Critique

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR

Go figure with your literary instincts, and you will sure know why books convey the variance of life as a cultural metaphor.

"Blessings upon Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books," wrote Thomas Carlyle, some time in the 1800s. Carlyle, for all practical purposes, hadn't foreseen the advent of electronic publishing, or the possibility of something as high-tech as an electronic book, in his wildest of dreams, yes -- a work published online.

The printed word, on paper, was too sacred a proposition for someone like him, like most of us -- especially, habitual book lovers. It still is -- no matter the changing graph in one's perceptions today, thanks to our, or your, own singular panache for the magical chip and all its wondrous, or dappled, uses.

Whatever one's understanding of high-tech publishing and/or what maybe construed as the printed work/E-book of the future, it goes without saying that all of it originated from the humblest of beginnings -- a pioneer called Gutenberg, and his first printing press. A simple, but a profound process -- one that is too deeply entrenched in our psyche. Of the smell of paper, the ink, and that great, elemental feeling of a published work in hand. It still holds magic -- one that enraptures us, even if we don't really read books as much as we did earlier. Blame it on our own overwhelmingly well-orchestrated preoccupations, the pressures of modern living, or the advent of television -- and, you have a plethora of abstractions as to why the reading habit is increasingly being undermined by baser elements, or mundane intrusions.

In reality, however, things are not as bad as you'd think. Printed books are being published -- in millions. People still read them for a host of reasons. And, what's more, you've bestsellers, not in their dozens, but in any number, rolling out of the press practically everyday, interspersed with several awards and honours -- including the noble Nobel. They are all books in a profusion of genres -- fiction, non-fiction etc., to the so-called "barometer" that measures your pristine intellect. It is also something that you ought to have in your résumé -- New Age wisdom, or the back-to-the-future sort of conscious feeling, and the web of life itself. It's a pre-requisite for uniform, or fulsome, success -- a way out of a whole, new world, and its materialistic impasse.

Not that the human brain is in trouble; but the invasion has begun. Sort of. Of machines, or products of human engineering intelligence, geared to take over the world. You may believe it, or you may also think that all this is illogical alarm, or wholesome hype, or hoopla. It all depends on your school of thought, at best. But, the fact remains. We are dwarfed by our own technological advance. More importantly, we have yielded our psyche to integrated circuits and their mechanical offspring.

Which brings us to two interesting books that examine the future of artificial intelligence, and concur that the human brain is in difficulty. Written by experts in computer intelligence, the books not only aim their compass to impress upon us the fact that the Age of Machines is near, but also expand on the notion that the future belongs to robots.

Ray Kurzwell's The Age Of Spiritual Machines takes its premise on a cutting-edge theme: of where human technology is going next. Yet, its voyage is philosophically receptive, with emphasis on the narrative: of an exploration of the meaning of computer innovations for human life, and the eventual victory of the virtual over the real itself.

Hans Moravec's Robot is another -- it is full of such futuristic speculations. The book's sub-title tells it all: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. It is also an intellectual exercise, all right. Not only that. It conceives its main mantle on independent robot-run industries of the future: of industries where one could transfer wealth, along with eventual replacement of organic human beings by mechanistic progeny, or "mind children." Its spectrum of vision has machines as the next evolutionary stride. It also convinces us that once intelligence is created by natural selection, it will only be a matter of time before the products of intelligence outdo their creators, and displace them entirely.

It's a fascinating read, all right, but not sound study of truth. Because, Maravec is on slippery ground in his endeavours vis-à-vis the idea of what maybe described as machine consciousness, or the nature of mind? You bet. Yet, it goes without saying that the two books appeal most to computer buffs, or enthusiasts, including general readers, for one striking reason. They bring the cogent idea of self-replication up-front. Computers today, they implore, are being used to design other computers. In the not-so-distant future, we'd just as well be making computers that challenge human beings in every manner possible -- as possible as possible can be.

Now, on to a comparative prism. It is all a question of possibility, in more ways than one, again: of why fiction reigns in a league of its own, and on its own pedestal. Take for instance, I Allan Sealy's remarkable photo-realistic novel, The Everest Hotel, the winner of the First Crossword Book Award for Fiction. That the novel was called in for scrutiny by the Booker panel may now be passé. What isn't -- it did not win the Booker. Maybe, the committee did not want India to romp home with the prestigious prize for the second time in a row, after Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things had swept the award a year before.

But, this doesn't in anyway detract from the merits of Sealy's enchanting work. The Everest Hotel is more than a glowing testimony to Sealy's growing literary effulgence:- a sensitive novel set against the backdrop of social and political distress, and measured by the rhythmical changes of the seasons, Kalidasa's Ritusamhara, to be precise. This is not all. Sealy's story of blighted love owes much of its origin to the twelve-month tradition of baramasih [folksong], where the languishing voice is always that of a woman. Not just a literary masterpiece, Sealy's daintily crafted work is more than a rich, evocative, and compelling read. It takes reading to its highest levels of literary embellishment. If you haven't still read it -- it's time you did. You'll savour every word of it -- even years after it appeared in print!

Which only draws us to one of Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-winning fictional works, Amsterdam, a deftly engineered and engaging novel. Amsterdam, despite its title, is very English. It is more than a gripping story about two friends who meet at the throng outside a crematorium -- the novel's dazzling opening sequence -- to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their present standing -- Clive Linley as Britain's most successful modern composer, who's taken in by his own sense of self-importance, and Vernon Halliday as editor of The Judge, a quality newspaper, who's "revered as a non-entity."

Molly had other lovers too, most notably Julian Garmony, foreign secretary, who's tipped to be the next Prime Minister. It's Garmony's compromising photographs that lead the two friends to unlikely fates -- of karma made by a pact with consequences neither has foreseen, and of a friendship that is tested to its limits.

Amsterdam is a mix of the nasty and the feisty, yes. Its humour is evident throughout, even when it is plainly dark. It delights with its time-shifting events, and of characters that don't really break free of McEwan's control. It has no factual moral explorations, or stress on understanding, but is always entertaining in the matrix of satirists like Kingsley Amis.

Amsterdam would be your perfect "how-to" for writing a novel of substance, if ever there was one: a do-it-yourself exercise to winning an award or two. But, it is also art -- a winning combination, all the same. That's something you won't get off-the-shelf, or for a song, as it were.

Go figure with your literary instincts, and you will sure know why it conveys that variance of life as a cultural metaphor!