Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Went on my usual weekend pilgrimage to the bookstore this afternoon and came out with the predictable (lately) historical fiction selection and this: Shantaram by a guy named Gregory David Roberts.

The cover and title drew me in, and then the brief synopsis of the author's life: apparently he was sentenced to 19 years in an Australian prison, but then escaped after serving about 10 of those years. He ran away to Bombay with a fake passport, and lived there for a decade, getting involved with the seamy and illegal side of the city. He also, incidentally, established a free medical clinic for the poor. Then he got caught and had to go back and complete his sentence.

This is his debut novel.

OK, so I supposed it deserved a look-see. I sat down with it in the coffee shop area and within seconds I was absorbed. Within minutes I was laughing out loud. Now I'm nearly on page 100 of a 900 page novel. The cover comparisons with Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet are starting to make sense.

I visited his website just now, and it looks cheesy. But so far the book is NOT cheesy; it's amazing.

Has anybody else read it? What did you think? So far, I'm impressed. I'm absorbed. He's writing about real people and about himself. It's NOT a travelogue, but the setting is EVERYTHING. It continually reminds me of the Alexandria Quartet, and from his website, it looks like Darley and Justine are two of Roberts' favorite fictional characters.

Damn, this is a good read, so far.

laurie, i don't have access to the book, but it sounds rivetting. Can you post the website (cheese and all)?

judih

Judih, the website is:

www.shantaram.com

Don't think you'll get much out of it, though. It's mostly self-congratulation on the book getting so much acclaim, and some awkward, weird philosophizing. He's a much better writer than that, so far. Self-consciousness is leeching most of the impact out of his literary style on this website. I can relate though. If I was in his position, I'd probably set up a similar website and look just as stupid. The book is very un-self-conscious.

Judih -- Amazon.com? Do you have that?

Here's a quote from the book:

The facts of life are very simple. In the beginning we feared everything -- animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky -- everything except each other. Now we fear each other, and almost nothing else. No one knows why anyone does anything. No-one tells the truth. No-one is happy. No-one is safe. In the face of all that is so wrong with the world, the very worst thing you can do is survive. And yet you must survive. It is this dilemma that makes us believe and cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate.

cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate.

To cling to life do we have to cling to lies out of our fears. Powerful stuff. A lot easier for me to think in terms of meaningless metaphors than it was for him. For some reason I been thinking about how I sentimentalize God. Trying to imagine god as a pair of tumbling dice.

I could not remember what I wrote here or why I replied. The book sounds interesting. My short answer should have been, "No I have not read it." I been thinking about buying another copy of the complete works of Anne Sexton. She is the poet who helped me survive these past thirty years. Her among others, but she was the first.

Quote:
cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate.

I guess it was Nietzsche again. So comfortable, secure, by his warm fire place, in his cozy room, writing as if he was an Austrailian prisoner.

Freud seemed to appreciate what a special effort it took

This picture of a delusion of (mainly moral) inferiority is completedby sleeplessness and refusal to take nourishment, and-what is psychologically very remarkable-by an overcoming of the instinct which compels every living thing to cling to life.

"Remarkable"is that a bit of an understatement?

For some reason I am remembering a conversation with an old friend of mine. She was with her father at his bed side in the hospital and he said to her "Lilian I don't know how to die?" He was ready to die, he knew it was just about his time to die, he expected to die. He just could not figure out what he was supposed to do. That prision the author writes about it would not be difficult to figure out how to die quick. I have another old firend (that was his father in law dieing above) the was a flight surgeron in the USAF, he treated some of the POW's from the Hanoi Hilton, he found their stories of survival remarkable. Helped him be a better pyschiatrist/physician. That was not such a noble field fifty years ago. All I have to do is think of the martyrs to Psychiatry in the fifties., Maybe he is a rare exception a doctor who practices as artist. Freud was an artists, too bad he became a priest.

geez this ramble wont stop