Crowfall by Shanta Gokhale

Abstract

reviews established early, with flashbacks to bring him to the present. What is not brought to the present is an explanation for his anal-retentive habits. He was a youth with some extraordinary talents who has not achieved. Described as he is from the outside , thoughts and material activities named, often as catalog lists, Joseph Skizzen is known and unexplained, known and uninteresting. The lack of enduring personal relationships is troubling. As a professor at a small college, he should be in close contact with a number of students. Then there are the faculty and committee meetings and, often, expectedsocialeventswithcolleagues. Such encounters are almost completely absent. Possibly the academic sections are fantasized, which explains the lack of context while undercutting the ground for the shreds of satire that emerge. Referencing Candide calls attention to a difference. I speculate that William Gass, like Aldous Huxley in Point Counter Point, was attempting a moderately musical structure to support a “novel of ideas.” The lectures certainly start and end with a main theme, framing digressive variations in the middle. Given the protagonist’s specialization in twelve-tone structure, perhaps it is not surprising that chapter events may reverse, flashing backward in time, sometimes to a dramatic scene leading to an event that has already concluded—and really of no consequence. Middle C ends up being a novel of scenes and topics, sometimes brilliantly performed, set within a lifeplot that has little energy. W. M. Hagen Oklahoma Baptist University Shanta Gokhale. Crowfall. Translated by the author. New Delhi. Penguin Books India. 2013. isbn 97806700866448 Shanta Gokhale’s Crowfall (originally in Marathi) starts with a paradox. Before she can begin telling her story, Anima, the central character, destroys the twelve volumes of her twelve-year-long chronicle of grief and nightmares that started with the mindless murder of her husband in the 1993 Bombay riots. “Free at last,” she mutters, after having shredded the pages. The diary had also become her solace as she linked her fate with the historic violence of the partition of India, the killing of the Sikhs in 1984, and the 2002 riots in Gujarat. These events become the backdrop to the 58 worldliteraturetoday.org Robert Eaglestone Contemporary Fiction: A Very Short Introduction Oxford University Press Fiction is re-visioned in this concise exploration of the contemporary writing phenomenon. Using the novel as the art form that best speaks to this new worldly “unboundedness,” the literary community is shown to be “infinitely enlarged” through the recent influences of globalization and the expansion of critical thought by postnationalism. Marie Chaix The Summer of the Elder Tree Harry Mathews, tr. Dalkey Archive Press The Summer of the Elder Tree provides a raw autobiographical account of Marie Chaix’s tenyear literary hiatus following the death of her editor. In this menagerie of old journal entries, conversations, scraps of poetry, and poignant revelations, Chaix explores in elegant prose the events large and small that have made her the woman and writer she is. Nota Bene novel. In the foreground is a group of friends: Sharada, a musician; her husband , Shekhar; three painters, Haridas , Feroze, and Ashesh, who is Anima ’s brother; and a supporting cast of relatives, retainers, gallery owners, gurus, and others. A parallel setting to Mumbai is Surgaon, where Anima’s family home is located and where her ailing mother still lives, while her idealistic father has gone missing. It is also the home of the Warlis, and this is the time that “Mumbai’s art world discovered Warli art” and shamelessly exploited it. As a columnist and performing -arts critic, Gokhale speaks with authority on the city and its evolving culture. She speaks with no less empathy of the unique sensibilities of her characters. The nexus between artists, galleries, and art critics, a lucrative formula in the art world everywhere, is shown as a ringside spectator would see it. Vikram Shah, the business owner of Shosha, a suburban art gallery, intent on developing a hitherto neglected market, holds an art bazaar and seminars to educate the public, and lavish cocktails for the higher-ups. Gokhale achieves a fine balance between satire and appreciation of the genuine. She is equally at home in...