Travel Reading

Time to read. That is perhaps the most beneficial aspect of travel for me. Without places to be and a car to shuttle me there, I am forced to spend most nights indoors and often alone. While my social skills may be deteriorating, my mind is sharpening. I’m writing more than I have at any other time in the past, and I’m devouring some great–and not so great–literature:

Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence, is a beautiful, brilliant, wickedly funny historic fairytale that makes me long to visit both Florence and Rajasthan. Two novels by Kiran Desai–Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (funny, delightful social commentary) and The Inheritance of Loss, a poignant, haunting work which is set in Kalimpong, the first town I visited during my 2007 three-month Indian Himalayan soujourn.

Kalimpong is noted for its magnificent views of India’s highest mountain peak, Kanchenjunga, and the plume of wind-blown snow that perpetually emanates from it–a captivating sight. Against this backdrop of beauty, Desai delivers her hard-hitting political commentary through characters who illustrate the complex social makeup of Indian society. Addressing a heartbreaking aspect of Indian diaspora and the enormous sacrifices immigrants make when leaving their homelands, The Inheritance of Loss also chronicles the dangers of staying behind during political unrest, such as the 1980s Gorkha National Liberation Front uprising in West Bengal. The novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2006.

I tend to love novels that win the Man Booker Prize and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008) is no exception. Desai, Adiga and Rushdie are all ethnic Indians, as is Abraham Verghese, whose novel, Cutting for Stone, is equal parts travelogue, history, social commentary and love story. Losing Gemma, written by an Englishwoman, Kate Gardner, is a travelogue/mystery set in India.

In keeping with my theme of works that are in some way connected to India, I also read an elementary version of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Despite being dumbed down considerably, I still found said Sutras mostly incomprehensible.

I discovered that F. Scott Fitzgerald was responsible for turning celebrity couples into one name. In Tender is the Night, written in the 1930s, he refers to his protagonists, Dick and Nicole Diver, as “Dicole.” Several other Fitzgerald-isms have made their way into contemporary vernacular, but I forget what they are. I think I took notes somewhere, but my notebooks are so disorganized I may never find them. Just as well, Tender is the Night is a novel that warrants re-reading. F. Scott Fitzgerald is now officially my favorite author.

Yann Martel won the Man Booker Prize for Life of Pi (an Indian protagonist) in 2002. His latest novel, Beatrice and Virgil, is impossible to read without feeling something deeply. Martel uses the Holocaust as a metaphor for animal exploitation and the ensuing extinction of species. He also uses atrocities perpetrated upon animals as a metaphor for the Holocaust. He centers the novel around what I imagine is a biographical element, which allows readers to see the author as vulnerable and evokes tremendous empathy. Two months after finishing the story, I still feel my flesh tingle thinking about it. The mother of one of my close friends is a Holocaust survivor; it makes me weep for her and for everyone who has endured unspeakable horrors.

After Beatrice and Virgil, I needed to lighten up. I tried reading a piece of chick-lit drivel, but just couldn’t do it. There was a time I could read about the fictional plights of Manhattan women on shopping sprees and actually enjoy the fluffiness of it all, but that time, apparently, has ended.

Finding Nouf is set in Saudi Arabia and officially confirmed that Saudi Arabia is country to which I would never wish to travel. I tried to read The Agony and Ecstasy, a historic novel about Michelangelo, but I found it poorly written and boring. Still, it was a bestseller… I also tried to read Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing’s Ben, in the World, but Nobel Prize be damned. Depressing material needs to be balanced with something that doesn’t make readers want to slit their throats. Maybe the book eventually does grace readers with redemption, but I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t stick with Lessing long enough to find out.

I read a biography of Madonna to inspire me to industriousness, and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild to inspire me to write. Unfortunately, my reading curtailed dramatically when the Casey Anthony trial began. I’ve become addicted to Twitter feeds from the courthouse. The case is fascinating for so many reasons–young, pretty, pathological mother accused of murdering her adorable two-year old daughter. Virtually every bit of evidence is circumstantial, yet she could be sentenced to death if convicted. The prosecutors, consummate professionals, are introducing groundbreaking forensics, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is no actual proof that Anthony killed her child. Everyone knows she killed her daughter Caylee, but the prosecutors can’t prove it. If Casey Anthony is convicted, it will lead to more questions than answers: Was her conviction the fault of her seemingly incompetent counsel? Did the jury go with its gut rather than weigh the (lack of) evidence? And what precedent would a conviction set for future cases where evidence is in short supply? Is it better for Casey to be acquitted than lay the groundwork for innocent people to be convicted based on supposition and circumstantial evidence?

I’m reminded of O.J. Simpson. I think someone should give Casey Anthony a copy of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Remind her that she can’t escape her conscience or her karma.