Book Review ‘The Dream of the Celt’ by Mario Vargas Llosa

#Book Review 

‘The Dream of the Celt’ 

by Mario Vargas Llosa

With this book I complete my acquaintance ,however fleeting and shallow , with the triumvirate (Garcia, Fuentes, Llosa )that reified efflorescence of literary creativity in the 60s and 70s in Latin America -read at least one book of each . 

‘The Dream of the Celt’ is a biographical fiction woven around real episodes,life events of the ‘Celt’ , Roger Casement, an Irish freedom fighter. Orphaned at a tender age, romanticized by folktales ,myths , traditions and culture of his Celtic ancestry, soaked in accounts of daring adventures of Dr Livingstone, woolly headed with a naive notion of colonisation as an uplifting, civilising and humane mission, he joins the British Colonial service. As a British consul he reports revolting details of barbarous treatment of natives in rubber plantations in Congo and Peru. A clamorous furore erupts and Roger is catapaulted to prominence as a global investigator of human rights abuses and an implacable, uncompromising humanitarian. He is knighted in 1911. 

But those years in the tropics take their toll. His health is in shambles, and his disillusionment with colonialism is complete. As if on a rebound, he becomes aware of the oppressive British colonial rule over his own peoples. The consciousness of his distinct  Celtic identity blooms into activism for freedom. He is stripped of knighthood tried for treason, slandered and hanged. Ouch ! the stuff of Greek tragedies. 

The vivid detailing of ‘indescribable’ atrocities in ‘enclaves of slavery’ and its dehumanising impact on perpetrators leaves one boiling with rage. In those dark and deep virgin forests brutality became the norm, unresisted and unprovoked, “because when the system of exploitation is so extreme it destroys the spirit even before the bodies”. The chief of one plantation had no qualms keeping five wives (a while ago he had seven ! ). “ In this climate women get used up very fast . You have to replace them all the time like clothing”. 

Meshed with straight forward chronicling of horrific cruelties  is  lyrical expressiveness in description of tropical nights, the mystical feel of dark woods and rivers teeming with life, and the longing for sex and companionship of a normal family denied to him for his deviant sexual preference. Llosa’s characterisation of Roger Casement is exceptional. With touching emotive depth and empathy he delineates the intricate and complex inner conflict that Roger perpetually battles with -bottled up rage at the ugly face of colonial greed , and having to sublimate concupiscent impulses or seek its relief clandestinely in mostly hurried manner in unlikely places, and almost always paid. 

It’s a book that, to use a pretty worn out term , is unputdownable. One caveat  though. The historical canvas on which Roger’s story is painted is a bit ripped, requiring the reader to patch up the holes from his own resources. In the might-is-right scramble for colonial assets what impelled western powers to gleefully gift Congo to King Leopold II as a personal property ignoring Belgian govt opposition. What emboldened Irish revolutionaries to the dare-devilry of an Easter Week uprising and its inevitable doom ?  I confess, google filled the gaps for me. 

The Roger Casement saga left two bees buzzing in my head. There is a case to think that mounting pleas for clemency were nipped in the bud by mischievously leaking his homosexual dalliances, real or fancied, recorded by him in Black Diaries. Should that have been ? As José Enrique Rodo says , a man is “many men”, angels and demons combined inextricably in his personality. Again, moral compasses are but shifting sands, its dunes blown hither and thither with temporal winds. Taboo yesterday, kosher today. With today’s morals Roger’s sexual orientation would not, mutatis mutandis, been a factor weighing with the British cabinet deliberating his clemency plea. 

The storyline swings back and forth. Roger is in the death cell in Pentonville prison, London. His past life flashes before him and the present he lives by. How does a man with a hero’s halo destined for the hangman’s noose cope with the present? Is he filled with boiling impotent rage, does he cower and cringe in fear of imminent death, or kills time savouring his hits and ruing his mishits, or keeps hoping against hope that his well-wishers will wangle a reprieve, or turns to spiritualism seeking existential meanings within ‘divine revelations’ embedded in ‘The Imitation of Christ’, or stays firm in his convictions and laughs at the world for its foolhardiness. Which is it for Roger ? 

Llosa with consummate ease and fullness of detail renders fictionalisation of the life of the ‘Celt’ seamlessly authentic.  It evokes nauseous revulsion at horrendous crimes by rubber barons, delves deep into Roger’s psyche, his strengths and failings, his child-like naivety and credulity, a romantic fool maybe, all told with an underlying tone of empathy. The fleshing out of a historical character could not have been any better.

Did the ‘Celt’ abide by the dictum ascribed to the legendary  Celtic hero ,Cuchulain “ I care not though I were to live, but one day and one night if only my fame and deeds live after me “ 

From me , a must read !

Book Review: The Lovely Bones

Brilliantly written novel in a tantalising novel format - a tell-tale from a heavenly abode ! Truly wowing . Held me in a riveting, unremitting, time-stopping embrace for a whole day. 

A compelling, emotive and soulful story of the family of a teenage girl, Susie Salmon, who gets waylaid, raped ,and gruesomely dismembered by a serial paedophile rapist killer on the prowl in her neighbourhood. One gets totally immersed in diverse emotions of abhorrence and abomination at a life brutally cut short, teary poignancy of a deflowered innocence, and exasperation of stifled hopes and aspirations of a teenager still learning the ropes of 'kissing' and suffering inchaote pangs of a budding adolescent love. 

The mind howls, kill that psycho ! Oooph , why can't the world let human saplings grow to maturity, let them fully taste and savour life ? What happens to the ones they leave behind ? How do the ones around Susie cope with her deathly absence that 'whispers' or sends 'wave of a whisper undulating down' to them as they go about living ? Some are affected positively , some disruptively. An intriguing voyage of discovery. 'These are the lovely bones that had grown around my absence ; the connections -sometimes tenuous ,sometimes made at great cost , but often magnificent -that happened after I was gone.'

Despite the horrific crime preface the tone of the narrative is cheery ,not morose nor morbid. For one thing, it has a happy ending. And another, Susie lives on, 'living' vicariously through her younger siblings and her schoolmates- 'sees' them do all those things that she would have done had her life not been prematurely snuffed out.The dead too talked and laughed with the living in the air between them. The family ,in turn, kept sharing when they 'felt' her and "being together, thinking and talking about the dead ,became a perfectly normal part of their life". 

 But dont be misled. This is no ghost story, no murder thriller, nor does it philosophize over life and death, it is an engrossing tale, told empathetically with looming hope, of a family traumatized by the cruel death of a loved young one carrying on the business of living . And ending with Susie's parting spectral solicitation, 'I wish you all a long and happy life'

There is a bit of puffiness in the plot that at places feels contrived and expendable, though that takes nothing away from the elegance, punch, compulsiveness ,and appeal of the story. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, I am sure you too will .

Book Review : THE SCIENTISTS by John Gribbin

An enlightening, enriching reading experience. Gives an elemental grounding in the 'life' and 'science' of scientists, the fountainheads who lent their shoulders for modern science and technology to rise tall. As Isaac Asimov says,

"No one can really feel at home in the modern world and judge the nature of its problems -and the possible solutions to these problems - unless one has some intelligent notion of what science is up to."

 John Gribbin's tome fills this need. It spans the most vibrant and athletic phase in the efflorescence of scientific thought, one that saw science breaking free from the vice-like grip of philosophers, mystics, religious orthodoxy and superstition to arrive at experimentally validated universal truths and laws governing natural phenomena.

 The pace of progress in the period covered by the book is breathtaking. In 450 years to close of 20th century we moved from an erroneous faith in earth-centric universe to Big Bang and mapping the human genome. In the hundred years of 19th century number of scientists increased a hundred times- from 1000 in 1800 to 100000 in 1900, doubling every 15 year. Naturally inventions and discoveries too spurted alongside.

 Gribbin tells this fascinating story most engrossingly, truly capturing the scintillating rapidity of sweeping changes in ideation , the explosive effervescence of scientific temper, and the lives of men behind this unfolding drama. He spares us the abstruse scientific concepts, jargons and the mathematical rigmarole that deter uninitiated from scientific literature. The attempt is to proselytize , entice the lay into the ways of science.

So he tells "about the people who made science and how they made it." The focus is on scientists struggling to balance turmoils of life with an insatiable want " for the pleasure of finding things out". The characters come alive and loom large in near propinquity.

 The painstakingly tortuous scientific method of arriving at a true understanding of bewitching nature is bared. It took millennia to demonstrate that human life is no different from any other on earth though the evidence stared at us all the while ; only in the 19th century were Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace able to conclusively establish that given plenty of time human beings could emerge out of amoebas through the process of evolution by natural selection.

 Gribbin demystifies science and lets the reader on to its enmeshing nature that keeps enfolding past 'truths' within new-found broader truths. For example, Einstein's theory of Relativity embraces the older Newton's laws of motion as a corollary.

 The narrative style is languid, moving at a leisurely pace that allows readers time to assimilate, as if abiding by Gribbin's axiom that scientific progress proceeds incrementally, step-by- step , not in revolutionary jumps. The author exemplifies his stance with copious anecdotal references throughout the book.

 By any reckoning the text isn't a telegraphic record , rather it is a beguiling fleshing out of pioneers with their trail blazing insights fluidly concatenated with other ongoing scientific developments. In fact, two biographies merge in a single stream- of the scientist, and of science. Gribbin populates his tome with scientists coming from all walks of life - the poor, the rich, dukes ,earls, aristocrats and nobles turned amateurs, advisers and physicians to kings and queens, and scientists wielding political power. All made significant contributions.

 Above all, Gribbin de-haloes, de- pedestalises them. That's what makes the book such a pleasurable read. Geniuses they may well be, but they show up as neither 'devas' nor 'danavas" but just 'aam aadmis' with the inevitable baggage of human frailties and foibles. There is the philandering Hooke fornicating with his maidservants not even sparing his live-in 15 year old niece ; there is Newton who only 'knows' men ; there is Boltzmann who cannot live to see his work go abegging and hangs himself ; there is Cavendish, 'the wisest among the rich' desiring no more than 'just a leg of mutton' on his dinner plate 365 days a year. And there is Ray who needs to be a subsizar, 'servant' student ,to a rich 'master' student cleaning even the 'master's chamber pots to pay his way through university education.

 Interspersed with occasional flashes of pure scientific brilliance is competitive envy, hate, upmanship and vindictiveness, and other shades of sordid greyness that bedevil personal relationships at the peer level. The irascible, arrogant and spiteful Newton held back publication of his epic 'Optick' for thirty years waiting for Hooke to die. Earlier, Hooke had accused him of stealing credit for discovery of fringes. He published it within a year of Hooke's death without giving him any credit. Also ensuring that Hooke's portrait in the gallery of the Royal Society got mysteriously lost.

 From the times when "for three shillings a meal included a choice of nine dishes of meat, poultry or fish, two fruit pies ,plum pudding, butter and cheese ,and wine ,porter or lemonade.", and science a gentlemanly pursuit that let a 'Generalist' scientist like Newton to wear many hats- from alchemy to optics to gravity to Master of the Royal Mint- the book takes us to science being made by 'professional' scientists in efficiently organised research laboratories.

 While Lord Kelvin ,and Michelson six years before him , were rudely disabused of their belief that physics would henceforth be limited to finding truths in the sixth decimal place, they were not so wayward in one respect - history of science will never again be a pageant of colorful, luminescent, idiosyncratic , fiercely individualistic and domineering personages notching up birdies on the golf course of science. No Newton will sit under trees brooding over falling apples or an Einstein quibble 'God does not play Dice'.Why ?

 Today, Science lies sequestered in ivory towers of research institutes and embedded in unfathomably complex gadgetry, super duper computing, data crunching and analysing contraptions ,and incomprehensible terminology. The scientists within are no less brilliant but stay mostly aloof and unheard. They have made life much , much easier for all of us but they lack the flamboyance, dash and versatility of the founding fathers. Science flourishes but the 'thrill' of 'making' it lies interred.

 Gribbin has done well to preserve their memory in his history of 'The Scientists'. Who knows there may be no further history to write if Francis Fukuyama's dire prognosis 'History itself might be at an end' fructifies. So savour what Gribbin has so engagingly compiled.

 PS : In the 'dark ages' it was commonly held that a magnet got deactivated by rubbing it with garlic. Into 21st century we hear from a corner of India that layering the back of a mobile set with cow dung eliminates all its harmful radiation. Do hope that when history of science in 21st century is written it does not record- Science and Superstition continued as bed fellows !