Troubled Troublemaker at the Chicago CTA station

Bizarre CTA Experience: This morning I stepped onto the platform at Chicago red line stop, and began reading Nabokov's Blues, a book about the writer and Lepidopterist (butterfly scholar/ collector) Vladimir Nabokov. I was on page three of a book I received this morning, when I guess my peripheral vision mapped an old man approach from my left side. Many travelers pass you by, and you barely pay attention. I was really enjoying my reading material, and before I sensed how close he was, he knocked the book out of my hands. The book, with two blue butterflies on its cover, fell onto the steel-gray tracks. With the book gone, my hands still raised up as if in prayer, I saw before me an old, haggard, African-American man. He had a cigarette butt in his lips, and a very angry expression on a wrinkled, dissipated face, eyes bulging out of sockets as if if with intense hatred. I stepped away from him, as did others around us. Then the man went on to partially drop his pants, expose his posterior, while a hand got busy for few seconds in his pants in the front. A minute or so later, with posterior still exposed, he walked past me, and approached an African-American woman who was sitting on a bench. He picked a tissue paper and a fork lying next to her, and angrily threw it at the tracks. A person next to me kept saying: is there an emergency button around here? Quite soon, but not soon enough, the train arrived. I boarded the train, later called and talked to a CTA representative reporting the incident to make sure the troubled man, the troublemaker was removed from the train station. Also I expressed interest in getting my book back. The man appeared quite disturbed and unstable, and clearly needs some form of care and cure. I wish I knew how to help him, and though I was appalled by the whole thing as it unfolded, I am still wondering why did he do what he did? #CTA #Chicago

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis is a prescient, prophetic, visionary novel, that embarks on a cautionary tale of a fascist, misogynist, racist leadership that manages to get democratically elected in the United States. The novel was written in 1930s when fascism was on a rise in the Western Europe while communism was growing stronger by the day in the Eastern Europe, and back when, most of the European nations, the US and Japan harbored strong colonial aspirations. Central to the story is the character of Buzz Windrip, the man who becomes the nominee of a major party, then the president, and then a dictator, "in order to save the nation from the welfare cheats, from crimes and sex, from drinkers and bootleggers, from the rising power of women who had just got the right to vote and work in offices and factories, from the ascendant African-Americans, businessmen Jews and the immigrants, from a liberal press, and imports". Buzz Windrip is brought into power with the help of evangelists and with the help of miners, laborers, and the so-called hardworking middle class American who believe in his promise that everyone would make more money under his leadership. In the first quarter of the novel, as the drumbeats around the nomination and subsequently the election of Buzz Windrip get louder and louder, the confounded intellectuals around the country go on mumbling "It can't happen here!"

The novel is a razor sharp political satire from another era, and it imagines the rise of both a dictatorial president and his henchmen from a fully-functioning democractic set-up. The scenarios imagined with a cold accuracy of a truly imaginative and creative writer appear to the a script many leaders around the world have emulated over the past few decades. Sinclair Lewis was the first American novelist to win a Nobel Prize for literature in 1930, for his major, more famous novels like Main Street, Babbitt and Arrowsmith. Although America narrowly escaped the wave of nazism and fascism in 1930s, the script of the novel stays as fresh and as foreboding as ever. Buzz Windrip, who eventually wins the vote, within this novel is said to have ghost-authored a book, written in a folksy, funny, simplified language, with choicest examples and phrases meant to echo in the minds and hearts of common people. Many chapters open with a paragraph drawn from the imaginary book, (titled Zero Hour) and each paragraph seems to have inspired words and phrases we have heard in our times from the leaders who are said to be in touch with the public, the masses, the working classes.  

The novel has a very memorable cast of characters, and works well both as a political satire as well as a saga of families and friends trying to make sense of events and changes around them. The primary actor and thinker in the story is Doremus Jessup, who is an editor of a small New England newspaper. Doremus both bears a witness to the emergence of Buzz as the president and a dictator, and becomes a victim to the influence of Buzz, exercised through handpicked cast of men in administration, each one more cunning and capricious than his predecessor at the job and also the incredible "Minute Men". Minute Men refers to a parallel  armed force of followers created by Buzz, with help of Sarason, his confidant and the supposed brain behind many of the popular songs, sayings and policies of Buzz. Minute men run the labor camps (similar to concentration camps), seize what they will, and they control justice system, and the minute men, with their marches and uniforms inspire awe and obedience in the masses.  Without giving away the thrilling and chilling plot points, including the inspiring and equally well-written female cast, I would add that the friends and family of Doremus, and his foes, provide a perfect orchestra of voices and choices through which the grand drama of the demise of a democracy is played out. I think it is the honored duty of every individual and every intellectual to read books like this one. Highly recommended.

Books Read in 2018

Read in 2018 (53= 26 + 27; NF 4) 

ENGLISH FICTION (21) 

FICTION IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION --  (10): The Double by Jose Saramago, Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte, I am a Cat by Natsume Soseki: Volume 1, Volume 2 & Volume 3, Runaway Horses and The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima, (Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig),  Morning Sea by Margaret Mazzantini [Translated by Ann Gagliardi], Botchan by Natsume Soseki [Translated from the Japanese by J. Cohn],

NOVEL / FICTION IN ENGLISH (11):  The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, (Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham), The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe, It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, The Book of Chocolate Saints by Jeet Thayil, Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, Coyote Doggirl and My Dirty Dumb Eyes by Lisa Hanawalt, There is No Such Place as Far Away by Richard Bach, 

ENGLISH POETRY (27=7+19+1) 

POETRY IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION (7):  War Primer by Bertolt Bretcht [translated from the German by John Willett], The Complete Poems by Catullus [translated from the Latin by Guy Lee], Songs of the Simple Truth: the Complete Poems by Julia de Burgos [translated from the Spanish by Jack Agueros], Birds for a Demolition by Manoel de Barros [translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey], Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems by Vasko Popa [translated from Serbian by Charles Simic], By the Danube: Selected Poems by Atilla Jozsef [translated from the Hungarian by John Batki], The Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, edited and compiled by Czelaw Milosz

POETRY IN ENGLISH (19): The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin, The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins, Erratic Facts by Kay Ryan, Felicity by Mary Oliver, Exit, Civilian by Idra Novey, My Soviet Union by Michael Dumanis, The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech by Stephen Dobyns, Registers of Illumintaed Villages by Tarfia Faizullah, Perception by Christina Pugh, A Face that Does Not Wear Footprints of the World By Usha Akela, My Dark Horses by Jodie Hollander, House of McQueen by Valerie Wallace, If they Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar, The Singer of Alleppey by Pramila Venkateswaran, Atmospheric Embroidery by Meena Alexander, Ferrying Secrets by Ralph Nazareth, Sharp Blue Search of Flame by Zilka Joseph, Magdalene by Marie Howe,

The Complete Poems by Catullus [translated by Guy Lee] in Latin,

ENGLISH NON-FICTION (4)

PHILOSOPHY / RELIGION / MYTHOLOGY / HISTORY (2):  Three Ways to be Alien by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Lessons of History  by Will and Ariel Durant

POPULAR SCIENCE / ECONOMICS (0):  
NON-FICTION - OTHER (2):  (Traction by Gino Wickman), The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson


MAHABHARATA (by Mahrishi Ved Vyas; translated from Samskrit into English by Kisari Mohun Ganguly) (0/18):

LITERATURE : INDIAN LANGUAGES (1=1+0; 0 )

Hindi / Urdu / Punjabi (Fiction/Mythology: 0 + Poetry: 0 + Non-fiction: 0): Pratinidhi Kahaniyan by Bhisham Sahni,

Sanskrit (Fiction: 0+ Poetry: 0): 

(If I am through more  than 50% of the book, it goes into the list of the year past, otherwise it appears in the new list next year. See here for the books read in 2017, with a selection of my favorite reads from the year past.)

Highlights from 2018

1. Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte: Both Kaputt & Skin by Malaparte are beautifully-crafted but horrifying and unforgettable portraits of human decadence, war-mongering, wars and cruelty, and essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the impact and influence of war (WW2).


2. Botchan and I am a Cat by Natsume Soseki: Humor and satire, with heart-warming style.

3. Runaway Horses and The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima: The second and the third book in Mishima's fertility series. Involves unforgettable passages about a visit each to Thailand and to India, especially to Benaras Ghats, ruminations on changes in Japanese society, Buddhism, love, honor and reincarnation.

4. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis: You can say Sinclair Lewis invented Trump or at least presciently knew what could lead to the rise of Trump-like president.  
 

5. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht: A beautiful tale that weaves magical realism into a story that is both timeless and poignant, and beautifully written.  

6. The Book of Chocolate Saints by Jeet Thayil: Like Savage Detectives, tracks down to source and beyond the movements and mysteries of Indian Writers (mainly Bombay poets) who chose to write in English. The prose is luminescent in places, I guess whenever the poet drops in to ignite a line or few.

7. My Soviet Union by Michael Dumanis: Great poems.  

8. The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech by Stephen Dobyns: I can hear Dobyns recite in my head, and so the poems have additional appeal for me. Poignant and prophetic.

9. The Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, edited and compiled by Czelaw Milosz: A great collection of poems, has no Indian poets represented though.

10. Pratinidhi Kahaniyan by Bhisham Sahni: A book that managed to give me goosebumps again, and again, and again.