Vikram Seth - astonishing writer, as well as a person.

 

Even though my opinion derives from reading just two of his books, I've no doubt it's justified. Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) India, in 1952, so six years younger than myself, he's lived some years in California and now flits between India and a home in Salisbury, actually just 75 miles from where I'm sitting now. His mental capabilities are nothing short of astonishing, just one of which being his enviable linguistic proficiency. Apart from English as well as his native Hindi and Bengali, he speaks fluent German, French, Urdu and.....not only Welsh(!)..... but also Mandarin!

A self-acknowledged bi-sexual (he had a 10-year relationship with a French male violinist) as well as having been 'conventionally' married. He was a prominent voice in seeking the Indian government and its judiciary to overturn gay criminality. No children, he's physically quite short at just 5'3". Having lived in England a lot, he took his degree in Oxford in 1975, the very same year when I myself started residing in that city.

But what I want to get on to say is that I've just finished my first re-reading of his novel-in-verse 'The Golden Gate' (referring, of course, to the 'Frisco bridge) and whose book's construction alone is an astonishing achievement - and first published in 1986 when he was just 34. Written throughout in 390 scrupulously rhymed, 14-line tetrameter stanzas it's got to be classed as a veritable tour de force - and nearly uniquely so, though Seth did take as his model the poetry of his own most revered writer, Alexander Pushkin. 

The novel's story, set in S.F., is actually quite a small-scale domestic one involving a mere handful of characters, all American of both sexes, of varying temperaments and sexualities, relationships and their fallings out, arguments flaring up, reconciliations.....you get the picture. Maybe not exactly riveting in themselves, but all the time my attention was held by the author's amazing scope of vocabulary (several English words I myself had never come across!) and his perfection of rhyming all fitted into this rigid structure - and I never once put down the book without my having been repeatedly astonished at his towering literary talent. If you want a reading challenge, something you can really get your teeth into, then this is not to be overlooked. Not an easy read for sure, but its nothing less than engrossing - and, for once, it's more because of its accomplishment than for its subject matter.

Incidentally, on finishing this book a few days ago, I did as I usually do, write that day's date on the opening leaf - and I was rather agreeably and interestingly surprised that it had been exactly, to the very day, twenty years since I had first read it.

Vikram Seth is not a prolific writer in terms of the number of novels he's written so far - his even bigger love is that of poetry - and 'The Golden Gate' is one of only two of his books I've read up to now. The other one is his other major tour-de-force 'A Suitable Boy' (1993), actually longer even than 'War and Peace', I've now read it three times. Quite as epic in length as the Tolstoy, though without that Russian's amazing scenarios of large scale (Napoleonic) battles in the Emperor's hopelessly futile attempt to invade and conquer Russia, battling against not only the Russian indomitable determination to defend, but also against the elements of that country's crippling Winter (with the author's own 'aside' commentaries) - whilst all in parallel with small-scale familial relationships, romances, enmities, reconciliations etc. 'War and Peace' would, in fact, be my own favourite novel of them all. It's one which I've now read at least eight times, in three different translations. Though many (most?) say that 'Anna Karenina' is superior, I wouldn't necessarily disagree, though that particular work remains throughout written from an intimate, individually personal, perspective of its characters, whereas W & P has huge vistas of historical, political and world strategies intertwined with a range of personal, small-scale episodes all with their own private individual emotions and complications. It's a work which, once I've started to read, I want it never to stop - and it almost obliges! It would be my own choice as castaway on 'Desert Island Discs' of one single book to read for, potentially, the reminder of one's life.    

But if the thought of embarking on Vikram Seth's magna opera (yes, I had to look up this plural!) does interest you, although the suggestion of reading 'A Suitable Boy' may be somewhat too huge an ask, do please give 'The Golden Gate' a try. Good reading and good luck!