Read Online The Modern Library by Colm Tóibín, Carmen Callil - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Colm Tóibín, Carmen Callil
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Literature Prize.
Age in year of publication: sixty-one.
Anita Desai 1937–
1984 In Custody
In India, where so many have so little, what is the use, what is the glory of poetry? Anita Desai’s answer takes shape in the person of Deven, a teacher of Hindi in a college in Mirepore, a dustbowl town near Delhi. Married to Sarla, a living pillar of pessimism, his real love is poetry, in the old language, Urdu.
Deven is a timid, put-upon soul, bullied by his friend Murad into interviewing the great but reclusive poet Nur. Deven’s visits to Delhi to see him turn into a nightmare of farcical episodes in which drink, layabouts, frenzied birds and even more frenzied wives manipulate Deven, forcing him into debt and dishonour. Nur is a splendid creation, lizard-like, rapacious; yet of the two it is Deven who, in his acceptance of the price he has to pay in the service of art, triumphs over the multitudes of self-destructions on offer.
This is a novel with many meanings, many faces. One of the most resonant is that of India itself, with its blazing heat, its preference for individualistic chaos: this is India in the early 1980s on the point of change, during that recent past when the wonders of its history were abandoned and crumbling. Placing this magnificent inheritance in safe custody, Desai exposes the dilemmas of modern India in cool and lyrical prose.
Anita Desai was born in Mussoorie, India, and lives in England and the USA. This novel became a Merchant Ivory film in 1993; other praised novels include Fire on the Mountain (1977), Clear Light of Day (1980) and Fasting, Feasting (1999), which was the runner-up for the Booker Prize.
Age in year of publication: forty-seven.
Pete Dexter 1943–
1988 Paris Trout
This is a clearly written, tightly paced novel about the Deep South in the time between the Korean and the Vietnam Wars when racial segregation was absolute, but certain actions against black people – cold-blooded murder of teenagers, for example – would not be condoned by a white jury.
Paris Trout is a moneylender, a small-time banker and a storekeeper. He is tight-lipped and ruthless. He has never paid taxes and he obeys no laws. He has recently married Hanna, an intelligent, sensitive and attractive schoolteacher, and he has made her life a misery. He has also lent money to a black man to buy a car. When the payments are not made he visits the man with a local thug and manages to shoot a young black girl, killing her, and injuring an older woman.
He is brought to trial; Harry Seagraves is his lawyer. Seagraves is a good man, but he is not a hero. He grows to loathe Trout, but he still defends him. He is sure that he can use his clout in the locality to have him released. The novel makes clear that in a society like this no one can afford to behave heroically; most people are prepared to play with the system or be bought. Trout understands this like nobody else. No one’s motives are pure except perhaps Hanna Trout’s; she remains eloquent and long-suffering and determined to survive. The last hundred pages of the novel are full of unexpected twists and turns; a wonderful addition to the contemporary literature of the South.
Pete Dexter was born in Pontiac, Michigan, and lives in California. Paris Trout won the National Book Award in 1988. His other novels include Brotherly Love (1992) and God’s Pocket (1984).
Age in year of publication: forty-five.
Joan Didion 1934–
1977 A Book of Common Prayer
A Book of Common Prayer and Democracy (1984) are Joan Didion’s most powerful works. The style is that of her best journalism: taut, nervous, brilliantly observant and cutting, using constant repetition, searching always for the moment which sums everything up.
A Book of Common Prayer is set in the fictional Central American country of Boca Grande, of which the narrator, Grace Strasser-Mendana , after her husband’s death, controls ‘fifty-nine point eight
Age in year of publication: sixty-one.
Anita Desai 1937–
1984 In Custody
In India, where so many have so little, what is the use, what is the glory of poetry? Anita Desai’s answer takes shape in the person of Deven, a teacher of Hindi in a college in Mirepore, a dustbowl town near Delhi. Married to Sarla, a living pillar of pessimism, his real love is poetry, in the old language, Urdu.
Deven is a timid, put-upon soul, bullied by his friend Murad into interviewing the great but reclusive poet Nur. Deven’s visits to Delhi to see him turn into a nightmare of farcical episodes in which drink, layabouts, frenzied birds and even more frenzied wives manipulate Deven, forcing him into debt and dishonour. Nur is a splendid creation, lizard-like, rapacious; yet of the two it is Deven who, in his acceptance of the price he has to pay in the service of art, triumphs over the multitudes of self-destructions on offer.
This is a novel with many meanings, many faces. One of the most resonant is that of India itself, with its blazing heat, its preference for individualistic chaos: this is India in the early 1980s on the point of change, during that recent past when the wonders of its history were abandoned and crumbling. Placing this magnificent inheritance in safe custody, Desai exposes the dilemmas of modern India in cool and lyrical prose.
Anita Desai was born in Mussoorie, India, and lives in England and the USA. This novel became a Merchant Ivory film in 1993; other praised novels include Fire on the Mountain (1977), Clear Light of Day (1980) and Fasting, Feasting (1999), which was the runner-up for the Booker Prize.
Age in year of publication: forty-seven.
Pete Dexter 1943–
1988 Paris Trout
This is a clearly written, tightly paced novel about the Deep South in the time between the Korean and the Vietnam Wars when racial segregation was absolute, but certain actions against black people – cold-blooded murder of teenagers, for example – would not be condoned by a white jury.
Paris Trout is a moneylender, a small-time banker and a storekeeper. He is tight-lipped and ruthless. He has never paid taxes and he obeys no laws. He has recently married Hanna, an intelligent, sensitive and attractive schoolteacher, and he has made her life a misery. He has also lent money to a black man to buy a car. When the payments are not made he visits the man with a local thug and manages to shoot a young black girl, killing her, and injuring an older woman.
He is brought to trial; Harry Seagraves is his lawyer. Seagraves is a good man, but he is not a hero. He grows to loathe Trout, but he still defends him. He is sure that he can use his clout in the locality to have him released. The novel makes clear that in a society like this no one can afford to behave heroically; most people are prepared to play with the system or be bought. Trout understands this like nobody else. No one’s motives are pure except perhaps Hanna Trout’s; she remains eloquent and long-suffering and determined to survive. The last hundred pages of the novel are full of unexpected twists and turns; a wonderful addition to the contemporary literature of the South.
Pete Dexter was born in Pontiac, Michigan, and lives in California. Paris Trout won the National Book Award in 1988. His other novels include Brotherly Love (1992) and God’s Pocket (1984).
Age in year of publication: forty-five.
Joan Didion 1934–
1977 A Book of Common Prayer
A Book of Common Prayer and Democracy (1984) are Joan Didion’s most powerful works. The style is that of her best journalism: taut, nervous, brilliantly observant and cutting, using constant repetition, searching always for the moment which sums everything up.
A Book of Common Prayer is set in the fictional Central American country of Boca Grande, of which the narrator, Grace Strasser-Mendana , after her husband’s death, controls ‘fifty-nine point eight
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