On "The Lazy River" by Zadie Smith

THE LAZY RIVER by Zadie Smith

Session 18^th November

Some Keywords: Metaphor (μεταφορά), Short form, Circular Flow, Heraclitus, Social Media, Migration, Brexit.

    Zadie Smith's “The Lazy River” was first published in The New Yorker , December 2017. One reads the title and does not expect the despair and hopelessness that lies ahead. Incantations of idleness and a Huck Finn journey acrosss the Mississippi, on long Sunday evenings, crosses the mind. Instead, hazy and disquieting borderlines spring as the eye wanders through the opening background blurry illustration by Geoff McFetridge which depicts a faceless lady adrift on a “buoyant” floating device.

    More confusion lies ahead with the genre: an explanative metaliterary approach imbibes the reader inside the word “metaphor” and thrushes us into the narrative. “We” become part of the journey that leads nowhere. We find ourselves emmeshed in a circular journey, on an unnamed river, inside a metaphor that gives the impression of flow but leads us to the the starting point. It should not pass unnoticed that the word “metaphor” comes from the Greek μεταφορά (meta-behind, along / ferein: carry), which means “transfer,”” transference from,” “journey from one word to the other” which brings us back to the original.

    We wonder whether this short form shapes into fantasy, essay or article. Clichés of British holidaymakers in Southern Spain twist into further depths, at least,“three feet depth.” The narrative voice wanders around the empty rituals they perform: lounging around the lazy river, letting themselves go with the flow; some carry buoyant floating devices, under the same relentless sun, forever, never advancing: others resist the ”ouroboros” thrashing a stroke, but finally yielding to the heraclitean curdled flow.

    These holidaymakers do not venture the vast ocean, nor the Moorish ruins, nor the arid mountains, “nor infinite horizons.” They do not venture into unknown territory. The fascinating literary journeys are replaced by sudokus, they gobble at the buffet, but, this is a non-judgemental zone, the narrative voice claims. Yet, there is stealthy shame that arises in between the lines. Shame is a concept that Zadie Smith brings forward in this interview.

    This short form warps themes of migration (the ladies from Senegal and Gambia that plait hair in the liminality of the lazy river and the ocean; the polytunnels in Almeria,  or the sea of plastic with their enslaved workers),“performative” social media where the props are displayed, the “I” turns into a “mini-celebrity” (see Zadie Smith's interview on “Facebook Addiction”), generational circular motion, Brexit...

Go ahead and comment on any of the issues above that arose in our last session, and, to which you contributed,as usual, with sharp insights and wonderful readings.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

(Shakespeare, “As you Like it”)

Your Favourite Quotes, your Reviews and more brooding on "The God of Small Things"

 

ABHILASH TALKIES and small things

 

Abhilash Talkies and small things

(Chapter 5 The God of Small Things)

Session 4^th November

Keywords: Loss of Innocence, trauma, manhood, rites of passage, Lemondrink Orangedrink man. “Rub-a -dub -dub three women in a tub”

“Abhilash Talkies advertised itself as the first cinema hall in Kerala with a 70mm CinemaScope screen. To drive home the point, its façade had been designed as a cement replica of a curved CinemaScope screen. On top (cement writing, neon lighting) it said Abhilash Talkies in English and Malayalam.”

After a tug-of-war in the tailfinned Plymouth, Ammu, Baby Kochama, Estha and Rahel are ready to overcome initial dissension as they cross the foyer of the Abhilash Talkies to indulge in the film “The Sound of Music.” It is ten to two, the time that freezes in the narrative in Rahel's toy wristwatch. “Big things lurk inside” (a leit motiv in the novel) and await them . 

 

THE SMALL THINGS: the red formica door, the slippery oily floor, the dirty marble floor, “the meat smelling blood money” the butcher gave Kochu Maria and that Estha remembers, the rusty forgotten cans of possible "Pickles and Paradise" preserves in the urinary seed a landscape of sheer desolation and ominous trauma wrapped up in nursery rhymes and the sound of music.

The hall heralds division and impending tragedy. The toilets establish the divide between “HIS” and “HERS”: Ammu, Baby Kochama, Rahel on the one hand, and , Estha, on the other. Estha braves the toilets alone, his first act as a little grown man: “Estha alone in his beige and pointy shoes.”

The three women traverse the “HERS” red formica door:

“Rub-a-dub-dub (Rahel thought), Three women in a tub, Tarry awhile said Slow…”

““Rub-a-dub-dub” is a traditional nursery rhyme that dates back to late 18th century England , “ the word “maid” being redolent of virginity. “Later research, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) suggests that the lyrics are illustrating a scene of three reputable men watching on the sly a less decent moment” (see source for this quote below). The three maids were later replaced by men (ibidem), and Rahel replaces them by women. The possible meanings and connections of this suggestive finding I leave to you (Keywords: gender issues, the act of peeping...)

https://allnurseryrhymes.com/rub-a-dub-dub/

Estha singing in a nun's voice, Estha alone, Estha lost in a nursery rhyme tub to be ogled and molested.

Disrespectful actions are ahead. Estha cannot hold himself from singing in the theatre. He is reprimanded and forced to go out. In the hall, fatal destiny looms over him in the shape of a sulky peeved bear-like man.  The Orangedrink, Lemondrink man cajoles Estha into yielding to his dishonest petition. Brutal awakening freezes in time.

Other interesting discussions proffered in this session were: Velutha as the iridiscent beautiful God of small things, “Locusts Stand I,”pervading alarum that Ammu repeats as a mantra, miscegenation, other Fairy Tale comparisons of episode 5, “Little Red Riding Hood,” the language rift (Malayalam and English) … I beckon all participants of last session to develop and make visible through your comments these or other sharp insights you contributed with in the last session.

THE THRESHOLD: "The God of Small Things" (Arundhati Roy)

 

Session 28^th October: The threshold

“The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy

Keywords:  History as an empty house, whispers, time frame, tragedy, setting in Kerala, caste.

The History House

The first page of the first chapter ushers us into the warped plot of the novel in which no word can be missed.  In chapter 2, Chacko explains to the twins, Rahel and Estha that “history was like an old house at night. With all lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside.”  An overgrown garden, full of whispers and an empty house with “the scurry of small lives” await Rahel on her return to Ayemenem in the opening pages of the novel. 

 

©       “Very few people had seen it. But the twins could picture it.  The History House” (chapter 2).

The Time Frame

The reader is adrift and embarks on a reading that opens up, in medias res, with more than one tragic event, Ammu’s death, Sophie Mol’s death …Past and present events shift in unchronological order, in flashbacks and flashforwards, and unravel in words that conform a tragic chorus barricaded between 1963 and 1993.  The crispy knickers, the dusty moths, the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man, a “viable die-able” age, …

We have challenged ourselves to find frame time references in the novel so the different moments can be tied up in a time span.  Yet, as the narrative voice will adduce in chapter 12:

©       “It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that secret of Great Stories is that they have no secrets.  The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again.  The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably.  They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings…” (chapter 12)

The Setting

Professor Masood Raja explains how the particular setting of the novel in South West India, Kerala, is meaningful and contributes to understand the socio-political and historical context.   Kerala counts with a history of conquerors, the Portuguese Vasco de Gama, the Dutch, the Rajas, the East India Company.  Kerala counts with the highest rate of literacy in India, communist parties in the government.  All this is meaningful in the light of the events in the novel.  Please check video on the left hand side columm of the blog for further knowledge

Caste / Divide

Interstices in terms of caste, religion, social and economic status are at stake too: Syrian Christians, Paravans (Velutha, the untouchable), factory owners (Mamachi and Papachi) … will all contribute to the divide and alienation of the doomed children of the mother Earth.

 

Sharp insights on behalf of the members of the club dealt with, among others, the comparison between this novel and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,”  the colourful narrative, the characters names, the metaphor of “mother Earth” to trespass the contingencies of history…. Please post your comments about the wonderful insights that you had in this session.

ARUNDHATI ROY ("The God of Small Things")

 

"It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain.

To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do"

("The God of Small Things"  (2017) by Arundhati Roy. Chapter 9)