Desperate Housewives meet your match!
One of my goals is to dedicate each month to one author, this February was Hanif Kureishi's month. Kureishi is a very accomplished British author and screenwriter. Last year I rented his fascinating film, The Mother. At the time I knew nothing about him, but now, after reading his books, it gives me a better understanding of him as an artist and confirmed the conflicted thoughts that lingered with me after the film. Kureishi has made an art out of creating characters you want to understand and strangle at the same time. His work is uncompromising and completely absorbing. This month I read four of his books, Intimacy (recently adapted to film), The black Album, The Body and Love in a Blue Time (a collection of short stories in which My son the Fanatic was turned into a film). I would also like to read his award winning novel The Buddha of Suburbia.
Intimacy: is about a man leaving the woman he has lived with for ten years and their two sons. It deals with the conflicting emotions he feels about ending the life he once knew but no longer wants. Uncompromising look at relationships and what many people try to hide.
The Black Album: Deals with Shahid a young Muslim youth trapped between his British western life and his desire to be loyal to his faith and his culture. Very timely though written in 1995
The Body: A famous writer decides to change his old body for a young body (temporarily) to see how it feels to have the best of both worlds, a mature mind and youthful body. Unfortunately the consequences of his action come fast and furious. This book was very disturbing but so so interesting. I enjoyed it!
Love in a Blue Time: A collection of various short stories. My favorite was "With Your Tongue Down My Throat". "We're not Jews" and "D'accord Baby" and "My Son the Fanatic". It was a great collection of stories.
It was interesting reading various books written by one writer, back to back. It began to feel like reading someones journals. There was definitely a strong and recurrent theme in most of his work. I began to wonder how much of Kureishi are in these stories, and if I had to take a guess, I would conclude a lot of him is, they definitely feel vaguely semi-autobiographical. Kureishi is undeniably a great, observant, passionate writer. Whether you like each and every character or not you get drawn into the lives and worlds of the people he writes about.
His books are consumed with the trials and tribulations of middle aged, middle class male angst (with the exception of The Black Album and a few of his short stories). Most of the men are writers of some sort, bored with any woman they have slept with for more than a year, filled with seething resentment towards women and domestic life while constantly looking to escape into a world of drugs, younger women's panties and pubs. You begin to get this image, that he does not work hard to dispute, of emotionally impotent men, aimlessly stumbling through life looking to screw any female that moves, get high, and boo hoo about how disappointing life has been since the hopeful glory days of the late 60's and 70's. They all feel trapped by success or the desire for success and most have an obsession and envy of youth, admittedly offering little to the people in their lives since they were too overwrought by self absorption and neediness to look outside of themselves for longer then a moment. Ultimately they're all disillusioned men pleading for love and acceptance, fearful that they have wasted their lives, and unable to accept most women.
Most of the wives and long term girlfriends in his novels are cold, dominant (feminist), who are withholding and disapproving. The men walk around, sleep around, drink around and pour out their souls trying to analyze the nature of relationships and the "bourgeois" trappings of success and faithfulness, (Kureishi did get a degree in Philosophy so maybe that's where all this "What is the meaning of life?" stuff comes from). Rarely are the men faithful, and the casual self righteous way that they carry on affairs with various women, many young enough to be their daughters becomes tedious. He also loves the word "arse," every third page seems to refer to fucking a woman's arse, wanting to kick someone up the arse, human beings behaving like, "arse's" etc.
But I did find a great deal of enjoyment in his books not necessarily from the characters but rather the brilliant way that he writes about them and writes about their lives. His characters tend to be either white or Asian, Kureishi parents are Pakistani (father) and English (his mother), he seamlessly expresses and writes about both the English and Asian culture wonderfully (filled with nuance and respect while remaining honest about the faults and weaknesses of both cultures), which I really enjoyed. Kureishi is so detailed, so observant, that each character immediately comes to life, and though he rarely goes into great physical detail about the characters, I could see them clearly in my mind. Kureishi is obviously very fascinated with the human condition and can sum up a person's essence accurately and magnificently within a short paragraph or even sentence.
Shahid looked up to see the man Riaz had called "the dissipater" shouldering through the queue with the assurance of someone used to line-jumping and with the fastidiousness of someone who didn't enjoy crowds...In Chilli's hand were his car keys, Ray-Bans, and Marlboros, without which he wouldn't leave his bathroom. Chili drank only black coffee and neat Jack Daniel's; his suits were Boss, his underwear Calvin Klein, his actor Pacino. His barber shook his hand, his accountant took him to dinner, his drug dealer would come to him at all hours, and accept his checks. At least he wasn't smoking a joint. The Black Album Pg. 47
Rocco tried to think of specific illustration that wasn't petty. He couldn't tell Bodger he hated the way she poked him in the stomach while trying to talk to him; or the way she blew in his nostrils and ears when they were having sex or the way she applied for jobs she'd never get, and then claimed he didn't encourage her; how she always had a cold and insisted, when taking her temperature, that insertion of the thermometer up the backside was the only way to obtain a legitimate reading; or how she was always losing money, keys, letters, even her shoes, and falling off her bicycle. Or how she'd take up French or singing, but give up after a few weeks, and then say she was useless. Love In A Blue Time: Lately, pg. 149.
Kureishi has a great sense of humor and uncanny way of presenting the most disturbing/selfish human problems in a way that allows you to understand and even empathize with the person(s). He reveals the hypocrisy of the world we live in without blanket judgments or neat (cliche) solutions. I found myself writing down and underlining quote after quote in his all of his books. Three out of the four books I finished in one afternoon and then quickly delved into the next. He left me with a lot of food for thought and challenged me. My only real suggestion is that he lay off the male angst thing, he has covered it from all angles now as thoroughly as possible. It's time to explore elsewhere.
My author for March is Anais Nin.
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