are true, and which are not – or is the entire thing, in fact, a fabrication, with only the names and settings being real?

Going Solo

Roald Dahl happens to be one of those authors from my childhood who I never quite managed to outgrow. Then again, Dahl also happens to be one of those writers whose books are so wonderfully magical that they are loved by readers of all ages.

Personally, I’m of the mantra that anything well-written counts as literature, whoever the publishers decide to market the book towards, and boy can Dahl write. I own two copies of this book; one is a slim pocket-sized edition from the Popular Penguins series, and the other includes both parts of his memoir, so it’s actually Boy and Going Solo. Anyhow, the Penguin edition was so light that I carried it around with me and read it on the train etc etc., – because you can’t really travel with War and Peace, no matter how gripping it is – and I found this book so funny that I laughed out loud several times on the train. I’m pretty sure people gave me looks, but I was so wrapped up in what I was reading that I couldn’t have cared less.

The great thing about Going Solo is that we see a different side of Dahl; the man before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Esio Trot, and George’s Marvellous Medicine. I laughed out loud because reading it was like an chance encounter with an old friend, but it wasn’t all Dahlesque kooky humour – many, many parts of this book are so incredibly poignant and thought provoking. All the more so because Dahl isn’t flippant or overly sober about it all, but he treats his life story in the same down-to-earth manner that gives his fiction such a whimsical, and yet believable touch. His experiences as a RAF pilot in the Second World War took up the majority of the book – and I did enjoy reading it – but I liked his observations of  British colonial ’empire-builders’ best.  Dahl’s life  really is a testament to the [by now, extremely] cliched saying that often truth can be stranger than fiction.

» This was my Used book for the 9 Books for 2009 project. For this particular category, we were asked to pick a pre-loved book that we owned. I chose Going Solo, by Roald Dahl – although I think I managed to ‘cheat’ once again by reading a new copy!

p.s. not at all related to Roald Dahl or his memoirs, but we had the strangest weather here in Sydney today! This morning, when I woke up, the everything in sight was shrouded in a blood-red haze – only it wasn’t a sunrise, or a bushfire – it was a huge duststorm! Facebook wallposts ran along the lines of: Apocalypse! Martians! Armageddon! It was like being momentarily trapped in a sephia photograph. Very surreal, and quite frightening at first.

Nine Parts of Desire

To date, I’ve despised every single one of Geraldine Brooks’ works of fiction – except March, which I haven’t bothered to read – so it’s no wonder that I was cautious about approaching Nine Parts of Desire. At the same time, I was immensely curious as to what a foreigner would have to say about the practices of Islamic society. After all, Brooks combines two extremely provocative subjects in this book: religion, and women.

I’m pretty much ignorant concerning the ways of the Middle East, so at first I wasn’t sure whether to trust Brooks’ authority on Islam. However, I came to realise that there was hardly anything subjective in this book; in fact, the majority of it consists of anecdotes. It’s clear that Nine Parts of Desire has been written for the purpose of dispelling media-projected, stereotyped views of the Middle East.

And it’s inevitable that there are gaps in our understanding of Muslim ideology. One relative of a Muslim woman encouraged her to take part in demonstrations, only to have her condemned by the religious leaders.

“I thought the time was right. Now the cause has been set back ten years – buried under twenty tons of concrete. It’s so easy for peopple like me” – a diplomat’s son raised abroad and educated in America – “to be totally off base about this country and what it is ready to accept.”

But the lack of understanding stretches to more general issues that arise from the practices of Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim countries:

“Rose,” [Brooks] said incredulous, “are you telling me you’ve ruled him out because he had dirty fingernails? For goodness’ sake! You can always clean his fingernails.” She raised her head and gazed at me sadly with her huge dark eyes. “Geraldine, you don’t understand. You married for love. What’s a dirty fingernail on someone you love? But if you are going to marry somebody you don’t love, everything, everything, has to be perfect.”

***

I’d hoped to find something different at Gaza University – perhaps the emergence of an Islamic feminism. Palestinians had always been among the most progressive on women’s issues, and I thought the fusion of that spirit with militant Islam might produce something interesting

But in Gaza, the militants had latched onto a brand of Islamic radicalism that threatened to do worse than set the clock back for Palestinian women. What Majida was proposing had never been part of Palestinian culture. Instead, her ideas were imports: they had “Made in Saudi Arabia” stamped all over them.

What I like most about Nine Parts of Desire is that it is written with heart; something I find lacking in Brooks’ novels. And it’s accessible. I found it an easy and enjoyable read even though I knew nothing about Islam and its customs. Brooks manages to avoid both the “sensational and the stereotypical” by incorporating anecdotal material, and she manages to discern between the teachings of the Koran and the misogyny of many Middle Eastern traditions. Brooks believes that many Muslim men are mysogynistic because they believe they are acting rightfully in the eyes of Allah.

I was baffled by this man’s hypocrisy until I read Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, Palace Walk, in which the main character is a man of strong faith who strictly sequesters his womenfolk, but each night goes out whoring with Cairo’s famous singers. When a sheik chatises him for his fornication, he replies that “the professional women entertainers of today are the slave girls of yesterday, whose purchase and sale God made legal.”

One chapter I detested (‘Whom No Man Shall Have Deflowered Before Me’) concerns another mysogynistic Middle Eastern tradition: clitoridectomy.  The detail made me feel rather squirmish afterwards. But of course there are some beautiful descriptions of everyday life. Have I mentioned that I love bread, and bakeries?

At sunrise, before the heat slams down and the air becomes heavy with diesel fumes, Tehran smells of fresh-baked bread. At neighbourhood bakeries women wait in line with their flowery household chadors draped casually around their waists. Their faces seem less lined than they will look later, as they struggle through the crowded city burdened with parcels and children and the countless worries of women in poor countries.

In the mornings I would find my way to the local bakery by following my nose. The air carried both the sweetness of seared crusts and the tang of woodsmoke from ovens sunk into the bakery floor. Inside, a four-man assembly line blurred in a heat shimmer of deft hands and flying dough. The bakers made lavosh – thin flat sheets of bread soft as tissue.

» Nine Parts of Desire was read as a part of the World Citizen project. Although I still have much to learn about the Middle East, Brooks’ book was a great introduction to the lives of Islam women. Geraldine, you’re alright after all. Why don’t you write fiction like this? Oh wait, I forgot. She does write fiction like it’s journalism, and that’s what makes it so wooden.