R.K. Narayan- The Guide

The Guide

Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics

R.K. Narayan

1958

"He got down from his pedestal; that was the first step to take. That seat had acquired a glamour, and as long as he occupied it people would not listen to him as to an ordinary mortal. He now saw the enormity of his own creation. He had created a giant with his puny self, a throne of authority with that slab of stone."

I've been thinking a lot recently about my own personal reading landscape, and of other people's in general. I try to visualise it as some sort of weird amorphous blob, growing larger and murkier each time I successfully add something new to its context; recently that's been a case of examining the familiar by trying to fully complete reading the bibliographies of some of my favourite authors. Auster is the most common of late, and in my look at Moon Palace I halfheartedly looked at the concept of increased fulfillment based on familiarity and the mostly safe exploration found when sticking to a particular author. I've really enjoyed reading lots of Auster and Terry Pratchett recently and I definitely appreciate being able to sharpen my understanding of their work, but sometimes it can be more interesting looking at something new. Reading R.K. Narayan's The Guide was my attempt to take a quick break from indulging in the comfortable favourites by tackling a novel exploring a culture and emanating froma time that I'm only marginally familiar with.

Published only ten years after Britain gave India back its independence, The Guide is a prime example of classic post-colonial literature, as a work of fiction encapsulating a rapidly changing time and place where two old and established cultures merged to create an initially strange amalgam. My only experiences with Southeast Asian literature come from the genetically very English Rudyard Kipling (I read the two standards, The Jungle Book and Kim many years ago) and other Western interpretations (Orwell's Burmese Days comes to mind), so The Guide was a new experience that felt, to me at least, somewhat more legitimate in a way. Handily, R.K. Narayan wrote his fiction directly in English, giving me a first-hand version of the world he was presenting. Yay for post-colonialism.

R.K. Narayan

I was a little apprehensive beforehand that I might struggle to connect with literature from such a mostly different culture (in terms of their classical literature), but I found The Guide to be a superb story, brilliantly controlled and paced by an author with a superb knowledge of story-structure, in a manner that couldn't help but make me think of the greats of eighteenth century English literature (Charles Dickens and Mary Shelley, curiously)- regularly switching from the past to the present of Raju, the central character, and switching from omnipresent narration to first person in doing so, all putting Raju's tribulations into context. At the start of the book Narayan introduces Raju as a corrupt tour guide in the fictional city of Malgudi who has just been released from a two-year prison sentence, and is then mistaken for a Ghandi-like spiritual leader by a local simpleton named Velen. Having established the set-up, Narayan switches between the present, where Raju begins to reluctantly accept his unexpected new life, and the past, as Raju narrates to Velen the story of how he ended up in prison.

Raju's account of his past fills the bulk of the book (which is a short novel at roughly only 200 pages), and is an engaging human drama where Raju the corrupt guide falls in love with a married woman named Rosie, and dedicates himself to fulfilling her dream of becoming a famous dancer. I found Raju to be a compelling character thanks to Narayan's flowing portrayal of his determination, anger and craftiness. Narayan's prose is not overly complicated or flowery, but strikes a careful balance between relatable drama and a fable-like tone that both compares and contrasts with Raju's spiritual rebirth to give the prose a gravitas that glued my eyes to the page. Ultimately the story narrows into Raju facing the greatest challenge of his life, embracing his new role as spiritual guide, with his secret history creating a deep character on the verge of reaching his own transcendence.

The Guide is a book I'm sure will linger with me, thanks to its powerful, very well-crafted narrative and refined main character. It isn't a book that tries to answer any of life's great mysteries, but instead explores the range of complex experiences and emotions that can shape a person into something unrecognisable to others.

George Orwell- Burmese Days

Burmese Days

Penguin Modern Classics

 George Orwell

1934

Other Orwell Reviews- Burmese Days - A Clergyman's Daughter - Homage to Catalonia - Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays

“It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.”

Having spent far too much time reading other people's blogs recently has guilt-tripped me in to writing something for mine; which should never be that difficult since I basically set the premise of this blog to ensure I couldn't fail. Still, I have at least got some pretty darn good reading done recently, with books by George R.R. Martin (I wonder which), Jose-Luis Borges, and Pierre Boulle's excellent, excellent high-concept sci-fi novel a Planète des singes, as the French call it, otherwise known as that cheesy Hollywood film with Charlton Heston and a bunch of monkeys. But before all that came a kind of personal reading landmark, in the form of the last novel left to read by a certain Mr. George Orwell.

I'm not sure which of Orwell's books I read first, but it was either Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four, and I'm not entirely sure when it was either, but I do know that both were polished off in quick succession. That must have been ten years ago now, and since then my typical scatter-shot reading habits ensured that, rather than attacking Orwell's bibliography quickly, it's taken me this long to get to the end- well, if you don't count the volumes of letters, diaries and further essays all out there in some form that I eventually hope to get to. I'm a growing fan of author miscellanea.

One of the true joys of Orwell is that he's very, very easy to analyse and follow through his path towards 1984. I like Animal Farm, but 1984 is a far better read, and it's been a lot of fun to look at every single one of his earlier books so far and see the concepts in a rougher developmental stage. Crucially, I've also enjoyed each one of those books on their own merits to varying extents, from the twisted Dickensian stye of A Clergyman's Daughter to the rather more dry and satirical musings of Keep the Aspidistra Flying (a dumb name for a very intelligent novel). Burmese Days (oh god, three paragraphs in and I've just reached the title), the last of mine to read, was also Orwell's first novel-length fiction, and is the first that I haven't really enjoyed on its own merits.

I'll attempt to refrain from diving into the plot much, because it's not a very interesting plot, telling the leisurely story of local political corruption in the imperial setting of Burma, where lead character privileged important white man John Florry is thrust in the middle of a dispute between Indian associate Dr, Veriswami and the villain, corrupt magistrate U Po Kyin, while meanwhile awkwardly courting an equally privileged, important and white woman, albeit one younger than he. In essence, the combined events left me the impression of two main themes, both quintessentially Orwellian (that phrase has to be annoying for some people) in nature but entwined in an uncomfortable way that prevents the narrative from reaching a satisfying conclusion. The look at imperial Burma, directly portrayed from Orwell's five year tenure in Burma as a an imperial policeman, is the most interesting side of the book since Orwell knew Burma as a real-life Eurasia. Unfortunately his portrayal of the fascist state is narrow, unexplored with any vigor or much analysis; at least to the standard and effect of Orwell's later works. 

What's left, then, is the second focus; Florry as an example of an ineffectual, confident English fop. When he inevitably falls for the young, pretty, unattached Elizabeth, his previous confidence and self-image falls to pieces in the face of real emotion, as though he, representative of English males like him, should never really have left his mother's side. In essence it's a type of characterisation that exists strongly today (or at least in the 90's), through the presence of the entire career of Hugh Grant. Only, Orwell threw me slightly off balance at the end, with my typical expectations of a somewhat wholesome resolution dashed against the wall like the brains of a rabid cat. I'm not exaggerating there either, Burmese Days ends on a far heavier note than seemed necessary.

I should probably try and put a lid on these ramblings before they get totally out of control and incoherent, and try to figure out what I've learned. On the one hand, I'm disappointed that my last foray into Orwell's fiction wasn't great fun, but I'm not particularly surprised since, after all this was his first novel. Historically it is absolutely an essential building block on the road to 1984 and the best novel ever written, but it's only fractionally as interesting. It suffers from dallying on characterisations that aren't entirely comfortable yet, though will eventually morph into the cultivated figure of Winston Smith, and so there's plenty of intrigue to be found from an Orwell fanatic. For everyone else, there's not really much point in recommending this book to you, because if you haven't read 1984 or Animal Farm then you probably shouldn't be wasting your time reading this stupid blog anyway, alright?