Time Magazine’s Asia edition writes a favorable review of the new book by Amitav Ghosh titled, Incendiary Circumstances : A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times:
…moments of collapse, when the writer realizes what he cannot do–and what he has to do, as a citizen–are the center of the roaming anthropologist’s new collection of essays, Incendiary Circumstances. The title comes from a piece in which Ghosh, sitting at his desk in Delhi, working on his first novel, in 1984, suddenly sees the tranquil world around him go up in flames in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Hours before, he was just another student and aspiring author, hovering over his notebook in a part of Delhi called Defence Colony; overnight, he becomes an activist of sorts, going out into the streets to shout Gandhian slogans with the other everyday citizens trying to quell the riots.It is part of Ghosh’s curious luck that he often seems to be in the thick of things: he was a schoolboy in Sri Lanka just before civil war broke up the island, and he was living in rural Egypt when villagers around him started going to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in search of jobs. He was in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. The disappearance of seeming paradises has been his lifelong companion. More than that, though, he is an amphibian of sorts who knows what it is to be both witness and victim.
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p>Reading the review I was reminded a little of this question I posed to Manish just a few days ago. When is the time to write about and discuss an issue over, and the time to to either act on it or walk away at hand? Sometimes writing can inspire the cause that will produce a needed effect. Ghosh seems to focus on this balance.
Faced by those rioters in Delhi in 1984, some women stood up to them and, miraculously, reversed the tide of violence. Following the destruction of their country by the Khmer Rouge, a handful of survivors in Cambodia in 1981 put on a dance performance, piecing their lives together like “rag pickers.” Writers have to be solitaries, Ghosh recalls V.S. Naipaul saying, and yet, he seems to feel, to be useful they have to be participants, too.Incendiary Circumstances traces, over and over, the perfidy of empires and the corruption of most governments, but it never loses sight of individual action and power. And navigating both sides of the shadow lines within him, Ghosh travels to some of the most difficult places on earth to bring their voices back to those in places of seeming comfort.
See Amardeep’s review of Ghosh’s previous book, The Hungry Tide.
Ghosh’s book looks promising. He’s deeply learned, and a writer of lucid prose. I’ll check it out.
And I’m very much looking forward to Pankaj Mishra’s new collection of essays. I can’t quite figure out if the title is “Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond” or “How to Be Modern: Travels in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan” (maybe different names in different countries?).
But whichever it is, it will be a fine contribution to the emerging powerhouse that is non-fictional narrative by South-East Asians. I thought Mehta’s “Maximum City” set the bar very high for books of this kind.
And I hope we get such a book from Siddhartha Deb, another emerging star, one of these days.
My slant on Abhi’s question concerns the ethics of journalism: at what point in a crisis might a journalist’s role turn from objective observer to activist? Ghosh’s essays on the tsunami, for instance, seem somewhere in the middle, not as objective as journalism, but more than a personal account. But then, in moments of crisis, the reporter’s emotions — pathos, rage — become legitimate components of their work. (Something similar was in play with reporting on Katrina in the U.S.: there’s no way you can just do “business as usual” with something like that… )
Incidentally, early versions of a couple of the essays from the new Ghosh book might also be found elsewhere, or online:
Tsunami 1, Tsunami 2, and Tsunami 3.
“The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi” is on Ghosh’s own website here.
A version of “No Greater Sorrow” is here.
“The Ghat of the Only World: Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn” is at The Nation.
And there may be others, but I don’t want to discourage people from buying the book!
Nice links, Amardeep. Thank you.
I remember reading a version of “No Greater Sorrow” about a year ago. In the Kenyon Review? Something like that.
Oh, and I forgot to mention Amitava Kumar, whose “London, Bombay, New York” I loved, and whose “Husband of a Fanatic” is on my must read list. That latter book is an expansion of the ideas in this terrific essay.
interesting. i look forward to reading the book as well. having said that, i’m not that impressed by the points made in the review, which, it turns out, is written by pico iyer. i’m not much of a fan of iyer, i’ve found his writing a bit pedestrian and narcissistic — at least in “the global soul” (i admit i’ve not read his more recent work. i’d love to hear from someone who has.)
the review says:
but isn’t any writer in the “thick of things,” at least potentially? and isn’t it part of what draws us to many writers that they are able to find/reveal/illuminate “the thick of things” in even the most ordinary, on the surface, situations? iyer’s little summation here seems a bit convenient. how is the fact of egyptian villagers travelling to iraq in search of jobs “the disappearance” of a “seeming paradise”?
i like the notion of an “amphibian” — certainly fits the tidal theme, between the “hungry tide” of ghosh’s sundarbans novel and the even hungrier tide of the tsunami, but ultimately all we are talking about here is the old actor/observer dialectic, only rephrased as actor/victim, which is find a little unsettling. how exactly is amitav a victim in these stories? that he helps us understand the victim is one thing, and certainly commendable, but i’d like to think that he, and other effective writers, help us understand all the different forces at play in the situation they relate, ambiguous and contradictory as these may be.
by referring to “victim”-hood i think iyer tips his hand, suggesting that whatever it is we are talking about here has to do with the writer as he/she engages with situations where there is an official, or assumed, narrative of victimization — whether by forces natural or man-made.
but are we talking about the “engaged” artist here, in the political sense of the term, deploying his/her art in the service of a social or political purpose? or are we talking about the more generic, and universal, problem of finding and navigating the line between actor and observer?
re: amardeep’s question, i don’t think of amitav (and others like him) as “journalists” as much as i think of them as writers, a much more nebulous and less rule-bound category. and the rules, for journalists, depend entirely on the local context — what is standard for a french or spanish reporter is anathema in american newsrooms, for instance, and vice versa.
the review says:
certainly; but i don’t see the contradiction. i’d venture that to some extent writers don’t “have to be” solitaries; rather, they are solitaries, at some fundamental, ineffable level. in fact, when you come down to it, i’d venture that even being a “participant” doesn’t in any way require the giving up of “solitary”-nesss. when i consider my own behavior, both when i write and in life in general, i feel solitary even when i participate, and somehow i find no contradiction in that.
peace
I think Ghosh the fiction-writer is overesteemed. I could finish neither “In An Antique Land” nor “Glass Palace”. In frustration, I wondered why I could not appreciate them…until I realized there wasn’t much (aside from some excellent historical research) to appreciate. Every character–every one!–bears the monotonous drone of a single voice: his own. The characters resemble machine-made “antiques” of the Sphinx and the Pharaos ubiquitous in bazaars near Giza in Cairo–readily recognizable as signifying something grand, but bearing a government stamp.
Eddie on January 15, 2006 05:41 PM · Direct link
In An Antique Land is semi-fiction. You might have to have an appetite for the subject matter to remain interested.
For a true appreciation of Ghosh’s craft at straight ahead fiction you have to check out ‘The Shadow Lines’
Good writing seldom gets any better than that..
…speaking of good writing, I am thrilled to see that Mr. Teju Cole – himself an extraordinary writer and traveller, humanist and observer – is among us. I only wish that I had noted his presence sooner.
Ostensibly, if you checked out the comments on this page you might be interested in non-fiction narratives from other time zones. Teju offers just that, and in sublime fashion, regarding his recent trip to Nigeria. Teju, I hope it’s okay to point Sepiaites to your website: http://tejucole.typepad.com/
And the photos…vow. Check it out before he makes it disappear (sometime at the end of January, no?)
Ah! But I see now that Teju provided that link himself.
Apologies, enthusiasm for this guy’s writing got the better of me. Anyhow, do check it out!
That’s very nice, Mallumolu.
Thank you.