Interpreter of Maladies

I really wanted to hate Jhumpa Lahiri's debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies. All these neat, precious stories where everything is tied up with a bow at the end. (Maybe I was just upset because the eponymous story in the collection is about an interpreter who works for a doctor, rather than some sort of shaman). Fortunately, I was not able to -- the stories flow quite well, as the limpid prose is eminently readable, and Lahiri makes it easy to become invested in her characters.

Having previously read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children helped me avoid too much culture shock towards Lahiri's Indian characters and settings, but she does an excellent job at making the exotic familiar -- all of Lahiri's characters are easy to relate to, and as such, there comes familiarity with the things, foods, and customs that they are familiar with.

Despite their ease of reading, I have little desire to revisit these stories. They're all the sort of work that I'm glad I read, but there's little pleasure to be had here, in re-reading. I'd love to be proven wrong, but this is an experience to have once. The characters are good to have met, and the craft is to be admired, but there's little memorable or to be reflected upon.

One thing I wish I could remember -- in "Sexy", an American (of non-Indian extraction) asks an Indian what the Taj Mahal is like, and is told: "The most romantic spot on earth. An everlasting monument to love." I wish I could remember what work I'd been exposed to said of the Taj Mahal "it's a tomb" to emphasize how misguided the desire to build one for a living woman was.

The Killer Angels

I have never heard of a historical novel quite like Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning effort; while other novels certainly feature equal or greater depths of research, Shaara is alone, as far as I know, in using only primary sources in his attempt to bring to life the Battle of Gettysburg. In a brief (one page) note, Shaara explains why he did so thusly:

You may find it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have been many versions of that battle and that war. I have therefore avoided historical opinions and gone back primarily to the words of the men themselves, their letters and other documents. I have not consciously changed any fact. I have condensed some of the action, for the sake of clarity, and eliminated some minor characters, for brevity; but though I have often had to choose between conflicting viewpoints, I have not knowingly violated the action.

Shaara also cites Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage as an inspiration for his novel -- that reading history isn't enough to induce the feeling of being there. Of course, this raises the question as to what liberties Shaara took -- what minor characters he eliminated or condensed, and why was this done? (Although, who needs a dozen different aides to a general when one will do?)

The Killer Angels is split into chapters in which the narration is focused on one man, from a third person perspective. I believe this is the best way to convey the scope of the planning, buildup, and execution of the battle, as Shaara rotates the viewpoint with each chapter (although the narration remains third person omniscient). The biggest criticism of this usage is that the thoughts of the most recurring characters (Longstreet for the Confederacy, and Colonel Chamberlain for Union) can get repetitive -- Longstreet constantly despairing of his inability to persuade Lee to engage in a more defensive posture, and Chamberlain doting on his younger brother, Tom. It is precisely because of this narrative structure that The Killer Angels succeeds as a humanistic portrait of the battle, rather than a historical analysis -- real people can be tedious and repetitive.

While I don't have the historical chops to go into whether or not Shaara's narrative is a) faithful to the sources he worked from and b) in line with what modern historians believe, I feel that I should point out that after the battle begins, he neglects to mention much beyond Little Round Top (because that's where Chamberlain was, and where Longstreet, on Lee's orders, attacked) and Pickett's Charge (because Longstreet and Chamberlain were again both involved). While the action on Little Round Top and the Federal center were not inconsequential to the battle, other areas of engagement are glossed over. So while the novel is large in scope, it seems almost narrow here.

The Killer Angels is a worthwhile, easy read, and certainly made me want to look more into the Civil War in general, and the Battle of Gettysburg in particular. In that respect, it is a smashing success. Is it a worthy Pulitzer winner, though? Out of the winners I have read, I would rank it next to last, ahead of only Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies.