http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/manu-joseph-india_b_674544.html
Anis ShivaniWriter
Posted: September 18, 2010 08:30 AM
Manu Joseph, Author of "Serious Men" (Interview)
This remarkable debut novel is one of the very best novels ever to
come out of South Asia, and points to a new direction after the
earlier wave of writing by Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, and Vikram
Seth. Aravind Adiga did class resentment really well in The White
Tiger, while Rana Dasgupta does metaphysics as well as the great
European modernists in his forthcoming Solo. Put these two elements
together, and add the relentless satire of Mohammed Hanif in A Case of
Exploding Mangoes, and you get Manu Joseph's Serious Men.
One thing that unites the four books is a supreme confidence that
Indian writers can chart their own literary destiny without regard to
prevailing fashions in the West. The novel's sallies at overeducated
Brahmins and resentful Dalits are universal in application (each
nation has its own Brahmins and Dalits, with unique anthropologies of
subtle and not-so-subtle class exclusions). The Indian middle-class
may well be rapidly growing, but regressive cultural attitudes die
hard. Serious Men skewers the pretensions of any governing elite
carried away by its own rhetoric of progress. This is not a dark
satire though--perhaps those are reserved for countries experiencing
rank authoritarianism; instead, one experiences moments of light and
ecstasy throughout the keenly observed playscapes of Bombay's haves
and have-nots.
Joseph's Ayyan Mani is a Dalit (untouchable) secretary at Bombay's
Institute of Theory and Research, working for Arvind Acharya, a
high-class Brahmin perennially rumored to be on the list of Nobel
Prize winners. While Ayyan ekes out an existence in an overcrowded
chawl (tenement), sending his ten-year-old son to a Catholic school,
Arvind puts the Institute's energies behind sending up a balloon in
space to gather evidence that alien microbes are always raining on
earth (hence explaining the origin of life). While doing his part to
inflame the Brahmin egos at war in the Institute, Ayyan cheats and
lies to have his little son accepted as a bona fide genius. This plot
offers great possibilities to explore class conflict, and Joseph takes
full advantage of it.
If there is one novel you must buy this year, whether or not you have
the slightest interest in South Asia, make it this one. It will revive
your hope in contemporary fiction, and make you convinced again that
the novel at its best has no competition in making sense of our
world--which seems so complicated, but is still driven by the same
fundamental delusions novelists have been exposing since Cervantes and
Swift.
Shivani: How long did it take you to write the novel? Was it always
basically the satire that it is, or did it evolve from some other
genre? How long have you been writing fiction?
Joseph: I can tell you that I took three years to write which would be
the truth but when I measure this time, I cheat. I calculate from the
time I wrote the first line (which I don't remember anymore). But I
had been developing the idea for a long time. I find it hard to accept
though that the novel was in my head for so long, seven years
probably. For some reason I want to believe that I didn't take much
time. Do other writers too feel that way? Some writers seem to be very
proud of the fact that they took 15 years to write a novel.
Strangely, I had imagined it as a film at first. Then I thought I
should write a novel which derives the best from the simple linear
structure of a screenplay and also the playful introspection that is
possible in a novel. When I began to write I must have been really
vain. I behaved as if I had never written before, as if I was about to
do something extraordinarily important, as if here with the first tap
of the key I would set in motion a literary revolution. I really
enjoyed my self-obsession, though I now figure I was only
inexperienced. This would be particularly hilarious if you were to
read the first ever draft of Serious Men, which was really terrible
and heartbreaking. Somehow I realized it only after I finished.
People tell me, like you do, that I have written a satire. Sometimes,
when I am careless or bored with a person I am talking to, I use that
word myself to describe Serious Men. But I feel that a person cannot
sit down to write a satire. Satire is the analysis of the reader,
probably even the creation of the book reviewer. There is only one way
in which I can write, and it appears that it can be called satire. So,
according to me, satire is not a conscious process of a writer, it is
the reaction of the reader.
Shivani: Was there a conscious way in which you rebelled against the
conventions of Indian fiction, before you even began the novel? Were
there familiar patterns you wanted to avoid, thematical and structural
issues that seemed to you obstacles to the development of your own
narrative style?
Joseph: I was very certain right from the beginning that I would not
write an autobiographical novel. Everybody around me was writing one
and I had made so much fun of them (though not when they were present
in the same room) that somehow I had lost the right to write one
myself.
I don't think Indian writing in English is a formidable thing right
now for anybody to have to rebel against. Clearly, considering my
view, I was not emerging from any literary tradition. That was
actually an advantage. I really do believe that if I was the first
ever person to write a novel I would have written Serious Men this
way.
Shivani: Satire seems to be undergoing an incredible worldwide
renaissance. The Bush years helped it along in America. In rising
countries like India, it seems like a very suitable form of
expression. Perhaps one will see an outburst in Russia too. One thinks
of Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes as a parallel novel
that mocks absurdity.
Joseph: I don't think there will be a satire explosion. As I said
satire is not a conscious process. It is a consequence of a form of
literary delinquency and not everybody has it. For example, it is not
easy for the refined elegant new breed of Pakistani writers with
foreign accents to even attempt A Case of Exploding Mangoes, which is
an absolutely brilliant work. It is the best subcontinental English
novel I have ever read. Satire cannot and will never be a trend.
Shivani: I detect a fair amount of sympathy on your part toward Arvind
Acharya. One might make a claim for him as the co-hero of the novel.
On one hand, you generate classic Dickensian sympathy for the
perpetually trampled-upon underdog, Ayyan, a resentful representative
of the Dalit underclass, but on the other hand you undermine our
sympathy for Ayyan by presenting Arvind so considerately. I love this
ambiguous balance. It's exquisite--shall we say, untouchable?
Joseph: It is interesting that you mention this. In the beginning
there was only Ayyan Mani. Acharya was a minor character. But I loved
him so much that in the later drafts he became really big. In fact in
the draft that preceded the final draft Acharya was the central
character, the novel even began with him wondering if Time moves
smoothly like a straight line, or in miniscule jumps, like a dotted
line. But then, something amazing happened. I realized something
almost paranormal. I have read many times authors with no known mental
problems talking about how every novel has only one predestined
beginning, and how you just cannot tamper with it. Even the great
Marquez has said that. I have read about novelists suffering from
frequent false starts that they somehow instinctively know. That
happened with Serious Men too. I tried everything I could to start it
with Acharya because I loved him more than Ayyan. But it just did not
work. The tone of the novel was somehow Ayyan's right.
Shivani: Is being a newspaperman good training still for a novelist?
Joseph: I do read about some writers, a few of them very good, who
have never been journalists. I then try to find out if they were
princes or princesses or others of a type who never had to work in
their lives. Because I find it hard to believe that a person who wants
to be a writer would choose any other profession than one which pays
you to write. When done well, journalism is indisputably literature.
The best thing about being a magazine journalist was that I did not
have any romantic notions about the novel. I was not intimidated by
the thought of writing a novel. If I were the type who would spit on
his hands and say, "Now let's see what's the big deal about a novel,"
that is exactly what I would have done. That was the attitude I had
when I first started writing. I behaved like an amateur.
I thought I was doing a good job until I realized that I had written a
giant book review of the book I wanted to write. That is the problem
with the journalistic approach and that is the problem most
journalists face when they try to write a novel. The depth of a novel
comes from the point of view of the characters (in my view, this is
different from what is called "voice"), and even a seasoned journalist
is usually not trained to narrate from the point of view of
characters. That is because in a news or feature story a journalist
cannot presume the point of view of a real subject. So the truth is
that debut novelists, even if they are features writers, have to
struggle a lot. A novel is a very distinct and very complicated form
of story-telling. Nothing trains you to write a novel than your first
novel.
Shivani: I see some parallels--and I hope you don't mind my saying
this--with the Hollywood movie, A Beautiful Mind. Not only the
references to Princeton, but for example the way Arvind keeps getting
reintegrated into the higher community of scientists, despite his
enemies' will and his own self-destructiveness. Was that movie on your
mind?
Joseph: It is intriguing that you mention the film. It does not have
anything to do with the novel or its characters but it has a more
fundamental role. When I was thinking of the novel or probably I was a
bit into the Ayyan Mani strand and Acharya was still forming, John
Nash the mathematician on whom A Beautiful Mind is based visited
Bombay. It was the most hilarious experience. The 5-star hotel's
banquet room was filled with the management types and a lot of very
pretty women. It was as if everybody had come to see Russell Crowe. In
a way they did. When they saw John Nash they were shocked. This was no
Russell Crowe. He looked a bit confused, and when he began his lecture
on Game Theory the hall emptied because nobody understood what he was
saying. That moment was crucial for the book. There is a sexy aspect
to science which occupies popular imagination. What men talk about
over beer is the sexy science--string theory, dark matter, even a
flatulent version of game theory and things like that. But real
science, the fundamentals, like the subject of Nash's lecture, is a
dreary thing, like truth itself.
Philosophy is a bit like that. It has the appearance of high art, high
science, but it is actually in the realm of entertainment. This
thought, this character of philosophy became one of the invisible
pillars of Serious Men.
Shivani: There is a fine line between genius and madness, isn't there?
It seems like one of the most fruitful territories for a novelist to
explore, in these days of hypercommunicative intelligence,
oververbalization, and convenient technologies of expressiveness that
encourage and publicize both genius and madness.
Joseph: I think almost everybody is mad. I really believe that. Very
few people in the world are sane, one of the subjects of my next book.
You look at the average person--his or her beliefs, the huge
cathedrals built for them, the religions that maintain order, the
rubbish that people believe in, the imbeciles who can influence
millions, the rover on Mars searching for water--it is very obvious to
me that most people are actually mad. Sanity is a gift. In fact,
Acharya is less insane than most people who think he is. Deep within
him there is a clarity of thought. Sanity is about that--clarity. The
struggle of humanity to achieve clarity is what all art is about.
Shivani: With respect to political correctness: at times it's a way
forward toward truth (there's always more than a grain of truth to the
imagination of past oppression). At other times, political correctness
is an absolute denial of reality. Your novel seems to play with this
notion throughout.
Joseph: Political correctness is not a form of sophistication as
people claim or imagine, it is a form of cowardice, the lowest form of
human communication. I prefer to hear frogs croak than read fake
literature that tries so hard not to offend. At the same time, there
is something fake about political incorrectness too. Some people try
too hard to offend, it seems. I feel writers should write what they
want and with honesty which is more transparent than they imagine, and
let people bother with what they want to call your work.
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