Of Palace Walk and other stories

Although its is highly likely that my disenchantment stems from my inability to grasp the subject matter, the only reaction I could offer the Nobel Prize winning author’s best effort was indifference. In fact if it hadn’t been for my inability to leave a book unfinished, Palace Walk may have been abandoned three chapters in. Admittedly, the writer created an almost tangible reality where his characters live out their lives. However, in my humble and utterly meaningless opinion, that skill alone does not merit a Nobel Prize for literature. A novel has to be about more than the characters in it, there has to be a story there, a plot of sorts which serves the purpose of exposing the characters. In palace walk I found no plot, just several very well detailed character sketches. I do not for a moment mean to say that Naguib Mahfouz is not a good writer, he most definitely is as good as any I’ve ever read, it takes a little something extra to breathe life into figments of one’s imagination through words alone and he is undoubtedly a master at that craft. All I’m saying is that Palace Walk did not make for very entertaining reading. It was mostly bland and humorless, more like a summary of a novel than a novel itself. A very long and tedious summary at that, a summary which has far more details in it than even a novel should possess. I couldn’t help feeling that at several different points during the process of writing and editing this book, the author was compelled to add needless amounts of details just to meet a pre-determined word count. This resulted in me being able to skip several pages in numerous chapters without losing out on anything integral to the plot.
Not that this comparison is warranted or even fair, but just for the sake of argument, lets pit Mahfouz against Marquez and Palace Walk against One hundred years of solitude and see what happens. Both books were written in the native languages of their authors, both were translated and critically acclaimed and both deal with the evolution of a singular family with the world at large being restricted to the periphery of their lives playing an instrumental but clandestine role in the lives of the protagonists. Not to mention that both these authors are almost always catalogued adjacent to each other in any alphabetically arranged collection. Now that the similarities have been mentioned, let’s get to the differences. The most glaring and obvious one is that while Palace Walk is grounded firmly in reality and makes no effort whatsoever to dabble with the world of mystical fantasy, Solitude does nothing but transcend the boundaries of reality to create a mystical world that is as real as it is fantastic. Neither approach is ground breaking, many a writer have done the same with varying degrees of success but these two writers and these two books have been heralded as more or less equally outstanding in their respective genres. Other obvious differences are in the time period and the society where the two stories are set. But the most important difference, in my opinion as a reader, is in the style with which the two stories are presented. While Marquez favors brevity, Mahfouz seems preoccupied with verbosity, thereby taking twice as long to communicate an emotion than Marquez and without as much impact. Why Mahfouz felt compelled to do this can probably be attributed to the social set up he himself belongs to which eschews flights of fancy into the absurd and hence hampers the minds attempts to float free. Marquez, obviously unencumbered by such restrictions, not only permits his mind to go berserk with notions most of us cannot even begin to fathom but by doing so is able to create a cohesive and thoroughly enjoyable experience which both justifies his apparent absurdity to his readers but forces them to allow their own minds to shun the tethers of logic. The end result is that Solitude ends up saying a lot more in a lot less time and with far greater profundity than Palace Walk.
Furthermore, Solitude is a book that I’ve already read several times and have always managed to find new meanings and new imagery in it which could not possibly have made any sense to me during the first read through. I cannot even imagine ever picking up Palace Walk to discover its hidden nuances because of how tedious the very first attempt at reading the book was. With solitude, every reading results in a feeling of loss even though I know every single word of the last paragraph by heart and know full well from the very first chapter how the story will unfold, while with Palace Walk my only reaction to the ending was my inability to empathize with the plight of the protagonists fueled by the indifference I had felt towards them all along.
So in conclusion, what exactly am I trying to say here? Am I attempting to prove that Solitude is a better book than Palace Walk? Or Marquez a better writer than Mahfouz? No, its neither one because how one reacts to a book or a writer depends entirely on ever person’s own preferences. Some people find Mills and Boons the end all be all of literature and in all fairness they cannot be blamed for their opinion for they do not know any better.
My primary intention here is to put something on my blog after a long absence and I have chosen to write about the only activity which I’m indulging in with any really interest these days: reading. My secondary intention is to praise the book (solitude) which I have often wanted to write about but have failed to find satisfaction with anything I write about it because I feel that I simply do not possess the skill to do justice to either the book or my appreciation for it. Which brings me to my third intention behind writing this post: displaying a list of my five favorite books so far in order to have any easy point of reference for the next time I forget the names and have to ask old teachers and old friends to name the book based on the sketchy plot summary I provide.

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude (D-uh)
2. Red Earth and Pouring Rain (only for those who can suspend all notions of reality long enough to let the author have his way with their imagination)
3. Far From The Madding Crowd (I understood this book immediately and without apology and will never be able to forget the impression it had on me. This was monumental in determining my perception about life and love and all such meaningless things).
4. Life, Love and a Little Malice (The autobiography of Kushwant Singh, written with such relish by the man who lived the life being detailed here in that a reader can’t help but empathize)
5. Moths Smoke (its not very well written, nor is it very poignant, but it captures the spirit of a life I have known very closely to appreciate the fact that Mohsin Hamid made the effort to expose it)

I’m certain that there are a few books which I have forgotten to mention here, hopefully when the two people who still read this blog share their own lists I will be reminded of them.