Through this
book the author tries to get into the commitment of revisiting the forgotten
Bombay poets of 70s and 80s.
The novel
explores the genius, yet psychotic, Goan-American poet-painter Newton Francis
Xavier. The uncontrolled high-lows of Xavier's life have been narrated in two
tones. First, as a series of interviews with his loony mom, neighbors,
ex-wives, teachers, and a host of other characters by Dismas Bambai, a
multifarious journalist who was recording an oral history of Xavier. Second, as
a chronicle of Xavier's journey from New York to Mumbai and finally to Delhi
where he’s travelling for one last hurrah, an exhibition before being consigned
to oblivion.
Thayil is a
brilliant writer. His flow, the language, his ability to summon up a vision or
emotion at will, his masterful use of a misplaced word that shakes you up, his
exceptional knowledge of poets, poetry, painters, art and superb research. The
use of poetry in the novel is again, brilliant.
Different
people's interviews to introduce the early life and the bohemian and reclusive
character of Xavier have been done brilliantly. Dismas Bambai goes back and forth
from people and at different times to slowly unveil the events involving Xavier
and his nature. The entire Hung Realist poetry movement (akin to Souza's
Progressive Artists Group) and the comic absurdities around various poets,
their debaucheries and the politics of Indian poetry scene are put very well
through these recordings.
Newton Francis
Xavier is satirized very well. A cursory Google search on India's well known
painter Francis Newton Souza and the well-known poet Dom Moraes will bring up
the unmistakable similarities in the life stories of the three. Xavier is
portrayed as an awarded genius, once-successful, irreverent & depraved
non-soul, obsessing after booze and younger women who he uses and discards
without being 'distracted by love', going down the abyss of personal and
professional self-destruction. There seems to be a lot of Thayil in Dismas
Bambai and Newton Xavier: that these characters running after heroin, booze,
casual sex and that they are poets give that away. In that sense, the book seems
to be very personal to Thayil.
The
increasingly unhinged thinking and erratic behavior of Xavier, depicted in the
book, maybe a plot device showing progressive disintegration of the character.
If so, it is masterfully done. But unfortunately, from half-way point of the
book, this comes across more as the author losing grip of his writing.
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