The pleasures of reading
Syed Badrul Ahsan reflects on a few books
Coming by books or looking for them is forever cause for joy. Now that people all across the world have had their interest in Abraham Lincon rekindled, thanks to Daniel Day-Lewis' screen portrayal of America's sixteenth president, it is somewhat cheering to go back to reading Lincoln, or of him. There is Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, a tome which explores the political savvy of Lincoln when it came to handling his rivals for the presidency. He was unwilling to leave men like Seward out in the cold as he began the process of shaping his administration after the election of 1860. He then did what he needed to do: he found places for them in his administration.
Team of Rivals is, therefore, one more instance of Lincoln demonstrating before the world his enormous capacity for political accommodation, especially with those who had little reason to agree with him on public issues. It was a team that served Lincoln well, with the result that when he was assassinated in April 1965, they were quick to remark on his foresight and abilities as a reader. Read the book and you will then quite understand why Barack Obama read it in such minute detail before he approached Hillary Clinton and offered her the job of secretary of state in his administration. Additionally, you could do just fine with another work on Lincoln, written a good number of years ago and which chooses to separate the man from all the myths that have come up around the politician who succeeded in keeping the American union intact. Stephen B. Oates' Abraham Lincoln is essentially an examination of Lincoln the man, with all his human traits, with all his foibles. Yours truly spotted a copy of this pretty searching work in Delhi's Daryaganj Sunday book market not long ago. And it will be a Sunday to remember.
Searching for books we have always wanted to read is something of a painful pleasure we go through at some point or the other. About a decade ago, I happened to step into a second-hand bookstore somewhere in a small town in Yorkshire. The second-hand books looked rather new to me. That was testimony to the care with which the shop owner had been looking after his goods, if you can call them goods. He was there, obviously convinced that I was a serious enough buyer. He pointed to the various shelves in the store, which in itself was for me a rather agonising affair. After all, you cannot get your hands on all the books in a store, can you? And because you cannot, there is that faint crack somewhere in the heart to let you know of the spasms of regret you are about to go through.
But in that Yorkshire bookstore on that cold afternoon something of a miracle happened. On one of the shelves stood Barbara Tuchman's much acclaimed The March of Folly, a tome I had been looking for over the preceding quarter of a century. I must have begun grinning from ear to ear, for the shop owner, a tall Englishman, stretched his hand out to the shelf, let the book slip between his fingers and then handed it to me. I walked out a truly happy soul. Finding a book you have consistently wanted is something akin to reunion with the one you loved before she went missing. Or put it another way. It is something close to communion with the stars after years of trying to break through the nocturnal monsoon clouds.
Tuchman is now with me. She will be with me until the end, after which someone in my clan will hopefully decide to thumb through it as a way of remembering the ages of man and politics the writer focused on in her reflections in a very distant era. Much the same can be said about Hugh Sidey's John F. Kennedy: Portrait of a President. Sidey, if you recall, was for very many years the writer of an incisive column in Time magazine on the American presidency. The column was regularly an insightful observation of the way the White House worked. More significantly, it was a study of particular presidents at work in particular phases of modern American history. When we read those columns, it was not very hard to comprehend the nature of US politics and to grasp the truth of how democracy in America had arrived at the stage where it offered the best in terms of leadership and accountability to the American people.
This particular work of Sidey's on JFK first appeared in 1964, less than a year after the president was murdered in Dallas. It is certainly an encomium on the man, considering that the scandalous details relating to Kennedy's life that were to mar his reputation in the 1980s and 1990s were yet unknown or deliberately concealed. But do enjoy the book, assuming that you get your hands on it (the edition I have was published in 1964). Sidey writes with feeling on the tumultuous times in which President Kennedy lived, especially his dealings with world leaders. His meeting with De Gaulle is an interesting review of how two important countries can politely disagree on critical global issues. Kennedy's summit with the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961 is a story we will not soon forget, for it was a meeting where the man from Moscow sized up the young American and where Kennedy understood for the first time that he needed to handle Khrushchev in a different way.
In a similar way, Helene Hanff will be part of my life from here on. Her seminal work, 84 Charing Cross Road, which by now has taken the shape of a movie, is a book I have wanted to read for ages. Somehow the opportunity did not present itself, for the book proved pretty elusive for me despite all the bookstores I have walked into in South Asia and elsewhere. But two years ago, on a trip to Kolkata and in a browse through the bookstore Crossword on Elgin Street, I ran into the Hanff book. It is a slim work, a masterpiece which speaks of the twenty-year epistolary correspondence between an American reader and a British bookstore owner on the availability and supply of books desired by the former. No conversation can be higher in quality than one on books. Hanff and the owner of Marks & Co on 84 Charing Cross Road inform you, by taking you on a journey through times when letter writing was an enlightening experience, just what it means to share thoughts on books.
So I have Helene Hanff's book, now resting proudly on the little table beside my bed. It shares space with Bernhard Schlink's The Reader (with that famous image of Kate Winslet on the cover). Since my teacher, Professor Niaz Zaman, a couple of weeks ago gave me that copy, which I must share with another member of The Reading Circle, I have read it with gusto and with alacrity. No, I will not see the movie made of the work, though watching Winslet is always a terrific affair. Truth be told, movies that emerge from famous books do not always do justice to the written narrative. Years ago, I read Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd and then spent days dreaming of the seductive Bathsheba Everdene as she was in my youthful imagination. And then I saw the movie. The book beat the celluloid version of it by miles.
I have lately been in the company of Jawaharlal Nehru yet once again. Shashi Tharoor is to be thanked for it, for it is through Nehru: The Invention of India that I have been in a process of rediscovering India's iconic political leader. There was a huge dose of idealism in Nehru. And yet there was turbulence in the man. He was perhaps that rare instance of a politician who would tackle hecklers head on, by jumping off the stage and physically running them out of the compound. And, of course, there was the lover in him. All men endowed with great intellect are fantastic lovers drawn to the sizzling beauty of women. Nehru falls into that category. Tharoor's work whets your appetite about Nehru. The energetic writing he brings into relating the story of his protagonist's life makes this book a new treasure in that old trove you have had for years.
Which reminds me. I should be getting back to Richard Sorabji's account of the life and times of Cornelia Sorabji. And then there is Stanley Wolpert's Jinnah of Pakistan to go back to, for some much needed re-reading. Wolpert has been a pretty interesting author. His Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan is a sympathetic portrayal of the man who was instrumental in pushing politics into chaos in 1971, the result being a genocide of Bengalis in the country's eastern province before it emerged as the independent state of Bangladesh. At some point in the later 1990s, some people in Bangladesh wondered if Wolpert could be persuaded to write the biography of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. I am glad he did not, for his views of Mujib, as they appear in the Bhutto work, were quite unflattering. It is difficult to believe that a writer, any writer, can be equally fair to such contemporary figures of history as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
A final point: the former BBC journalist Frances Harrison has come forth with an account of the final days of the Sri Lankan conflict. Still Counting the Dead, a harrowing account of the tribulations the country's Tamils were pushed into once Velupillai Prabhakaran's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated in 2009, makes sad but gripping reading. It causes to rise up in you the entire history of Sinhala-Tamil conflict in a country to which independence came peacefully in 1948, at a time when millions were dying through the partition of India in 1947.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is with The Daily Star
Team of Rivals is, therefore, one more instance of Lincoln demonstrating before the world his enormous capacity for political accommodation, especially with those who had little reason to agree with him on public issues. It was a team that served Lincoln well, with the result that when he was assassinated in April 1965, they were quick to remark on his foresight and abilities as a reader. Read the book and you will then quite understand why Barack Obama read it in such minute detail before he approached Hillary Clinton and offered her the job of secretary of state in his administration. Additionally, you could do just fine with another work on Lincoln, written a good number of years ago and which chooses to separate the man from all the myths that have come up around the politician who succeeded in keeping the American union intact. Stephen B. Oates' Abraham Lincoln is essentially an examination of Lincoln the man, with all his human traits, with all his foibles. Yours truly spotted a copy of this pretty searching work in Delhi's Daryaganj Sunday book market not long ago. And it will be a Sunday to remember.
Searching for books we have always wanted to read is something of a painful pleasure we go through at some point or the other. About a decade ago, I happened to step into a second-hand bookstore somewhere in a small town in Yorkshire. The second-hand books looked rather new to me. That was testimony to the care with which the shop owner had been looking after his goods, if you can call them goods. He was there, obviously convinced that I was a serious enough buyer. He pointed to the various shelves in the store, which in itself was for me a rather agonising affair. After all, you cannot get your hands on all the books in a store, can you? And because you cannot, there is that faint crack somewhere in the heart to let you know of the spasms of regret you are about to go through.
But in that Yorkshire bookstore on that cold afternoon something of a miracle happened. On one of the shelves stood Barbara Tuchman's much acclaimed The March of Folly, a tome I had been looking for over the preceding quarter of a century. I must have begun grinning from ear to ear, for the shop owner, a tall Englishman, stretched his hand out to the shelf, let the book slip between his fingers and then handed it to me. I walked out a truly happy soul. Finding a book you have consistently wanted is something akin to reunion with the one you loved before she went missing. Or put it another way. It is something close to communion with the stars after years of trying to break through the nocturnal monsoon clouds.
Tuchman is now with me. She will be with me until the end, after which someone in my clan will hopefully decide to thumb through it as a way of remembering the ages of man and politics the writer focused on in her reflections in a very distant era. Much the same can be said about Hugh Sidey's John F. Kennedy: Portrait of a President. Sidey, if you recall, was for very many years the writer of an incisive column in Time magazine on the American presidency. The column was regularly an insightful observation of the way the White House worked. More significantly, it was a study of particular presidents at work in particular phases of modern American history. When we read those columns, it was not very hard to comprehend the nature of US politics and to grasp the truth of how democracy in America had arrived at the stage where it offered the best in terms of leadership and accountability to the American people.
This particular work of Sidey's on JFK first appeared in 1964, less than a year after the president was murdered in Dallas. It is certainly an encomium on the man, considering that the scandalous details relating to Kennedy's life that were to mar his reputation in the 1980s and 1990s were yet unknown or deliberately concealed. But do enjoy the book, assuming that you get your hands on it (the edition I have was published in 1964). Sidey writes with feeling on the tumultuous times in which President Kennedy lived, especially his dealings with world leaders. His meeting with De Gaulle is an interesting review of how two important countries can politely disagree on critical global issues. Kennedy's summit with the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961 is a story we will not soon forget, for it was a meeting where the man from Moscow sized up the young American and where Kennedy understood for the first time that he needed to handle Khrushchev in a different way.
In a similar way, Helene Hanff will be part of my life from here on. Her seminal work, 84 Charing Cross Road, which by now has taken the shape of a movie, is a book I have wanted to read for ages. Somehow the opportunity did not present itself, for the book proved pretty elusive for me despite all the bookstores I have walked into in South Asia and elsewhere. But two years ago, on a trip to Kolkata and in a browse through the bookstore Crossword on Elgin Street, I ran into the Hanff book. It is a slim work, a masterpiece which speaks of the twenty-year epistolary correspondence between an American reader and a British bookstore owner on the availability and supply of books desired by the former. No conversation can be higher in quality than one on books. Hanff and the owner of Marks & Co on 84 Charing Cross Road inform you, by taking you on a journey through times when letter writing was an enlightening experience, just what it means to share thoughts on books.
So I have Helene Hanff's book, now resting proudly on the little table beside my bed. It shares space with Bernhard Schlink's The Reader (with that famous image of Kate Winslet on the cover). Since my teacher, Professor Niaz Zaman, a couple of weeks ago gave me that copy, which I must share with another member of The Reading Circle, I have read it with gusto and with alacrity. No, I will not see the movie made of the work, though watching Winslet is always a terrific affair. Truth be told, movies that emerge from famous books do not always do justice to the written narrative. Years ago, I read Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd and then spent days dreaming of the seductive Bathsheba Everdene as she was in my youthful imagination. And then I saw the movie. The book beat the celluloid version of it by miles.
I have lately been in the company of Jawaharlal Nehru yet once again. Shashi Tharoor is to be thanked for it, for it is through Nehru: The Invention of India that I have been in a process of rediscovering India's iconic political leader. There was a huge dose of idealism in Nehru. And yet there was turbulence in the man. He was perhaps that rare instance of a politician who would tackle hecklers head on, by jumping off the stage and physically running them out of the compound. And, of course, there was the lover in him. All men endowed with great intellect are fantastic lovers drawn to the sizzling beauty of women. Nehru falls into that category. Tharoor's work whets your appetite about Nehru. The energetic writing he brings into relating the story of his protagonist's life makes this book a new treasure in that old trove you have had for years.
Which reminds me. I should be getting back to Richard Sorabji's account of the life and times of Cornelia Sorabji. And then there is Stanley Wolpert's Jinnah of Pakistan to go back to, for some much needed re-reading. Wolpert has been a pretty interesting author. His Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan is a sympathetic portrayal of the man who was instrumental in pushing politics into chaos in 1971, the result being a genocide of Bengalis in the country's eastern province before it emerged as the independent state of Bangladesh. At some point in the later 1990s, some people in Bangladesh wondered if Wolpert could be persuaded to write the biography of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. I am glad he did not, for his views of Mujib, as they appear in the Bhutto work, were quite unflattering. It is difficult to believe that a writer, any writer, can be equally fair to such contemporary figures of history as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
A final point: the former BBC journalist Frances Harrison has come forth with an account of the final days of the Sri Lankan conflict. Still Counting the Dead, a harrowing account of the tribulations the country's Tamils were pushed into once Velupillai Prabhakaran's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated in 2009, makes sad but gripping reading. It causes to rise up in you the entire history of Sinhala-Tamil conflict in a country to which independence came peacefully in 1948, at a time when millions were dying through the partition of India in 1947.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is with The Daily Star
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments