The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks

Another of the belated birthday gift that I chose for it's name. Of the few choices given to me, this one had the most interesting title. So I read the description and decided that it was worth reading. The reviews were good and one can consider experimenting with gifts.

Dr. Sacks is a renowned neurologist who worked in America and Britain. His fascination with Luria and his work led him to adopt the romantic style of writing that Luria professed. The clinical tales are more than facts recorded as statistics. It is history and emotions which, as Dr. Sacks believes, forms an equally important part of the story, or case. Thus his stories have a rather personal touch to them. He empathises (rather too much I believe) with his patients and sees them not as dilapidated items in need of repair, but as individuals struggling to maintain their identity in the midst of a chaotic mental tempest. A fascinating TED talk by Dr. Sacks will give a picture of him and his way of connecting.

The book recounts twenty four tales of his erstwhile patients who suffered from some neurological problem. The cases are divided into four sections : Losses : dealing with the classical problem of loss of some brain function; Excesses : dealing with the excess of a brain function; Transports : dealing with visions and hallucinations; and the World of the Simple : dealing with autistic patients and their enhanced skills. The book presents a number of interesting brain irregularities like loss of the ability of identify people and things, phantom limbs, loss of control over one's own body, religious visions, enhanced smelling ability, identifying primes and mnemonic memory. Sacks raises existentialist and moralist questions on how the patients are and ought to be treated by the society as well as the doctors and nurses. The last section, dealing with the autistic and 'morons' was much more personal than the earlier ones, perhaps because of the elongated period of association with the patients, for unlike in the other cases, the patients suffering from autism did not "get better".

Dr. Sacks' vivid portraits of his patients was extremely fascinating. Leads one to question how and why the brain is treated as a model that has a "normalcy". At times though, Dr. Sacks' empathy and appreciation for the patients was a bit too redundant and drag. He has more interesting books but I will come back to him later.

myth=mithya - Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik

It was at Chennai Airport, while I was waiting for a flight back to Pune that I entered the airport bookstore. Weirdly, after all this time I am somehow naive enough (or stupid enough) to believe that I will just look around and not buy anything from a bookstore because of the big stack of pending books. Yes, I see you pointing a finger at me and laughing your head off, but that was my intention. For real! So as you must have already gathered, I bought this book and stowed it away for a not so distant future.

I had heard of this book earlier but never given it a serious thought. But a recent argument about the Hindu religious philosophy with a colleague and the pending Basham's "The Wonder that was India" drew me to the book. I flipped through randomly and saw a lot of small sections of stories, a page at most, and many crudely drawn sketches of the various Hindu deities. I was to find out later that the book was full of such drawings, tables and flowcharts. I found the pedantic efforts of Dr. Pattanaik extremely cute. The work did not seem half baked and incomplete. The research was well done. At no point of the book did it seem that the author was fleeting through the topics, despite the concise nature of the work. Also, the work is not theistic in nature like religious texts tend to get. Pattanaik does not impose his opinions anywhere. Rather he states in the preface that religion is a matter of faith and can be rationalised only till a point. He recommends seeing it as a way of understanding human life rather than an explanation for it.

The book revolves around the three primary Gods of the Hindu mythology (Bramha, Vishnu, Shiva) and their counterparts (Saraswati, Laxmi, Shakti). It seeks to explain the Hindu religious beliefs in the light of modern concerns. Dr. Pattanaik comes up with an extremely persuasive way to present what we currently know as Hinduism. Scattered throughout the books are the various small stories from the Puranas and Vedas describing the conflict between the devas and asuras. The author brings this strife to a new light by deeming every section of the mythological league as essential in the Hindu culture. The asuras are as important as the devas. He interprets the Hindu culture as non-judgmental, saying there is room for every type of culture, but each has its place and time.

The read was an interesting one, to say the least. There were aspects of the Hindu culture that I was unaware of (at least the aspects as Devdutt Pattanaik sees them). There were also many stories that I did not know of, and many lesser deities that I knew no more than the name of. I am very impressed by Dr. Pattanaik, though I doubt I would reach out for another such work of his any time soon.

Humiliated and Insulted - Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky

It had been long since I picked up a Dostoyevsky. For eight long months I had given my Dostoyevsky fever a rest and picked up other books; other genres. But it was time to return to my quest regarding Dostoyevsky's works. I have gone through most of his works in a rather random fashion. So I randomly picked 'Humiliated and Insulted' to be the next in this crooked line.

This book was Dostoyevsky's attempt at re-establishing himself in the St. Petersburg literary circle after his years of absence due to imprisonment. It was him breaking free from the influences of Gogol and finding a style of his own. This book highlights all that I love about Dostoyevsky's writing. His later works were rather too well done for me. This one was cooked just right. There is a balance in the realism and fever in this book that Dostoyevsky loses in his later works in favour of the latter. It is this balance and the gripping plot that define this novel for me. As usual, the author explores the darker and the dingier recesses of the Russian society to come up with a story that is allegedly auto-biographical in nature. The book, like many others of his, were published it parts. Probably the three short breaks between the four exciting parts were the only time I could put down the book with a certain ease of mind. Otherwise the book was nothing short of an addiction!

The plot features Vanya, a young author, at it's heart as he struggles to help out the woman that he loves, Natasha. She has run away from her family to be with her lover, Alyosha, a young prince who was close to her family once. The family has disowned their daughter for the shame that she put them through. Alyosha's father, Prince Alexey, is a money grubber of the worst kind and wants his puerile son to marry a rich, young heiress - Katya. The plot is further thickened by Nelly, the granddaughter of an old man who used to occupy Vanya's quarters before he died in the opening scenes of the book. The book twists and turns slowing, weaving an intricate web over all the characters and binding them together in one fascinating and thrilling story as Vanya and Natasha fight their way through the humiliation that they face. As the story progresses, Nelly too grows as a character as her past is slowly uncovered by her benefactor, Vanya, who rescues her from the clutches of the evil harlot of a landlady. The story speaks of life in a section of the society that suffers insults with little to retaliate with, but a pride to bear it.

This was eleventh of the sixteen novels listed under Dostoyevsky's name that I have completed. Needless to say what I think of the author, but I will say it none the less. He is a genius at creating characters and scenes which, despite their fantastic nature, reek of a realism that appeals to you. It is a feeling beyond words when you see his plot unravel and reach a fervent peak and gratifies you. Dostoyevsky sucks big time at keep a mystery. But then the beauty of it is that the mysteries rarely account for more than extraneous adornments in his stories. Five more to go. Whatever shall I do when I expire that number!

Asterios Polyp - David Mazzucchelli

I first saw 'Asterios Polyp' in a haze at a friend's friend's place. I took to adjusting the cover mindlessly and put it down without a read. It seemed heavy and I was more interested in Moore's 'Promethea' series on display in the shelves, which too I did not read. Anyhow, this is what I got, or rather chose as a belated birthday gift.

It took me two sittings to swallow the novel; will probably take me a few iterations to digest it. It was quite engrossing. It was truly graphic in the sense that the visuals were equally responsible for portraying the story as were the words used. Mazzucchelli deserves a thumping pat on the back for pulling it off by himself. 'Asterios Polyp' is an experience that he takes us through. It is more than a story; it is more than just art. One is left free to roam in his pages and understand the references that he leaves around. Reading this book was interactive and I think that is the real beauty of it. The plot was a little weak but then those weaknesses were easily overlooked in favour of the exceptional design.

The story is of a successful architect whom we meet on a rather unfortunate day of his. He has turned fifty and his house catches fire as a lightning crashes into his building. The narration takes turns to tell of his life thence and his life until. His past is narrated by his twin brother who died at birth and who dominates his thoughts. From the very beginning the reader is presented with a lot of contradictory aspects of Asterios' nature. Asterios leaves his messy apartment with three tokens of his past and leaves on a greyhound bus to a place as far as the money in his wallet could take him, Apogee. Here he takes up work as a car mechanic and lives with his employer's family. In the background his past life and troubled but happy marriage are slowly brought to light. We see Asterios gradually lose his hubris and reform himself into a much more agreeable person over this "Odyssey" that he undertakes.

I really liked reading 'Asterios Polyp'. I have not diverged much from Moore in the graphic novel world but this one was quite worth it. I will return to the point of movie like experience that Mazzucchelli takes you through. His work is very fluent and has a depth that can be uncovered in parts; specially the references to the Greek tragedies. Mazzucchelli has written another graphic novel but I am thinking that I would go for one of his more hailed works next. 'Batman : Year One' with Frank Miller.

Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges

A friend's ping suggested I read "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". The name sounded unusual. I looked it up and it was a short story by an Argentine author. Since the recommender was usually good with suggestions, I decided to try it out. Hence I ordered "Fictions" which contained this particular story. Not much later, I picked it up.

I lapped up Borges like a thirsty dog. I had been wanting to read something interesting for some time and all I had managed to pick up were Nietzsche and Woolf. After the tiresome descriptive readings that were laden with philosophies, Borges seemed unnaturally succinct and extremely gripping. It took me a while to get used to his style; the mild humour, the puns. At times I doubted whether what I was reading was fiction but the author made it evidently clear eventually.

There were a total of seventeen stories split up in two parts : "The Garden of Forking Paths" and "Artifices". The stories were altogether fantastic. Imaginary planets, impeccable memory, fateful lotteries; all these and more made up for some of the most pleasant reading that I have done till date. Moreover, the content was stimulating to an extent that I often put down the book to think how the author must have come up with such an incredible plot or how I might have gone about building on the same theme.

JLB was, in a word, awesome. He is a keeper for sure. One can pick him up between books or when does not have the time for bigger novels. A story roughly takes ten to twenty minutes to complete and leaves you slightly perplexed, slightly stimulated but mostly entertained and satisfied. Will look for more of his works for sure. But as of now, I will take a short break from reading.

Basic Writings of Nietzsche - Friedrich Nietzsche / Walter Kaufmann

Nietzsche is a well known name. But I had little idea what I was getting into when I had chosen this book in the flipkart liquidation sale. Since I had heard the name quite a few times and since the book was coming dirt cheap, I decided to go ahead with it. Picked it up more than a year later, though.

Nietzsche's works are probably the second blatantly philosophical work that I have read; the first being Aurelius' "Meditations". Nietzsche's proved to be an agitating philosophy. He is possibly more of a psychologist than a philosopher. He tends to explain things based on human psychology rather than come up with pleasant sounding irrational theorems. And his philosophy is indeed too far from pleasant. Also, it is easy to see why he is so widely misunderstood. He proclaims quite a few offending things without meaning offence, or so interprets Walter Kaufmann. But as far as I can see, Nietzsche is all about interpretation. If you like him, you will interpret his words differently from what you would if you dislike him. Nietzsche, as per his own writing, does not give a damn for those who do not understand him. The topics he touched upon seemed very personal to him as well as current for his time. In parts, it became unnecessarily verbose for the modern reader who does not share his perspective. Again, I doubt Nietzsche cared a lot about being 'eternal', though he did believe himself to be 'the destiny'.

This book five of his writings : "The Birth of Tragedy", "Beyond Good and Evil", "On the Genealogy of Morals", "The Case of Wagner", "Ecce Homo"; and a collection of aphorisms from his various essays. The compilation was quite beautiful in itself, showcasing a wide variety of Nietzsche's works throughout his 'career' as a writer. Walter Kaufmann seemed in total agreement with Nietzsche's philosophy and did a rather tedious job of pointing out every instance of disagreeable meaning or criticism that certain pieces of texts had received. But often, it seemed like a publicity for his other works regarding Nietzsche.

I will reserve my views regarding Nietzsche's philosophy for another post in Phantasmagoria. However, they rang with a certain degree of understanding and easily explained why intelligent brains over the years have read him time and again. Towards the end I started finding him tedious and pompous, though the arrogance and self importance had showed in every single work of his. "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" is another of his book that I will read. But not now. I have had enough of philosophy for quite some time, thank you.

The Waves - Virginia Woolf

Another one of those books that I picked up while idling in a book store. After "To The Lighthouse" I had not dared to pick up another Woolf. But I had read nothing challenging for a while and thought myself up to the task. But this was before Nietzsche.

Woolf did not surprise me this time. For the first few pages, I was utterly lost. Was this a play? A dialogue? People talking to each other? Playing games? What was this? Turned out, while I was reading the introduction later (one of those few that do not strive to show the introducer's intellect but actually introduces the content of the book) that they were, what Woolf called, soliloquies.So it was akin to a play after all. But not quite a play. Woolf has tried to do something different by representing characters as threads of individual thoughts rather than build them up through plot.

The book is more of character building than a story. The story is sparse and widely spread out. It centres around six individuals : Bernard, Neville, Louis, Susan, Jinny and Rhoda. Each has his or her own individuality that they speak out loud as a stream of thoughts. The story follows them from their childhood through to their waning ages. There is a seventh "silent" character of Percival whom everyone adores. Bernard is somewhat more central than the others and finishes the book with an existential piece that revisits the life of all his friends.

 I was expecting nothing different of Woolf. Despite all the difficulties that it posed, the book was something of a delight to read. No one uses words like Woolf does. They are a piece of art by themselves. But then I strongly hold her conscious disregard for a plot against her. It was as if I had jumped from one Nietzsche to another, only, the original was far easier to read.