Finding Malgudi in the Mediterranean, with Victoria Hislop

Since I can’t physically holiday on the Mediterranean this summer, I’m doing the next best thing and reading about Mediterranean holiday locations.

I reread The Last Dance, by Victoria Hislop, a collection of short stories I’d picked up while travelling in Greece many years ago. I’m loving it. Because these vignettes of Greek village life could so easily have been set in RK Narayan’s Malgudi.

These are stories of a simple, happy people, living among friends and family members they have known for generations. They sometimes get into fracas with each other, but these frictions are quickly and happily resolved.

There is a story of the Malkis brothers who fight over an inherited street café, split it down the middle, but then make up and reunite. There is the story of Claire from Yorkshire, who is engaged to Andreas the Cypriot, who learns about her fiancé’s family and to feel at home in this place where it is really hot even at Christmas. The title story is about Theodoris, who shares a dance with his one true love on the night they both are getting married to others. Fortunately, this collection doesn’t feature any deeper tragedy or pathos.

Sometimes reality does intrude on this idyllic world. The anti-Euro Athens riots make an appearance in one story, sort of like the Indian independence movement makes an appearance in Swami and Friends. But for most part, this collection evokes a simple world that carries on despite these intrusions, like Tolkien’s Shire, or Asterix the Gaul’s indomitable village, or RK Narayan’s Malgudi.

“I am often asked, ‘Where is Malgudi?’” wrote RK Narayan in his introduction to Malgudi Days. “All I can say is it is imaginary and not to be found on any map…”. So, Malgudi can’t be found on a map of the Aegean. But it does have kindred spirits on those rocky islands.

From Malgudi Days

RK Narayan with his wife Rajam

Victoria Hislop with her husband Ian

JRR Tolkien, the lousy teacher

"At Oxford in the nineteen-forties, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was generally considered the most boring lecturer around, teaching the most boring subject known to man, Anglo-Saxon philology and literature, in the most boring way imaginable. “Incoherent and often inaudible” was Kingsley Amis’s verdict on his teacher. Tolkien, he reported, would write long lists of words on the blackboard, obscuring them with his body as he droned on, then would absent-mindedly erase them without turning around. “I can just about stand learning the filthy lingo it’s written in,” Philip Larkin, another Tolkien student, complained about the old man’s lectures on “Beowulf.” “What gets me down is being expected to admire the bloody stuff.”

It is still one of the finest jests of the modern muses that this fogged-in English don was going home nights to work on perhaps the most popular adventure story ever written..."

More evidence that genius in one aspect of life, even in one aspect of communication, can go hand in hand with mediocrity in other related aspects of life, or communication.

Extracted from this (very nice) story in the New Yorker, which is still visible online...

Lord of the Rings: The Appendices

This is the Tolkien trip for the real Tolkien fans. I noted before that the movie was good, but left an old-time Tolkien fan like me a touch unsatisfied, like having eaten half a meal. Now, having watched the extensive appendices which come with the DVD box set, even I am sated, chock full of Tolkien fundas to inflict on the innocent bystander. Here is a sampling of the nuggets that made the appendices totally worth watching: - Rohan is modelled on Saxon culture. The motifs on the armour, the design of the helmets, they are meant to look like artefacts from the famous Saxon burial sites at Sutton Hoo. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon, the culture which produced Beowulf, and deeply regretted the loss of a “native” English mythology with the coming of the Normans. Rohan was his way of imagining how Saxon culture may have developed if the Battle of Hastings had been won - The tale of Beren and Luthien, of the elven princess who gives up immortality to wed a man, is incidental to Frodo’s quest. But it is probably the most intensely personal element of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s grave refers to himself as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Beren, and to his wife Edith, buried alongside, as Edith Mary Tolkien Luthien - The original movie script had Arwen fighting alongside Aragorn at Helm’s Deep. Liv Tyler spent months training to use a sword. Several fight sequences with Arwen were filmed. Then, there was a leak, the bloggers found out, and revolted. They accused Liv Tyler of betraying Tolkien because she wanted to play Xena, the Warrior Princess. The online vitriol was so intense that the bloggers won. The elven host finally showed up at Helm’s Deep without Arwen. Liv Tyler was clearly very upset by this, but it was the right outcome. Well done, bloggers - On the shoot, Viggo Mortensen had the hots for the Rohirrim girls. Not for the gorgeous Eowyn. But for the soldiers who rode with Eomer. They’re babes in drag. Apparently, Viggo was really into these lithe, lissom, helmeted ladies, wearing beards and carrying spears. This was gleefully reported by Dominic Monaghan, who plays Merry, and later denied by Viggo - At the party to celebrate victory at Helm’s Deep, Legolas drinks Gimli under the table. That’s what happens in the movie. In real life, Orlando Bloom passes out at the merest whiff of alcohol. In Dominic Monaghan’s words “Orlando is so pure, his breath smells of flowers”. The appendices have enough room to acknowledge, and even enrich, Tolkien’s vast Middle Earth. And they also open up another vast world, the world of Peter Jackson’s film project. Watching the appendices, you’re an insider to one of the biggest films ever made. If you’re the sort of person who has ever dreamt about wearing an elven cloak and canoeing down the Anduin with the fellowship, the appendices are a must watch.

Lord of the Rings. At the Racsos

This is to announce a special Racso award for the worst moments in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Brought to you by Moonballs from Planet Earth. 

The nominees are: - Gandalf and Saruman. The fight in Orthanc, when the venerable wizards biffed each other's flowing robes and beards into a terrible tangle - 

The last homely house. Rivendell, with its kitschy soft-focus shots and air-brushed effects, looked like something from a Thomas Kinkade painting - 

The paths of the dead. The avalanche of skulls that nearly trapped Strider, Legolas and Gimli inside the Haunted Mountain. This could have been a solemn moment in an action-packed film - 

Arwen and Aragorn. The kiss on a bridge in Rivendell. Of course, it had to be in soft-focus. Why was this limp love-story promoted from the appendix to the main film? More screen time for Liv Tyler is not reason enough - 

Uruk Hai births. The slime-covered creatures emerging from the breeding pits under Orthanc. Some things are better imagined than seen, even in a film 

And the Racso goes to Gandalf and Saruman biffing it out in Orthanc. Thunderous applause. Nothing can beat Saruman and Gandalf twirling each other around Orthanc for sheer goofiness, especially in a film that clearly cares about production values.

Lord of the Rings. At the Oscars

This is to announce a special Oscar for the best moments in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Brought to you by Moonballs from Planet Earth. The nominees are: - Minas Tirith. The seven-circled white city on a hill, topped with the Tower of Ecthilion glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, whose fighting men wore breastplates wrought with the White Tree of Gondor - Lighting the beacons. The bonfire relay across the snowy mountain-tops that brought the Rohirrim thundering south to fight alongside Gondor - Edoras. The setting for Meduseld, hall of Theoden son of Thengel, Lord of the Mark of Rohan. "Before the mountains of the south: white tipped and streaked with black...a tumbled mountain-mass with one tall peak stood like a sentinel a lonely height...set upon a green terrace, there stands aloft a great hall of men. And it seems to my eyes that it is thatched with gold. The light of it shines far over this land..." - Faramir's charge on Osgiliath. The futile cavalry charge Faramir led on an occupied Osgiliath, while Pippin sang at Lord Denathor's sumptuous lunch - Escape from the mines of Moria. The vaulted, crumbling staircase through flaming nothingness that led the Fellowship to the Bridge of Khazad Dum, where Gandalf battled the Balrog And the Oscar goes to...Faramir's charge on Osgiliath. Thunderous applause. All the nominations, the value-add in going from the book to the movie, are about visualization. The film stayed faithful to Tolkien's words, and yet visualized these scenes with a vividness and beauty that is far beyond my own imagination, even as a committed Tolkien fan. The unsung heroes of the film are probably Alan Lee and John Howe, two artists who have been visualizing scenes from Tolkien for decades, long before this film was even conceived. Peter Jackson had the good sense to collaborate with these outstanding old pros. Faramir's charge on Osgiliath wins the Oscar for being more than visualization. This scene is implied rather than described in the book. The movie takes this raw material, and builds it up into an emotional crescendo so intense that I almost dare not imagine it. By rights, it should have crumbled under its own weight. And yet, it works. Well done. Thanks PJ. Blog readers and Tolkien fans, please do chip in with your own Oscar nominees.