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The Rajah Has No Robes
| Article
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11243 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1993 |
2,142 Words |
| Author
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Rajesh Alfred
Rajesh Alfred is a writer based in the Washington, D.C.,
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A SUITABLE BOY
Vikram Seth
New York: HarperCollins, 1993
1,349 pp., $30.00
We are going to Calcutta tomorrow evening by the 6:22 train.. . . Don't you dare say anything," said Rupa Mehra. Excuse me, madam, but I must. We can't. Not tomorrow or any other evening. There neither is, nor was in the fifties, any train in India at 6:22. I know. I've lived there for almost twenty-five years. Heck, even the watches there can't read 22. They work in increments of "late." How late, did you ask? Well, "LATE."
Though unsuitable in size, Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy is suited for commendation in its endeavor--a Himalayan labor, indeed. But who, anymore, reads such tomes (1,349 pages and three and a half pounds), and where does one read them? Can't do it on the train or the bus, or in bed, or a recliner, either, for, having to support it on your thighs, you'd have to sit up straight. Not something you could toss in the tote and take to the park. Indeed, if it were art, even on a Rushmore scale, you'd take the trouble, but the mediocre meanderings of life in Anyplace, India? Literature it is not; an obesely fleshed out screenplay for a miniseries to be shown exclusively in India, maybe.
But passing a ten-line judgment on a 1,400-page book is neither fair nor becoming. Surely there must be, tucked within its pages, elements that invoke discussion of some literary nature? Seth, after all, comes from Bengal, the land of Rabindranath Tagore, who earned India its only Nobel Prize in literature in 1913.
Unfortunately, however, and to my great sorrow, I do not see them--those elements that might invoke "literary" discourse. It is an okay book, but not one that is outstanding in its literature, its depth of depiction, its ideas, its style, its novelty. Seth himself reportedly claims that he wants to strip fiction of ideas and style--whatever that may mean. Without going into the philosophical arguments that ensue from that, my question then simply is, Why bother?
But then came Jonathan Yardley's review in the Washington Post. Yardley is a reviewer of the suburban variety--he gets his mower out every Sunday, plunks on the ear phones from his Walkman, and levels the turf--and when he is done everything is, well, nice. Breakfast the following Saturday was disturbed when the Style section of the Post fell out at my feet.
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