The Romantics: A Novel

Author - Pankaj Mishra ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Random House was reviewed on 23-Jul-2008.

Search ISBN:0375502742 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. The Romantics: A Novel Reference Book. Classifications : Contemporary British World Literature Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Contemporary Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Hardcover Binding (binding) Refinements Books Printed Books Format (feature_b . Click the following link to view the cover of The Romantics: A Novel.

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1) Hardcover Book The Romantics: A Novel by Random House. In this tale spanning seven years, Mishra explores love and longing through a 20 yr old student Samar, who lives rather aimlessly in Benares. What could have become a beautiful, evocative novel of a rite of passage, has turned, in hands of Mishra, into a tale that just scratches the surface of human emotions. The two main characters in the novel are sadly two dimensional. One never learns why Samar turned out the way he is or why Catherine thinks and acts the way she does. One almost gets the feeling that the main characters, Samar and Catherine, are so close to the author that he is worried that he may divulge too much. While this failing may not be quite noticeable in plot-driven novels, it is a glaring inadequacy in this largely character-driven narrative.

The novel has it flashes of brilliance and while it is slow to gather speed, it does gain momentum as the story develops. The description of Benares and the Himalayan landscape is lucid and the author´s love of nature comes through these passages clearly. However, Mishra needs a fresh outlook while looking at landscapes he so lovingly describes: it is perilously close to being jaded repeats of his earlier book `Butter Chicken in Ludhiana (where Mishra is truly original).

All in all, I´d give a 2.5*.
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2) Hardcover Book The Romantics: A Novel by Random House. THE ROMANTICS is a short novel that is far from shallow. In fact, most of the action takes place far beneath the surface. The story concerns an Indian student who goes to do graduate study in Benares. There he by chance falls in with an expatriate European community, who unwittingly force him to question everything he has ever known before. This isn´t a coming-of-age novel as much as a novel of enlightenment. Oddly enough, the works that it most reminded me of are both gigantic tomes-Mann´s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN and Proust´s IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Mishra accomplishes much of the same things as his two European predecessors with far greater economy. The young narrator of the story compares his lot to that of the hero of Flaubert´s SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION (which I have not read). I finished the book a couple of days ago and it has stayed with me. This is intelligent and literate writing from a gifted first novelist. Worth reading.¤

3) Hardcover Book The Romantics: A Novel by Random House. Samar is a 20 year old student in 1989. He arrives in Benares, "the Oxford of the East", where he hopes to study and spend his time with his favourite books. He is a shy young man who does not enjoy the casual display of personality at social gatherings. The superficial amiability and the light chatter make him feel uncomfortable and he doesn´t enjoy taking part in conversations, afraid to say the wrong thing and not quite sure what the right thing to say is. He grew up alone and therefore developed no skills for intimacy or even friendship which he feels requires a degree of self-abnegation from him.
However after meeting several characters like Miss West, Rajesh - a fellow student who turns out to be a criminal - and Catherine, Samar slowly realises that socialising allows him to discover a whole new world. It is particularly his love affair with Catherine which he experiences as a strong emotional turmoil. It is understandable since Samar grew up in a culture where men and women are ushered into marriage after parents have convinced each other about their respective social and financial status. Love is supposed to follow marriage and not the other way round and it doesn´t matter much if it doesn´t...
An interesting tale of a young provincial man who struggles to make sense of a strange and alien cosmopolitan world. The descriptions of Pondicherry, Allahabad, Benares, Dharamshala and the Himalayas are lyrical and the reader is constantly reminded of the bewitching power of India.
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4) Hardcover Book The Romantics: A Novel by Random House. This is a novel of remembered youth, lost love and self-discovery. Told in Mishra´s crystalline, courtly prose, it is vividly imagined and emotionally resonant. Mishrah has a knack for evoking people who have misplaced their lives in a chaotic landscape and a view of emotion and motivation that is almost clinical in its clarity. Mishrah´s style is superficially similar to Naipaul´s but his perspective strikes me as much more compassionate and lacking Naipaul´s perpetual undertone of disillusionment. This is a much better book than Mishra´s An End to Suffering, which seemed to me rather an awkward blend of didacticism and literary autobiography. Mishrah should stick to fiction: The Romantics is a wonderful read.¤

5) Hardcover Book The Romantics: A Novel by Random House. I just finished this book and was very surprised that the author did not give credit or homage to V. S. Naipaul, who won a Pulitzer Prize for literature as he used the same style and writing techniques. The main character is constantly emphasizing that because of his lack of means and cultural proverty he has no real hopes of being a productive member of society. Despite this premise, he embarks on a serious course of reading that includes all of the great European philosophers and writers. While taking a room in Benares to be able to access the library at the local university, he meets several European expats. He spends quite a bit of time with them and becomes quite friendly, but he cannot understand them because of he has no cultural common ground with them. So, over the course of at least 7 years he continues think about them and briefly comes in contact with some of them at the end of the 7 years. For 7 years, he lives by himself, teaches English at a Tibetan School and is unchallenged mentally. He finally learns that the expatriats have either returned home and are on their way home. Again, he emphasizes how he just didn´t understand them. It´s all very academic and V.S. Naipaul did it so much better.¤

6) Hardcover Book The Romantics: A Novel by Random House. On the banks of the Ganges, the holy city of Benares groans and heaves along the fault line where modern India presses against its living past, as pilgrims bathe in the sacred waters while the bodies of the dead await by the thousands their turns on the burning ghats. Into this city comes in all innocence young Samar to complete his university studies and take the civil-service examinations that will determine his future. An uprooted Brahman, bearing the responsibilities of his caste but shorn of its privileges, Samar, obsessed by the intellectual culture of the West but shaped by ancient obligations due his ancestors, finds himself suspended between conflicted worlds. He is the classic young man from the provinces, propelled by curiosity and passion beyond his comprehension. He will emerge with a story to tell: a story of lost illusions and the joy and pain of love.
        
On his journey of self-discovery, Samar is accompanied by two guides: Rajesh, an impoverished fellow Brahman, a hanger-on at the university who has mysterious powers over a band of student malcontents that has made him its leader; and Miss West, his neighbor in the ramshackle lodging where he has taken a room. Miss West--English, fortyish, her good looks so far intact--will introduce Samar to her circle of Western friends who have come to Benares seeking a culture more resonant than their own. From Rajesh, Samar will discover the dead end to which that culture has come.
        
When he arrives in Benares, Samar knows Miss West´s world only through the books he has read. By the time he is ready to leave the holy city, Samar´s Brahman reserves will have been tested to the breaking point by Miss West´s beautiful friend Catherine and by the horror to which Rajesh has exposed him. He survives by the grace of character and intelligence with which his brilliant creator--one of the most promising talents of his Anglo-Indian generation--has endowed him in this astonishingly mature first novel, the harbinger of a major literary career.¤

7) Hardcover Book The Romantics: A Novel by Random House. In Pankaj Mishra´s debut novel, East not only meets West, the two forcibly collide, causing all manner of bruises and contusions. The hero and narrator of The Romantics, a young Brahmin student, has come to the Hindu holy city of Benares to study at the university. Samar´s shelves are laden with tomes by Schopenhauer and Turgenev; his dreams center around passing the rigorous exam that will admit him into an Indian Civil Service originally created and shaped by the British Raj. His next-door neighbor in the cheap apartment he rents from an opium-addicted musician is British, and it is through her that Samar first experiences Western thought and culture outside the covers of a philosophy book. Diana West is well connected in the expatriate community, and soon she has introduced her naive protégé to other foreigners in search of something that eluded them at home. There is Mark, an American studying Ayurvedic medicine following various careers as "poet, dishwasher, painter, Tibetan Buddhist, carpenter, and traveler through such remote lands as Ecuador and Congo." There is his girlfriend, Debbie, who is considering converting to Buddhism, and Sarah, a German girl who already has. Then there is Catherine, a beautiful French woman in love with Anand, a poor sitar player with dreams of making it as big as Ravi Shankar. Suffice it to say that Samar finds this cast of characters both alluring and perplexing, and the juxtaposition of his life among the expatriates with his days spent with fellow Indian students only adds to his confusion. And then there is his unquenchable attraction to Catherine...

Pankaj Mishra has taken on an ambitious subject--the attraction and almost equal repulsion that the East and the West feel toward each other. At his best, he evokes his homeland with an aching immediacy:

A thin crimson-edged mist hung over the river when I walked out of the house. The alleys leading to the main road would be empty, the houses sunk in a blue haze, still untouched by the sun, which had already begun to tentatively probe the façades of the houses lining the river. Rubbish lay in uneven mounds, or was strewn across the cobblestone street, firmly sticking to the place where it had been deposited by an overflowing open drain. After every twenty meters or so, a fresh stench hung in the air.

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 20-Aug-2008, 03755027429780375502743, 100-420-500-5X1-XWB-0UB-8

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