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RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR
Books have a definite purpose.
Hence, quite distinct perceptions, or readership outlines
-- of a decorum exclusively restricted to the realm of the
tangible, not to speak of literary ornamentation… Take
any period in history, and you have a grand spectacle: of
great, or 'best,' books that have left their imprint on the
sands of time. Here's a selection -- 10 great books of the
last century.
The world of
books, like writing per se, is quite simply, a pursuit
of both intellect and substance in scaffolds and words: of
a sculpture brought forth by imaginings, or perceptions. This
also explains something definitive. For the characteristics
of literary expressions to flower up-front -- from musing to
understanding -- not many axioms are needed.
Take any period in history, and you have
a grand spectacle: of great, or 'best,' books that have left
their imprint on the sands of time. Our century has been no
exception. Yet, to pick just ten 'best' books in as many decades
-- to represent a connotation -- is no easy task. It is akin
to dissecting a bud to appreciating its innate beauty. But,
here goes our pick -- not very complete, but just illustrative
of an epoch -- a mirror to a spoor.
Kim
Kim O'Hara is the foundling son of an
Irish soldier stationed in India. He is neither untainted
nor mistreated. Brought up by a half-caste woman living on
dope, he speaks the colloquial by propensity. He also believes
that a great destiny is manifest: for him, and for him alone.
In Kim, Rudyard Kipling, the bard of India, and Nobel
winner, who knew the streets and the jungles of Britain's
own Jewel in the Crown, creates a congenial portrait of India
that coalesces the life of activity and that of meditation.
Quite truly, one of the first 'best' books of the last century.
Ulysses
This James Joyce gem which was once labelled
as vulgar, rotten, and blasphemous, remains a contemporary
classic. A graphical work, the novel is simply a long story,
with profound meanings. What we have in the assertively readable
book is a rogue's gallery of perpetual Dubliners. They animate,
nibble, walk the streets, debate, and even titillate their
own sensual fancies. As a host of human impressions is celebrated
on the canvas of a single day, the novel emerges not just
as an experimental work, but the very reflection of the veritable:
of workaday happenings. A remarkable tour de force
of Joycean realism and genius.
The Metamorphosis
What happens when you go into repose,
and 'metamorphose' as a giant cockroach? You get a very queer
feeling: the shock of a lifetime. Franz Kafka's monumental
three-act novelette has that odd element, not to speak of
spectacular synthesis, melody, design, and yarn, including
allegory. The Metamorphosis is not only an assortment
of classic tales that reflects Kafka's grotesque humour, but
it also celebrates his psychological genius, and lyricism,
in addition to his everlasting repute as one of the greatest
writers of his time, and beyond.
A Handful Of Dust
Evelyn Waugh's archetypal novel, A
Handful Of Dust, is an elevated exemplar of a desolate,
caustic form of writing: a bitingly comical account of blue-blooded
rot and absolute boredom in Britain between the wars. Among
a select group of writers that has walked the line between
sham and misfortune effortlessly, and also engaged the covenants
of the waggish novel to flake away at the English class system
already on its last legs, Waugh stands at his own pinnacle
of glory. A Handful of Dust is simple, even capricious;
it is the best among Waugh's best.
The Power And The Glory
The finest of Graham Greene's great works
is set in Mexico, during the era of anti-clerical violence
by communist revolutionaries. The novel delineates the execution
of the last Roman Catholic priest, who is being hunted by
the police. The 'whisky priest,' as he is called rather sardonically,
is a depraved dipsomaniac who has violated most of his vows,
albeit he asserts upon fulfilling his obligations till it
is 'curtains' for him. A pietistic account that locks God
and faith against 20th-century materialism, The Power...
is an ageless novel -- it epitomises Greene's imperious talents as a chronicler beyond
compare.
The Tin Drum
Nobel winner Gunter Grass's huge novel,
The Tin Drum, pictures a repulsive Nazi dimension:
a world that is replete with corrupt politicians and uncouth
shopkeepers in brown shirts. In so doing, it uses barbarous
parody and an uncompromising measure of mystical realism to
bring home not only the horrendous realities of war, but also
the dark excrescences at the pith of civilisation that
brusquely allows
such indignities to take place. Acclaimed as the greatest
German novel written since the end of World War II, The
Tin Drum is the autobiography of thirty-year-old Matzerath,
who has lived through the prolonged Nazi incubus and who,
as the novel evolves, is being held in a mental asylum.
The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting
It is a paradigm like no other: of life-imitating-art,
and vice versa. Milan Kundera talks about Czechoslovakia with
a political twist, or underpinning, running through it -- a
sort of it-is-there, it-is-just-not-there, type of mélange.
Additionally, it is also a form of non-emergence and emergence
that is, partly, explored. The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting
is a many-sided work. A novel, an autobiography, and a philosophical
primer, it is seldom politically correct; besides, it is not related to any
genre, but always original, amusing and positively dazzling.
A masterly novel.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude
One of Gabriel Garcia Márquez's
magnificent novels, One Hundred Years Of Solitude loops
many a proviso before the hero, Buendía, stands before
the firing squad. In so doing, it also narrates the unbelievable
-- a whole community struck with sleeplessness, a woman who
levitates to paradise while doing laundry, and a suicide that
mocks at the laws of gravity. Not only that. The novel follows
one hundred years in the life of Macondo, a village founded
by Buendía, and engaged by progeny all wearing changes
on their forebear's name. The best part -- in the midst of tragedy, Marquez's
stunning work is highly comical and utterly captivating. A
rare mix that only Marquez can commingle with delicious surprise,
and uncanny propensity.
Beloved
Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison's poignant
novel follows the trail in the troubled years following the
American Civil War. As the 'spectre' of a murdered child troubles
the home of a former slave, it leads to a motley of weird
situations. The baleful apparition breaks mirrors, leaves
its fingerprints in cake-icing, and makes life burdensome
for Sethe and her family. All the same, the woman finds the
unearthly, strangely serene: for the esprit is that of her
own dead baby, never christened, but thought of only as 'Beloved.'
A deceased child, a vassal on the run, and a horrid 'privy'
-- these are the pivotal trepidations of this portentous novel.
Midnight's Children
This Salman Rushdie novel of delectation
engages Bombay as an incomparable, extensive spectacle, and
Bollywood, with its grand repertoire of burlesque, as a fantasy,
where real life isn't anything it is. Rushdie paints Bombay
with his own sense of explicit singularity: "… along
Marine Drive! On Chowpatty sands! Past the great houses on
Malabar Hill, round Kemp's Corner, giddily along the sea to
Scandal Point!… [On and on], down my very own Warden
Road, right alongside the segregated swimming pools of Breach
Candy, right up to huge Mahalaxmi Temple and the old Willingdon
Club…" Bizzare dreams. Surreal fantasies, for someone
like Saleem. They are all explored -- like no other 'root-stock'
book. The Rushdie spell is instantaneous and imperishable
-- like our 'best' books of the twentieth century.
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