When The Mahabharata Becomes Boring

The Mahabharata goes slightly less a-pace. I slipped off reading other things. The war is over for the Pandava’s, they have their kingdom again. Yudhisthira now feels the weight of kingly responsibility. He goes to his uncle Bhishma for advice. Bhishma fought for the Kaurava’s out of a sense of duty that doesn’t add up for me. Well there you are. His lessons for Yudhisthira bring Confucius to mind, not that I claim any breadth to that statement. Class distinctions stand inviolable. Warriors are warriors, Brahmins are Brahmins. Caste is understood as a sanctity. It is hard to wrap around this from my vantage. It reads like the bland list of advice that Polonius gives. I believe more action awaits, this part drags.

More Mahabharata

More Mahabharata

The battlefield action in the Mahabharata strains belief. Not its fantastical nature, I expect supernatural exploits in mythological tales, but just the difficulty of imagining the events. When we read that thousands died at Arjuna’s hand as he plunges into a fray, we can shrink that figure down to tens or a lot. if we are thinking of historical events. I don’t know what historical event might have inspired the story. Perhaps some Hatfield versus McCoy thing amongst cousins expanded to include a few trillion souls on their karmic journeys including every person dumb enough to be a chariot driver, id est expendable.

A few instances of so-called celestial weapons occur. These offer complete devastation in not quite explained ways, gifts from the gods like nuclear bombs.. Mantras and magic can also be weaponized. Arjuna’s quiver remains always full despite shooting thousands of arrows a second. I can’t even picture that, tho folks at Marvel Studios probably can. The fighting brings Marvel to mind because tho the nameless cannon fodder feed rivers of blood, the upper echelon heroes join in fierce battle but walk away merely wounded. Or pouting.

Heroic speeches prior to engagement with the enemy have a long tradition. But just thinking about all these zapping arrows, strewn bodies, gored elephants and horses, overloads you. Amidst this enormous clutter of human endeavour the valiant knights scurry about seeking chivalrous one on one fights. It wears thin. The Iliad, in comparison, reads like reportage of a real event, even with the similar boasty speeches.

A marked aspect of the Mahabharata is how resplendent the people and gods are. Dressed in splendid colours and bejeweled to the gills, they are visually vivid. The Greek gods seemingly just wear robes, if that. The Norse must be imagined ever in battle gear, men and women both.

So the action on the battlefield goes clearly over the top but amidst that we still have beautiful thoughtful passages. A strong moral and spiritual note holds the story up. It comes to us by oral tradition. You can imagine the originators telling the stories, however solemn, vivacious, or thrilling.

The Mahabharata

 Halfway into The Mahabharata we come to the part that often stands alone, The Bhagavad Gita. This represents a sea change for the epic. Up till now, the work has been mostly narrative with moral and spiritual matters occasionally interpolated. Now we have Krishna explaining duty to the unexpectedly quailing Arjuna. Krishna has always been understood as a god, but in human aspect. In this section he reveals himself in his terrifying god aspect. The imagery seems fit for Revelation—i. e. crazy ass—and the vision of Krishna in full godhead doesn’t exactly calm Arjuna. Eventually Arjuna comes around.

Earlier the Pandava brothers finished out their exile by hiring themselves incognito to one of the million kings in the area. Arjuna, greatest warrior in the world, chooses to be a eunuch dancing master in the ladies quarters. Bhima huge and Hulk-like becomes the king’s cook. He also teaches wrestling. At one point the brothers come upon their enemies the Kauravas. Bhima immediately wants to find a tree he can tear from the ground to wield as a weapon. “Bhima smash,” you can imagine him saying. Wise Yudhisthira convinces him of more diplomatic measures.

The account of the battle itself lacks the precision of the Iliad. Millions seem gathered on the field of Kurukshetra. In the Iliad Homer tallies the number of ships each Greek brought to Troy, supplying thereby a plausible guess at the size of the battle. The Pandavas and Kauravas each gathered allies to help supply requisite cannon fodder. It was quite the gathering.

When I first read the Gita, I was taken aback that Krishna scolded Arjuna for not wanting to kill these his cousins. Being of the warrior class, he has a duty to fight. That duty tangled with such pointless devastation doesn’t reconcile easily for me. The terms within the epic keep death fluid. The five Pandava brothers were earlier killed by Vishnu, I think. It was just a lesson, they were returned to life. All is foretold anyway.

Broken Theory by Alan Sondheim

  

Alan Sondheim has just published a new book, *Broken Theory*. Internet denizens with literary interests may know Sondheim’s name. He posts to numerous lists daily, I mean daily. This work comes in all shapes and sizes. It represents an unbelievably vast effort to mine the maelstrom of experience. *Broken Theory* seems like both a culmination of that effort, tho without a sense of finishing it, and perhaps a re-envisioning.

I have only just begun reading this book but twenty plus years of familiarity with Sondheim’s work gives me traces to follow. His is a work in which philosophy, psychology, literature, science, history, politics, and more collide and intercept within his experiencing mind. Does that even sound like anything? I declare that it idles.

What caught me as I began to read is that Sondheim has tempered the boundlessness of his writing so that the book can be a book. Think of how a tiny portion of The Mahabharata, The Bhagavad Gita, spun out with centripetal force as a singular work. In the same way *Broken Theory* has its own separated identity. I feel, as I read, a sense of the book as a whole while recognizing that it is but a portion of Sondheim’s enormous task.

Now, I admit that I have not read much of the book. I may not *finish* it. I think linearity doesn’t parse here, just as time seems far less linear than a calendar might suggest. Treat the book like an oracle—I doubt Sondheim has such an intention—and see what wildness, what mystery, what glint appears.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

 Finished Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I have mixed feelings about it. He presents a wonderfully troubling vision of the future, with humanity clearly having screwed the pooch. The intertwined narratives move a-pace but I’m pretty sure a good portion of Simmons’ intention dashed precipitously past my register. Rereading would be worthwhile if I had the energy.

Six main characters tell, in their own narratives, why they joined this pilgrimage to the so-called God of Pain. We only see this figure, known as The Shrike, in glints. It seems like The Shrike represents the natural endgame to humanity’s hubris. The Earth, centuries prior, has been destroyed. A hegira from the planet of origin spread restlessly across the universe in a seeming de-evolutionary scramble. War is constant, and massive.

Each narrative explains how the character joined this pilgrimage, which only one of their number is expected to survive. The narratives run to goodly length. Supposedly the pilgrims are telling their stories to the others. Okay, Canterbury Tales, The Decameron. These narratives, however compelling, resemble (not so) short stories rather than après dinerperformances intended to show each pilgrim’s motivations. Simmons did not try to replicate how the characters might regale the others. Perhaps that would have been unwieldy. I found it jarring to expect characters to be so narratively skilled in a literary way.

Although the narratives supply plenty back story, they also overwhelm with superfluities. I tended to lose track of the greater narrative amidst the details of the personal stories.

The book seemed overlong tho not in a dragging sort of way. It ended quietly, and for me without satisfaction. For all the apocalypso of humanity’s seeming last gasp, the books end with the characters singing “We’re off to see the Wizard”. I discerned no denouement, just coasting to a stop. The story seems unfinished but admittedly I raced to finish.

Not to worry, I guess. Three more books fulfill the series. I am on record about franchises. I don’t expect to press on. 

Simmons refers and alludes to a number of literary figures and works. Most notably John Keats. The poet even appears in AI form. One character, a hard boiled detective, carries the name Brawne Lamia. She and the Keats AI splice romantically. I don’t actually get what Simmons is up to but I appreciate Keats’ presence.

“The Call of Cthuhlu”

 I just read The Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft. I’ve read a number of his stories, and find them compelling. This is my first meeting with Cthulhu. I’m a bit dissatisfied.

Of course I have absorbed some understanding of Cthulhu because the, er, character has cultural currency. The name resonates. Lovecraft’s mythos seems rather mushy when you look but carries weight for some. I mean people ‘take it seriously’, beyond the parameters of storytelling. I guess one could.

The story shows Lovecraft’s ability to create mood. The narration edges towards breathless. It runs on a similar hurried foreboding as some of the Sherlock Holmes tales display. Both writers were writing for lucre. This story, however, disappoints. It did not satisfy my anticipation.

The story suffers because of POV. The narrator isn’t really involved in the action, he merely pieces the story together from the narratives of other characters. This drives immediacy from the story. Poe’s story Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym has the benefit of the narrator being involved in the action. In the almost apocalyptic ending, the narrator essentially disappears in the frantic rush of the (unfinished?) conclusion. It is as if the writer could not sustain his distance from the narrative.

Here, the narrator recites the stories of other people. He even loses interest in Cthulhu after a chapter ends. That was weird.

For all the mythos of the Ancient Ones, their arrival on Earth from space reminded me no more than of cheesy 50s horror and sci-fi movies. I mean cheap costumes and poor special effects. And it’s not like that must kill the story. The Thing (50s version) was a vegetable from space—a murdering carrot—and convincingly scary.

Cthulhu may look like a kraken, which struck me as unimaginative, but the threat offered seems more about strangeness and foreignness. I glean no point to the malevolence beyond the usual Monster versus Us. And monster is just Other. The Ancient Ones are illegal immigrants on a cosmic scale, screwing with our paradise. Cthulhu personifies that terrible One that ain’t us. Lovecraft’s sense of the world’s decay sets on that foundation. Which may sound familiar because the GOP has been feverishly pressing that button. You have probably noticed.

So I do admire Lovecraft’s narrative gift and the relentlessness of his vision. In the end, tho, he seems more fussy than visionary in this story. He was a racist Bozo, you know. That’s inevitably part of the judgment.

The Fu Manchu of Our Lives

 I am reading The Insidious Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer. I have read several Fu Manchu stories over the years. I think. Rohmer wrote many books about this nefarious Oriental’s clash against Sir Denis Nayland Smith and all that is good. It doesn’t matter what title you select, tho, the books are all the same.

Racism shows thick in these stories. They express a solid, nay impenetrable, demarcation between races, and a surety that races exist in so clear cut and confining fashion, that I find obnoxious in their bland acceptance. And it is all wholly instituted by a lack of inwit. The contractual racism of good British life somehow fulfills the otherwise squalid meanness of colonial empire.

Fu Manchu’s aim never comes clear to me. Sure, world domination, like any good master criminal desires, but specifically what that entails never fully forms for me. Years ago while misspending my youth, a wrestling body featured a narrative concerning The Fourth Reich. The beat of this was that a goose stepping German wrestler and his cronies would conquer the wrestling entity (not one belonging to Vince McMahon). Having accomplished that, the free world would be a piece of cake. Against this dismal prospect stood some All American boy, I don’t remember who. Hooray for our side. Professional wrestling has played that key to a fare thee well, stoking the unexamined fears. Rohmer, I expect, merely saw readership nodding at the implicit horror of Other.

I read past the racism because in the end the stories propel themselves with nervy excitement. If any prose bristles, Rohmer’s does, mystery and foreboding on every page. His language sizzles.

Rohmer takes the tales of Sherlock Holmes exactingly as model. The relentlessly focused hero and his down to earth sidekick meet mystery and danger at every turn. Nayland Smith is far more bumbling than Holmes, however. In the end he never seems to defeat the insidious Doctor. Instead some Deus ex happenstance thwarts the evil one this time. 

Tho more upright and ascetic, Sir Denis Nayland Smith resembles James Bond, a dedicated functionary of the colonial machine. He evokes a Britain of caretakers thoughtlessly fulfilling the white man’s burden. The instinct to lift the primitive toward that creamy excellence called Civilization constitutes the soothing narrative implicit in all actions in these stories. 

The stories routinely begin with Nayland Smith breathlessly arriving at his friend Dr Petrie’s place fresh from some barely explained trouble in Burma. The name Burma itself oozes with danger and mystery. Always Smith is pursued by the lascars and dacoits that serve as minions of the Evil One. Lascars are sailors from Southeast Asia, and dacoits are bandits from the same region. Rohmer—real name Arthur Ward—makes them seem like mongrel races, certainly not the stuff of Eton. They are red shirts in the service of evil.

As this novel begins, Smith anxiously attempts to protect Sir Hyphen-Hyphen, Assistant Minister of Something About the Orient, from the fell plans of the acknowledged Master of the Yellow Menace. Alas, Smith is too late. The fiend has managed to kill this august personage, right under Smith’s nose.

Despite acknowledgement as a genius, DrFu Manchu’s methods always seem convoluted. The initial murder in this tale provides illustration. While the victim works in his study, a dacoit climbs onto the roof and lowers a deadly centipede down the chimney into the study. I may have the details skewed because the rush of prose causes my reading eyes to race ahead. But how to get this centipede to attack? Why, first send the soon to be victim a missive with a special scent infused in the paper. This inexorably draws the deadly centipede to Sir Hyphen-Hyphen, and Sir Hyphen-Hyphen to Death’s fell clutches. Conan Doyle has worked similar magic but perhaps never so outré.

In the Holmes stories, Dr Watson mostly serves as narrator. He may pull out his pistol but Holmes is the show. Dr Petrie does that but more. He is dazzled, and I mean dazzled, by Fu Manchu’s daughter. She shows up early on as branded Woman of Mystery. Petrie is smitten. Rohmer tempers not his adjectives in warmly describing her effect on Petrie. And the feeling is mutual. This provides narrative tension because her dad, you know, a confirmed murdering maniac. Also, he is Oriental. 

The two meet cute in this story but I am pretty sure they’ve met cute in other stories. They eventually marry in one of the books but I don’t think dad walked her down the aisle.

The Thames oddly plays a vivid role in these stories. Fu Manchu chooses riverside opium dens for his hangouts. Which makes sense what with all the shipping bringing new shipments of lascars and dacoits to do his bidding. In this story, the boys confront the evil genius in the comforting dampness of his den. Petrie leads the rush but the Doctor releases a trap door and Petrie like to drown. Sir Denis could not quite reach him. Is it up for Petrie? A chinamen that had been in the den removes pigtail and mask. It is Fu Manchu’s daughter. She gives the queue to Sir Denis, who pulls Petrie to safety, then disappears into the sinister night. Whew! More narrative will surely follow.

Rohmer expends some prime prose describing the river’s beauty and threat. In the end, tho, the lurking presence of the evil green-eyed doctor remains. It is the fear of fear, a fear that we all know.