Skip to main content

Book Review: The Book of Chocolate Saints by Jeet Thayil

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversatio...
65 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should ...
68 comments
Read more

Character Sketch of Binya from ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond

The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond is a popular children’s story. It features Binya as the main character, though there are other important characters as well, but the story revolves around Binya and her little beautiful umbrella. The story is widely popular among children, thus it has also been included in the schools’ syllabus all across the country. Since it is often taught in the school, thus the character sketch of Binya is often demanded by students from year to year. Character Sketch of Binya from The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond Binya is the main character of the novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond. Her full name is Binyadevi. As in the hills or anywhere in India it is a kind of trend to call children with their short nicknames. Binya’s elder brother’s name is Bijju, whereas his real name is Vijay. Binya aged eleven is a hilly girl. She lives with her small family in the hills of Garhwal. Her father died when she was two years of age. For sustenance, the...
41 comments
Read more