The New Yorker just published some hacks' take on RK Narayan, so I thought I should post this hacks' take penned over a year ago. 1000 words for a blog? It can happen again, methinks...

Bombay and tonic

R.K. Narayan is the grand and god father of the Indian writer writing in the English language. Prior to the hype of Rushdie, Lahiri, Roy, Ali and Mistry (Naipaul too, if you want, but he wouldn't) there was Narayan, whose first novel Swami and Friends found publication in the UK in 1935 thanks to the assistance of Graham Greene, his early champion. It wasn't until 1953 that he found an American publisher (University of Michigan Press, then Viking), and another nine years until he found literary fame, thanks to a New Yorker profile by Ved Mehta.

Narayan published some dozen novels during his long life. I've recently reread four of his middle books. The latter books are not very good, but his first three novels work. Narayan pulled a unique feat with his first books, writing three semi-autobiographical coming of age novels in succession, each with different characters but each also mirroring experiences of the title characters: Swami and Friends involves a scamp in a world of horrible teachers and cricket-stardom dreams, The Bachelor of Arts tells of a struggling college student trying to make sense of acquired knowledge and the monotony of adulthood, and The English Teacher tells of a man making his way with a profession and a wife, only to lose interest in the job and lose his wife to illness. The English Teacher was designed to break your heart and it does; it doesn't get easier to reread knowing Narayan lost his young wife to disease and thereafter remained in celibate mourning for the next 60 plus years of his life.

Narayan's action takes place in the fictional town of Malgudi, a smaller cousin of his native Mysore. Malgudi is Yoknapatawpha with comic charm rather than southern Goth. Main characters in his novels make cameos in the other books, but setting is not as relevant as the revelations that turn the action in Narayan's books. There is a spiritual devoutness that his main characters initially resist, but then when they are forced into a crisis adopt. It might seem illusory to have identity issues neatly wrapped by the last page of a book, but Narayan's books work because he can entertain the reader and implement believable character development through direct consequence of actions.

The Guide (which made Bloom's canon) was his biggest success, The Man-Eater of Malgudi might be his best, but The Vendor of Sweets (made the Burgess 99) was written post-Mehta profile and did what every hued author of a multicultural bent has failed to do; write a great book about East-West culture clashes that doesn't preach, that is well written, that entertains, and that holds up nearly 40 years after publication.

Jagan is a niggardly proprietor of a sweet shop that makes the best fried eats in Malgudi. He is rolling in dough (floured and rupee) but has known disappointment. He failed his quest for a BA and used an arrest under the auspices of helping out the Mahatma with civil disobedience to cover his education failures. His wife passed away ten years after Mali, his son, was born, and the son, now in college, drops out because he wants to be a writer. Jagan is concerned at first then boastful of his son's decision ("Did Shakespeare have a BA?"). But the son loafs for a year and then pilfers his father's cash for a trip to America to attend a "novel-writing school".

Mali returns three years later but he's not alone. He's brought along his wife, a Korean-American, who is affront to Jagan, his caste and extended family. Jagan soon becomes kind to her when he hears out Mali's plans for the future; he intends to raise capital to manufacture a story-writing machine ("Most magazines in the US use them. One knob is for number of characters, another is for theme..."). Jagan senses that his son is a moron, and when he can't be open with the new girl in his house he turns to Hindu scriptures and looks for a new life away from what his current has wrought. Jagan becomes a 60-year-old Indian Gatsby, in retreat of romanticism instead of for it.

Narayan's books work because his characters, though comic, are not without purpose and reason. Narayan's India was the population of the US today and it is refreshing to know that out of a mess of derelict citizens and ineffectual governance great literary art can rear, make one laugh, and endure.