I am going to start out my thoughts on Book 1 in the same way Ann did: A Passage to India is a book about...150 pages too long. This was really a grind for me to get through, not because it was difficult but because it just couldn't keep my attention. It had its moments, a few passages in which I found myself saying "finally, some insight," but there just weren't enough of those.
As I was getting close to the end, I realized that there wasn't a single character in the book that I was pulling for. Aziz was clearly getting a raw deal from the most abhorrent character in the book, Miss Quested, but I found him to be very inconsistent in character. He was a likeable guy in the early going and during the trial, then he seemed bitter in his dealings with Fielding, then he was Joe Johnny Nice Guy again at the end. I suppose you could argue that anyone would be bitter having gone through what Aziz did, but he was bitter with the only Englishman that stood up for him.
Maybe I'm just not well read enough, or smart enough, to "get" A Passage to India. But maybe I am, and I can't imagine why this book is on any 100 Greatest Novels List when names like Mailer and Dos Passos are absent. Notwithstanding my poo-pooing of the first book, I am 100% committed to the project. What I am hoping is that in the next few years, as we all read through the List, we can have some good discussions over some good beers why certain books should be out and why others should be in.
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It seems I enjoyed the first book more than you did, my dear!
ReplyDeleteThat whole section after the trial was extremely puzzling. After the incident at Marabar Caves, you sort of say to yourself, "Ah! This is where the book was (very slowly) going!" And then it's pretty riveting up to the point of the trial, after which, you look at the sheer number of pages remaining and say "Huh?!" That's the reason why I found it so difficult - and simultaneously so important - to puzzle through the question of what this novel is really "about."
We rented the movie over the weekend, and I was reminded of how important that question is to one's interpretation of the book. Watching the movie, I could see that the director thought the movie was about Miss Quested, who is so sexually repressed that she has some sort of Freudian rape fantasy in the caves. Sure enough, when we watched the commentary, David Leans said, "To me, this is a story about a young girl (?) from England. I always imagine she grew up in a vicarage or somewhere very sheltered. And she goes to India and discovers her sexuality. And she goes to the caves with Dr. Aziz, whom she finds very attractive (????)." I was so irritated with all of the things he had to impose on the text to make the story fit his vision that I asked Jason to turn the commentary off.
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ReplyDeleteOh, and I wanted to add my thoughts on the subject of Aziz and Fielding at the end:
ReplyDeleteWhat Aziz experiences as a result of the trial is a political awakening, the first stirrings of his own nationalist spirit. Aziz convinces himself that Fielding asked him not to sue Miss Quested not for her sake, but for his own, because Fielding intends to marry her. Nothing can shake Aziz from this (obviously false) idea because after the trial, Aziz's mind state allows for no other relationship between Englishman and Indian than one of inequity, trickery, and exploitation.
In the final section, I don't see Aziz as reconciling easily with Fielding. Aziz is forced to accept that he was wrong - that Fielding married Mrs. Moore's daughter - but even so, Aziz says, "My heart is for my own people henceforward." And just as Aziz is aligned with India, Fielding is now aligned with the British (as Aziz discovers by reading the letters left on the piano). At the very end, they have their first openly political conversation, at the end of which, Fielding still wants Aziz's friendship. But institutions larger than they don't want it - and I think that's one of the themes of the novel: the way in which institutions, nations, and politics interfere with normal human relationships.