Eleven Minutes

Eleven Minutes

The ‘scandalous’ novel by Paulo Coelho. One which I had always wanted to read, but always avoided, on account of an inscrutable aversion(or fear?) towards anything serious about love sex. Finally, quite ironically, I got my hands on it, and at such a time in my personal life when I should have kept light-years away from it, going by my previous aversion. Well, some things are bound to happen, and I read this book, most coveted by me, but only after I’ve been through 7 others of Coelho’s.

Story of a prostitute, the story opens with all young girl’s usual dilemma of “why-do-men-only-want-sex” versus “my-Prince-Charming” dream which our protagonist, Maria, also harbors, if only for an appropriately short time. You can’t philosophize much in that part as both the premises are quite naive. And neither does PC tries to do anything beyond the obvious.

Started in an Alchemist fashion, poor young girl landing in an unknown land trying to fulfill

Eleven Minutes

her dreams, the story soon finds its path, the inseparable duo of Love & Sex. The diary notes, which Maria writes at the end of almost every chapter are the best part, offering Paulo’s pearls of wisdom in pure form.

Landing in the ‘business’ of prostitution, Maria treads an interesting but potentially destructive path. Exploring the world of human nature and weaknesses, she discovers the futility of the art of sex itself, not just for her as an agent, but for the client, the consumer too. She sees, she feels the gaping hole in everybody’s life, being ever widened by the indiscreet, futile overabundance of sex. The missing essence of the physical act. But Maria, still deprived of real ‘love’, the Yang, continues to hanker for it, ignoring the Yin, sex. But its understandable, given her life.

And just when she thought she would never find what true love is, her life changes, and she meets with a painter who saw her ‘inner light’. At this critical juncture, the story might have gone down a much simpler and straightforward path, girl meets the perfect boy, all the pieces of the puzzle of life fall right into place, girl has the perfect orgasm, gets out of prostitution, and they live happily…(including ‘ever after’ would be a sin for me to insinuate in Paulo’s works). But thankfully, the story doesn’t go straight down the waterfall(or the metaphorical gutterhole, if you please), but manages to hang there, as there are questions, in Maria’s life and in the novel, still unanswered. The attempt to discover love, its true nature, the essence of sex, goes on in a typical-Paulo surreal narrative.

Starting off and going on a promising note, the book falters towards the end. All the questions are put perfectly. But when the search for answers begins, strange things happen, in places. The surreal narrative, and the weird turn the story takes, is inexplicable at certain places and doesn’t make any sense. And it is outright ridiculous at one place where, during a talk with her librarian friend, Maria ‘discovers’ the G-spot, and the reason for her inability to have an orgasm. In an instant, poof! there goes all the philosophical ramifications developed due to her inability to have an orgasm vanishing into thin air.

The questions asked are fundamental, and therefore elusive, and if found, highly subjective. And at times Paulo tires too hard to answer to cook something up for an answer(it’s really not as bad as it sounds). True maybe, it’s all a matter of faith.

And that’s precisely the reason Paulo Coelho’s books matter

My Apprenticeship

My Apprenticeship is the second part of Maxim Gorky’s autobiographical trilogy. I had read the first part, Childhood, way back in my 10^th class. In those days I used to read Gorky a lot, reading Mother and other of his novels and stories.

My Apprenticeship tells the story of child Alexei thrown into the big bad Russia of the 19^th century, sent off to work as an apprentice in a shoe shop. The book reveals the Russia as it was, from the eyes of the child, and though he had already seen many painful tragedies in his 8-year old life, death of his father, and later his mother, unloving relatives, poverty and its consequences, begging and picking on streets, he was yet to see the even more darker side of the world, that of human relations and emotions.

After the death of his mother and the disintegration of his remaining ‘family’, his grandfather set him up for a door-boy in a shoe shop, where he worked along with his cousin Sasha. There he first got to know aspects of behavior in society which he could not understand then, but despised. And with time the more he got to understand the rotten psychology behind the way people behaved, the more he hated and despised it.

He was soon thrown out from the shoe-shop due to illness. This proved to be a blessing in disguise as he came to live again with his grandmother. Young Alexei Peshkov loved his

             Maxim Gorky

grandmother more than anybody. Throughout the book, what he saw embittered him and shook his faith in man’s integrity, honesty, religion and God. Yet he could never lose faith in her grandmother’s simplicity, honesty and a smiling resilience to face any possible suffering in life. The time spent with his granny at home was one of his bests. He played with old friends, went to collect berries and mushroom in forest with granny.

Unfortunately, his grandfather sent him off to work for his granny’s nephew. He worked there for a very long period, one of the most dreary and depressing periods of his life. His only refuge at that time was books, with which he came in serious contact after meeting a beautiful lady who lived beneath their apartment, from whom he got the books to read surreptitiously, avoid his strongly discouraging mistresses. He named the lady Queen Margot after one of his favorite literary characters, and her personality had a deep impact on him.

The world of book became his only refuge from the world where only boredom, brutality, ignorance, and malice-for-no-reason existed. As he grew up, he saw the depths into which the people around him were wallowing. Struck with boredom, they claw at each other’s skin just to prove to themselves that they are alive. Everyone would seek bestial pleasure, at the same time cursing oneself for it. Muzhiks, soldiers, washerwomen, petty housewives, thieves, gamblers, drunkards, gamblers, merchants, beggars, children, everyone was sunk deep into the rotten swamp of old, decayed society and its dead morals.

After about three years, young Alexei abruptly ran from his master’s house to join a steamer on Volga. There he met another person to affect his life immensely, Yakov the stoker. He saw that it was the same on the sea as it was everywhere else, the same brutality, borne out of boredom and ignorance. One day he left the steamer as abruptly as he joined, to return to the old master. The second time is as bad as the first one, in fact worse as Alexei is older and more observant. And more defiant. This time it didn’t last long and left soon to work for an icon-painting workshop.

There he met another set of acquaintances. Sharper and more observant now, he saw the horrifying extent to which the social, moral and mental fabric of an individual had been decayed. Living among the lowers, he saw their bonds, their desires, their fears and their laughter, their wisdom and their ignorance. And more than anything, he saw their inevitable doom. All of them going down the same rotten path, some struck by consumption, some drunk senseless, some sunken neck deep in debauchery, some lost the will to live…

Finally, sick and depressed to the core of this human depredation, he leaves the icon-painting workshop to work for his older master, overseeing the construction of fair shops. There, life teaches him new lessons, as the boy grows to become a young man, firm in his convictions and mature in his bitter experiences.

This autobiographical novel, like other works by Gorky, gives us a vivid picture of the time he grew up in, the society he lived and suffered in, and observed. This is also a story of hope, perseverance and fighting spirit, which keeps going on even in the worst of situations.

No matter what he saw, no matter how much disillusioned and embittered it made him, it only strengthened his faith in what he believed in.

Inheritance – A befitting end to the series

This year, late in May, when I became properly active on Goodreads, I had set myself  a goal of completing 20 books in 2011. Being on summer internship at that time, I completed a majority of that goal in May and June itself, and completed the rest 3 or 4 books comfortably up to October. I was relieved that now, after completing my goal, I could concentrate upon my exams which were looming in the end of November. But book had evil intentions to foil my every plan of studying peacefully without thinking about books anymore. And that book was released on 8th November. As soon as I got to know of it, I threw all my studying plans out the window and got a copy of that book. Yes, we are talking about the fourth and final book of the Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini – Inheritance.

The novel starts where Brisingr ends, with Varden starting offensive on the city of Belatona, according to Nasuada‘s plan of talking on Galbatorix. In Brisingr, Oromis and Glaedr are killed by Murtagh and Thorn. The eldunari, or a dragon‘s hearts of hearts, of Glaedr is still ravaged by the loss of his Rider. During the seige of Belatona, Saphira is attacked by a Dauthdaert, ancient weapon immune to dragon magic and made specially to kill them. Nasuada sends Roran to the southern coast of Alagaesia, to the city of Aroughs, to capture it against impossible odds. 

Not telling you the whole story, I’ll tell you why this novel shines. This is by far the most mature work in the Inheritance cycle. Starting from Eragon, published in 2002 by a still-early-teenager Paolini, he has steadfastly matured through these four novels. Inheritance shows that finally he has come of age truly as a writer and none of his talent will now be hindered by his lack of experience as a writer.

His writing style has become more sophisticated, poised, taking control, taking in all the details with a steady pace. The description of battle has become all the more involved and better. Battles in Inheritance are far more complex and strategical than the straightforward attacks and all-or-nothing wars of the previous works. This was both necessary as the story line demanded distinct battles with distinctive touch of strategy, espionage and tactics for each city, and commendable as Paolini pulled it off in quite a respectful manner. The seige of Belatona is faily simple but things quickly become complex after that.

Another good part of the novel that carries over from Brisingr, and partly from Eldest, is the parallel story line of Roran. Roran is the archetypal warrior hero, who fights for his wife, his newborn child, for the heck of it, and oh yeah, for world peace too. Nasuada, who I feel was a little too inhuman and dark-shaded, sends Roran on near-impossible assignments which he pulls off miraculously.

The best part I liked about Inheritance, and which I think is Paolini’s greatest achievement, is NOT depicting Eragon as the conventional hero, the savior of the world. In a story, where he is the most powerful good magician in the world, and the only good Rider and basically the last hope of the whole Alagaesia, it’s hard, it’s very hard, not to make him larger than life. And yet Paolini succeeds in doing so. The protagonist of the novel is a man on a quest, a wanderer searching for the answers to the myriad of questions in his mind. He has mastered the world he was thrust in so brutally, but he has yet to come to terms with many things of that world. He is not a charmer, he is not suave, he is not in agreement with many of his associates, and he is made to do many things he wouldn’t do if not for his duty. More than anything else, he’s not alien to human emotions and weaknesses they bring, love, jealousy, yearning, depression, angst, revulsion, pacifism. He is in search of a solution that would somehow put the things in order, stop the inherent problem that he senses in this world.

Another good part about the book is the more involved storyline and building up on historical legends. This was not to such an extent in previous novels. Here, the pressing need to defeat Galbatorix necessitates the formulation of ways out that are quite outlandish. Outlandish as they are, Paolini makes sure there are no loopholes to make it sound unbelievable, and he almost completely succeeds at it.

This is the part related to the Vault of Souls, and the prophecy made by Solembum the werecat in Eragon, the first book of the series. Solembum remains one of my favorite characters of the series, and he reappears in the book. But sadly, all of Angela’s secrets are left unexplained in the cycle. I would have loved to know the stories behind them. Murtagh rocks in his Byronic, tragic anti-hero persona. Murtagh fans will find a pleasant surprise for themselves in the end.

Last thing I’d like to say about the book is the way it ends. It doesn’t end with the end of Galbatorix (okay, this much should be quite predictable, so no spoilers here), but goes on, as it should have been, as not challenges facing Eragon and the future of Alagaesia have been eliminated.

Inheritance is a fitting end to the cycle. Best of the four books, this is a culmination of the journey Christopher Paolini, and all of us, took through the series .

The Silmarillion

Dark. Long and arduous. Monotonous. Detailed to the point of nervous breakdown, yet incomplete. 

Sounds like a children’s fantasy tale? No? Same here. And all those who’ve read it will agree. The last of Tolkien‘s major works to be published, The Silmarillion follows the path of increasingly darkening tones in Tolkien’s works, the seeds of which were laid in deceptively naive children’s fantasy The Hobbit, and is darker than The Lord of the Rings.

While chronologically the last of Tolkien’s major works, technically the ideas of it were sowed in his mind as early as twenties. Tolkien began working on the story of the fall of the hidden city of Gondolin as far back as 1917, when he was a soldier in World War I. While it is usually perceived as a addendum or encyclopedia to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, that wasn’t how Tolkien had imagined it. A professor of Anglo-Saxon literature, he had been working on the medieval European mythologies for long, and the idea of an imaginary world had been brewing in his mind for a very long time, well into the First War period. Stories kept emerging one after the other, not completely organized into a structured whole, but forming discrete sections of yet-unformed novel. When he sat down to write The Hobbit, he used his imaginary world as a backdrop for the children’s fantasy tale, introducing for the first time his own imaginary world to our world. After success of The Hobbit, he was tasked to produce another novel of the same kind. Up until then, his discrete stories of the Middle-Earth and its history had formed into a cohesive entity which he produced to the publishers but was rejected. From this rejection, came his another creation, his most famous one, The Lord of the Rings, the great epic set in the same Middle-Earth. During all these times, his continuous revision, and reworkings on The Silmarillion never stopped, and he continued to work on it.

The Silmarillion recounts the history of the Middle-Earth, from the very beginning of the creation of this universe by Iluvatar, the Single One, and formation of Arda, the earth. It then recounts ages and ages of history of the earth, the creation of Elves, the Elder ones, the retreating of the Valars, the Gods, formation of the Sun and the Moon, creation of Men, the great battles of histories. Now the narrative is obviously non-linear, for it to cover epochs.

Now, as I said earlier, it is darker than The Hobbit and LOTR trilogy. The grey elements thinly veiled in The Hobbit finally came to the fore in The Lord of the Rings, and their all-pervading influence on the entire history of the earth can be easily seen in this book. This is not a children’s tale in any sense, nor should they try to read it with his previous novels in mind. And to the one-sided LOTR fan, this may just be a compendium to account for all the facts and mysteries presented in previous two works. But if you take into account the conception of the idea of this work, and it’s magnificence compared to the plots of The Hobbit and LOTR, you’ll start to see this thing in a completely new light. In The Silmarillion, we see that the history of this earth is blotted with blood all over, and jealousy, treason, evil, and darkness reigned supreme even in the hallowed times of the old. The title is taken from the Silmarils, the three jewels said to contain the eternal light, which was before the formation of the Sun and the Moon. A large portion of the book, Quenta Silmarillion is dedicated to the quest for these jewels. These jewels remind one of the corrupting influence of One Ring, and all the havoc that was wrecked on the world due to it. These jewels corrupt the fate of the Elves forever, sealing their diminishing in the wake of the dominion of Men. Kinslayings, death of the Two Trees, fall of Noldor, and later the whole Beleriand, the history of elves is marked with their bloody fate which is inextricably linked with Silmarils until the end of the Second Age.

Later, in the Age of the Men, we witness the fall of Numenor, once again a vista of the evil and darkness, that lay in the heart of the noblest of Men. If you’re seriously pursuing the novel, you’ll sense a deep depression falling upon you as you approach the end, as you witness millennia plunged into darkness due the the darkness in Elves’s and Men’s hearts. Now this fantasy is far more closer to the reality, and equally grim. The only part containing a flicker of never-ending light (that of love) was the tale of Beren and Luthien, and that is the part I like most. In my opinion their love story is the greatest in all the Middle-Earth (not that there are too many, hehe), and greater than that of Aragorn and Arwen.

As for length, it is not a monster, but a quite regular one, but I bet you’re going to have lots of pains reading this one. And you’ll be cursing yourself over you speed which would hit an all time low . As expected from a historical narrative, it is choke-full of information, names of persons, geography, objects. In fact in the starting you’re going to be completely bowled over by the sudden spate of information pouncing over you. Slowly you’ll regain your composure to go ahead. I’d advise keeping an atlas of Middle-Earth handy for easy referencing, or you’ll get completely lost before long. For the same reasons, it begins to feel a bit monotonous if you’re not completely into Tolkien, so this requires a bit of dedication on your part . Only for hard-core fans, others try at their own risk.

In the end, I’ll only say this: Expansive, in scope and in reach. This book may not suit those looking for a nice story, one that is usually sought in fantasy, but for those who want to delve deep in the mysteries of Middle-Earth, and those to whom the history of events described in Lord of the Rings excite to no end.
For those who are willing to brave through the avalanche of information to the very end.
And yes, very dark. It lays bare the thoughts which are too true in the real world itself: Men are not without failings, and with power and wealth, those failings catch them, and bade their fall. Which is only very true.

The Hobbit

I read The Hobbit a long long time after I had watched Lord of the Rings, even though I had wanted to read it for quite a long time.

This book is a classic. First and foremost a classic of children literature. Then a classic of fantasy literature. And a classic of world literature. And all the three genres are going to remember it for a long time.

It was from this novel, that the great leap from fantasy to high fantasy was taken, at least technically if not in reality (as The Silmarillion was born in Tolkien‘s mind much before it). It is from here, that the present day notions of all the creatures of fantastic realm came, from fair, wise and immortal elves to hirsute, greedy dwarves to mountain-dwelling goblins.  This book is the starting point of all images and concepts we have in our mind regarding fantasy.

Okay, enough with the paeans. Maybe I went a bit too far hehe. Anyways, the story, from the outside, seems quite simple enough. A team goes on an adventure. And adventure they get in ample amounts. All the usual stuff (it has been usual since medieval folklore of Teutons and Anglo-Saxons) is there, fighting the bad guys, bravery and courage in war, loyalty towards friends, amiable friends, larger-than-life foes with ridiculous Achilles Heel.

But as we go to look deeper into the motifs of the novel, then we begin to see subtleties which make it different from a normal children fantasy tale, or even from legends of Beowulf and Sinbad.

The protagonist isn’t your usual hunky, big-muscled man with flowing golden locks and charming eyes. Rather he’s a middle aged midget with a weakness for good food and comfortable living.  How this adventure makes a hero out of him is one of the greatest things of this novel. Unlike usual heroes, he’s not born with courage. Rather he’s an out-of place accomplice with a company of dwarves, on whose poor shoulders such epithets are heaped which he hasn’t done a single thing to deserve .

Another thing worth noting is the calm, methodical pace with which Tolkien keeps introducing new characters, or rather, new kinds of creatures. Starting with hobbits, then dwarves, he goes on to trolls, elves, goblins, wolves, eagles, men and lastly dragons. And with each race, comes a new adventure. A nice trick. It’s like he were rolling down the complete documentation for us to refer to during further explorations (read: LOTR).

Though, it’s a children’s tale, its depiction often delves deep inside the obvious and begins to deal with adult themes, grey characters, greed and avarice, cunning, personal rediscovery through external adventures, widening of horizon of the perspective of a hole-dwelling hobbit. Even the main protagonist, after performing countless feats of valor and brushing with death too often to save his friends, is not immune to cheating those friends in the face of immense attraction of Arkenstone. And neither are those very same friends immune from forsaking their savior under the influence of their lost and thereby regained riches. These motifs, though very strong, are dealt only with secondary emphasis in the novel. The primary emphasis remains on the adventures, as befits a children’s tale. In places, it almost feels like Tolkien must have had to curb his urge to write an adult novel (an urge he quite readily yielded to when writing Lord of the Rings, to the immense benefit of the literary world) and keep concentrating on the adventures.

After The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings came and everything was changed forever. C. S. Lewis published his Chronicles of Narnia at around the same time. The high-fantasy has arrived

The Hobbit is considered one of the rarest gems of children’s literature . Secondly, in fantasy genre, this was the starting of the Tolkien revolution which would soon rewrite all the rules of high fantasy. Without it, Harry Potter and Inheritance cycle would not have been possible (I wish i could say the same for Twilight saga, sigh….). He first depicted fantasy as they were to remain, 60 years and still going high . Tolkien is the godfather of fantasy. Third and last aspect of the book is its theme and underlying serious motifs which made it more than just a classic of children literature. Much more than that. They made it a classic of world literature.

Related articles

• ‘The Hobbit’: Peter Jackson offers the first close-up look at three of his dwarves (insidemovies.ew.com)
• Post-Antaragni Hobbit-hoppings (notesbymohit.wordpress.com)
• The Hobbit (jdhhomeschool.wordpress.com)
• Sept. 21, 1937: The Hobbit Opens Up a Brave New World (wired.com)
• The Hobbit as Tolkien Saw It (wired.com)

End of the bad times-A post a week

It’s been a very slow start for Phaedrus Within.

I made it in the end of February of this year, specifically for music and literature reviews. For a full month I didn’t write the first post. After hours of intense torture, the first post came out, which was a satisfactory experience though .

But the pace always remained as slow as ever. It’s a sad thing to realize that though the first-born, it has always been a severely neglected child in comparison to my other blogs, Prairie Wind and Gorky Cafe.

Anyways, the good thing is I didn’t abandon this blog, and even though extremely infrequently, kept writing reviews of literature I read.

Now I think the troubled times for this blog (the torturous me! ) are going to end. From this week onwards, I’ve took up the personal challenge to write a post a week. Also from now on, the madman will only rave about his literary wanderings, and not the musical ones (sparse as they are, hehe). I guess this will make this my most coherent blog up to now .

End of the bad times for Phaedrus Within

Notes from Underground

Chilling. Dark. Menacing. And True.

These are the four words to describe this feat of philosophy and literature by Dostoyevsky.

The story is told by a man from the underground or a ‘hole’. Right from the start the narrator makes no compunctions about his thoughts on humanity and on himself. He denounces the society for its falseness on the outside beneath which there is a putrid core of rotten morality, ethical values and twisted ideas of collectivism and social welfare.

It starts by a classic description the narrator gives of himself, as an irritable, hostile and utterly despicable man who has been living in a ‘hole’ for the past two decades. He has been thinking about the society a lot during these 20 years and finally he’s noting down all those contemplations. And he doesn’t give a damn whether you take his thoughts in the right spirit or not. Because they are not in the right spirit in actuality. You can get appalled by them or you can laughingly toss them in the dustbin for all he cares.

He exposes the shallowness of the society he lives in, and goes on in a lengthy exposition about what people expect from a society and what they give to it and to what extent society marks its influence in the everyday life and thought-process of a common man. Moving on to the concept of ‘selfless ideal’ and ‘selfish evil’ he exposes the fallacy of this concept and denounces the collective amorphous faceless crowd that determines the fate of an individual man with a face.

Notes from Underground was one of the most vituperative and most revolutionary texts of the 19th century. It created a furor in the intellectual circles of 19th century Europe when it was published. The views over it in Russia was divided in two extremes, in the wake of the liberation of the serfs.

This book was the first novel to expound upon the idea of individuality which would later become the cornerstone of the edifice of Existentialism created by Sartre and others. Fyodor Dostoyevsky at his all-time peak as a philosopher. He presupposes the dawn of individual as a philosophical entity who would stand tall in the coming 20th century.