The Golden Gate, Vikram Seth (365 Books, Day 247)

[rushthatspeaks]

For centuries the novel told in verse
has neither read nor sold one-tenth as well
as books in prose (although they might be worse);
so Seth said to his muses, what the hell,
I've got this beat, this long-disused tetrameter,
my knowledge of a simile's parameter,
hilarity from all my friends, a pen,
a travel book in presses-- therefore, then,
present to me a sonnet-cycle/novel.
The muses said to Seth, we like your line,
and Berkeley's as good as any hovel
a poet's lurked in waiting for our wine.
Only we must as kind daimones warn you:
doggerel's what you'll get from California.

Seth didn't mind. The characters were sound,
the through-line true, the subtleties were there.
If sometimes cluttered near-rhymes ran aground,
the story-shapes should make the reader care.
And so they do. The book is very good.
Our protag, John, computer-jockey, would
like love, but all his head is out of joint.
His best friend Phil (who really is the point)
struggles with having to be a single father,
loves a man and loses him to God,
wonders why religion's all this bother,
is gently funny, sweetly loving, odd.
Triangles and circles, change of partners, seasons,
and life and death: the usual plotly reasons

apply as in the prose work of your choice.
But due to Seth's unusual form and mode,
his California has a stronger voice
than other authors have found down that road.
It's not roman à clef if it's a sonnet.
You get a different viewing angle on it,
a deeper heart, a joy in all this cleverness.
Not Great American Novel-- what ever is--
but a California Novel I will take.
I mean, the table of contents, dedication,
acknowledgements and bio do not break
the mold in which he worked his aspiration.
What should a cheered and tired reviewer do
but (for my sins) inflict some sonnets too?

Comments

[redbird]

I liked the book, but don't feel remotely up to producing sonnets to say so. (And may or may not chase down some more of Seth's work.)

[rushthatspeaks]

I liked the small chunk I read of A Suitable Boy before it aggravated my RSI to the point that I became physically unable to read it. (It is about the size of the Manhattan telephone book in hardcover and has an introductory sonnet warning you not to sprain your wrists and silly me, I thought he was joking.) If I ever get an e-reader I want to finish it.

[adrian_turtle]

An Equal Music is glorious. I recommend it very highly.

I haven't been able to read much of A Suitable Boy, either. It's on my wishlist for both ebook and audiobook, whatever Stephen can find first. Every so often I look at the paperback on my shelf and wonder if it would be desecration to take it apart into sections I could actually read.

[kate_nepveu]

*applause*

[jazzfish]

Delightful!

[alias]

This made me smile, thank you :)

[starlady]

Bravo!

[kore]

Hee, awesome!

spam warning

[redbird]

You seem to have a couple of spam-probe comments this morning, replies to my comment and Adrian's. I don't think we can delete or report them, because it's not either of our journals.

Re: spam warning

[rushthatspeaks]

Thanks. I'm going through and deleting them now.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

How I love that book. It made me cry on a train, and when I finished it I read it straight through again. I've liked everything Seth has done, but this is exceptional even for him.

Also, worth noting since you said Great American Novel, and Californian, that he is from India, and he was in California in grad school, yet nothing feels off in writing American characters and situations and dialogue and attitudes.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

It is the first Seth I've managed to read, as I tried A Suitable Boy and bounced off it for an annoying reason-- the library only has it in hardcover and I cannot physically wrangle the thing, my wrists are too bad. Currently the only occupant of a very small mental list marked 'things I want to read as e-books more than I do as printed ones'.

His San Francisco and Berkeley are both recognizable and lovely. I enjoyed this very much, and did in fact hunt it down because of your torcom review.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I didn't read it for ages for the same reason. That's why I have the British 3 volume paperback, each volume of which is the size of a normal longish novel.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that existed. Thank you, I will look for it now.

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

oh bravo. I thought you'ld like it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, Rush-that-speaks! I enjoyed this tremendously.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What should a cheered and tired reviewer do
but (for my sins) inflict some sonnets too?

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Grin, yay, grin, yay. Excellent.

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm impressed, on all fronts. Bravo!

[skygiants]

This is great dedication to the art of book reviewing and I salute you.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thank you. I sat there for like the latter half of the book going 'I really do have to, don't I', and decided that I really did.

[larryhammer]

Brava! Encore!

This is, natch, my favorite novel in verse (and one of the three main inspirations for my myrmidon poems). Well played and appreciated.

---L.

(Minor nit -- it really isn't sonnets, but Puskin's Onegin stanza. It's very minor, but it bugs me every time a reviewer gets the name wrong.)

[butsuri.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, it's generally considered that the Onegin stanza is a type of sonnet, so this is not an error.

[larryhammer]

It has sometimes been described as such, true. And I may be arguing definitions (always a rabbit hole). But Pushkin developed the form out of similar stanzas in earlier poems, with as far as can be determined no influence from other Russian poets' experiments with adapting the sonnet -- which are much closer to Romance language versions (including decasyllabic lines and a consistent volta). Pushkin himself didn't attempt an actual sonnet until well after he completed Onegin.

---L.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

AAGH I WILL NOT ENCORE AAGH

(well, only if something really needs it)

It's certainly the best novel in verse I've read, although critics think pretty highly of Aurora Leigh and I really ought to.

I consider the Oneginian stanza a sonnet. Also, it is easier to rhyme 'sonnet' than either 'Pushkin' or 'Onegin', although IIRC Seth rhymes them both.

[larryhammer]

I had trouble getting through Aurora Leigh -- the first half is pretty good, but then it starts dragging, and, worse, getting grindingly mid-Victorian. I'm sympathetic to EBB's aims, especially reading it right after a buttload of Trollope, but it doesn't make the journey any easier to finish.

As a novel, The Golden Gate is better. Byrne by Anthony Burgess is the only other one I've read that comes close.

A sonnet, despite enjambing it across stanzas 2 and 3? You're pretty clearly using it as a stanza form, instead of as a discrete unit as in a sonnet cycle. Ah, well -- we're probably arguing definitions, which is probably not the most fruitful of pastimes.

---L.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Huh, nothing I've ever heard about a sonnet cycle has indicated that you can't use enjambment?

I should have suspected Anthony Burgess of a verse novel, that man could do anything. I'll look into it.

Aurora Leigh keeps being recced me by feminist critics, which means I ought to try it, but it's one of those books that mentally feels like homework for some reason, possibly that I do expect it to be very Victorian.

[larryhammer]

I've never seen it articulated as a rule, but I've never seen a sonnet cycle treat the sonnets as stanzas -- rather always as separate poems. Even coronas, as far as I can recall, full-stop each sonnet.

Byrne was published posthumously. It's hilarious and and bawdy and offensive and brilliant.

---L.

[sovay]

Only we must as kind daimones warn you:
doggerel's what you'll get from California.

Okay, now you're just showing off.

(I approve.)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Okay, now you're just showing off.

Yes.

(Thank you.)

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Wait. You hadn't chosen the book at midnight, and long before dawning, there's a brilliant review in verse?

I am in awe.

Nine

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Remember I am an hour behind you.

If I'd known I needed to do the review in verse I'd probably have started the book earlier, but it really was necessary, so I decided that clocks are arbitrary anyhow.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

*glee*

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

*claps* I love that book, and am delighted to see your inventiveness in your review.

[butsuri.livejournal.com]

sometimes cluttered near-rhymes

I think everything rhymed perfectly for me, when I read it last year: but I seem to recall I noticed some rhymes which wouldn't have been exact in a rhotic accent, and concluded that Seth's English is probably non-rhotic.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Some of it does not rhyme for me, and there were a couple of things where we disagree about the syllabification on a very deep level, such that I have no idea how he is pronouncing the word. But I do suspect he and I speak quite different dialects.

[pameladean]

You have outdone yourself.

P.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

Nice. I kinda hope the author gets to see it.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I have had some authors I did not expect turn up in comments, but Vikram Seth I really don't expect. No idea whether he uses the internet...

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

highly unlikely, although this chat was some time ago, and his opinions may have changed since then:

divya:

Do you have a website or some email address where one can keep in touch with you? I live in America. Studying here
Mr Vikram Seth:

divya: I try to keep my computer in a state of virginal purity. I'm neurotic, rather, paranoid about a bug wiping out my next opus. So I'm not even on e-mail, let alone connected to webs or other spidery devices. But this cyber-cafe (on someone else's computer) is fun.

from here:

http://www.rediff.com/chat/vikchat.htm

[gwynnega]

This is awesome.

[crowleycrow.livejournal.com]

Well done, very well done -- the mode and manner both. You should add "Don Juan' (Byron) to your pile.

WHat you write though is not tetrameter but pentameter.