Whenever I hit the
book store or the library, I see books that I want to read as every book offers
generous sharing of its author’s
perspective and insights
whether it is non-fiction or fiction, the latter less explicit. Every
work of fiction is a piece of creative writing that often tells more truths (
often psychological) than some writings
that purport to report the truth. The imaginary tale contains narratives
that resonate with its reader and engages him or her with the unfolding of the
story that might actually happen or is already happening in the real world and
as the reader turns the pages, he or she is perplexed by the intricacies of the
plot or seized by an overwhelming feeling
of joy at the brilliance of the
writer.
The real voyage of discovery
consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes -
Marcel Proust. Apart from
pleasure, one primary reason I feel compelled to read is that reading helps me
to see things with new eyes. Some writings prompt us to look at things from
fresh perspectives while some writings remind us that we should believe in
humanity and see life for what it is. I particularly enjoy reading satires by
authors who cleverly put forward a hilarious fictionalized account of the
madcap world we live in.
In the MARK and the VOID
written by Paul Murray, the fiction is set against the backdrop of the ongoing crisis in the
eurozone . Claude Martingale is French and he works as an equity analyst in the
Bank of Torabundo in Dublin. His father was a blacksmith who had encouraged him
to study but his father subsequently resented Paul for his success as a banker in Paris as he
was mortally against the whole financial industry. His father remembered ‘the scandals that emerged after
Liberation, the bankers who had collaborated with the Nazis in order to enrich
themselves and he accused Claude of taking the job out of malice.’
Claude does not
agree as he narrates,
“ Empires fall, that was what he
had taught me; the world turns, and people, whole cultures, become obsolete.
Progress might be a lie, but it was a lie that swept all before it and so the
best tactic was to find high ground.’
After his mother
died, Claude had to flee France to work in Dublin as he and his father could no
longer be in the same room and he subsequently reproached himself for not
having made up with his father before his death . Claude is approached by
a down-on-his-luck author Paul, who is looking for his next great subject and
plans to write a book about Everyman who works in a bank. Claude does not think
that his life would make an interesting book. But Paul assures Claude that he represents the perfect Everyman
in the modern times and he plans to shadow Claude for his writing project.
Claude later finds out about Paul’s real
situation and tries to get him to feel inspired to write again. One
reason why Paul gives up writing is that he thinks “modern people live in a
state of distraction”.
Paul has written
a novel and it is called For Love of a Clown but the book was eclipsed by
another prize winning novel written by Bismal Banerjee called “ The Clowns of
Sorrow.” Paul has the serendipitous encounter with his ex-editor who happens to
be in Dublin for a reading by Banerjee who has published another book. Claude
and Paul are both invited to the reading followed by a
dinner. During dinner, Banerjee tells Paul that he should feel no regret at
having failed as a writer for it is the dying art of a dying civilization.
“I believe art is a dying art,’
he says. “What we are witnessing in twenty-first century Western society is
nothing less than the death of subjectivity. We are in Dublin, so I will quote to
you a Dubliner, George Bernard Shaw, who said that man looks in a mirror to his
face, and at art to see his soul.
But modern man has no soul to see. He has become little more than a conduit for
the transfer of wealth between corporations.’
Amongst Claude’s
colleagues at the investment bank, Ish is the least likely investment banker in
the real world.
‘Ish is an anomaly - not of the god’s eye view sort, but not
especially interested in money either, other than what she needs to pay for her
apartment, which she bought off the plans during the boom at a price she now
admits may have been extravagant even for an investment banker.’
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