A Book Review
Q. What did Nobel Laureate Rabrindanath Tagore call "a teardrop on the cheek of time"?
Quiz-related fiction, a small but existent genre, is dominated by David Nicholls's Starter for Ten, a horrible recipe of concocted and obvious cliches, e.g. the hero has his way with the beautiful girl of his dreams but ends up with the mouthy one who he is really so much better suited to. I hated it. Even putting aside the University Challenge qualification system faux-pas shag-ups.
It was the spec for a film, to star James McEvoy I believe, who is far from the spotty social incapable that the book envisages (or maybe that was me). The show, the sacred and wonderful UC, was just a Macguffin for the Working Title-style love story. Did I not like that.
Looking at Vikas Swarup's Q&A, I felt a kind of Pavlovian reflex. Another bad novel that uses a quiz show conceit to play out a story about a poor, lovable lad trying to find his way in the world. I recoiled and I dismissed it.
Yet I did read it. I really had no choice. And, indeed, it did use the conceit of How Will Win a Billion to play out the colourful, oh my it's colourful, life story of a poor 18-year-old Indian waiter.
But this was different. Setting it in an alien culture did it a lot of favours.
It tells you something about the police and the justice system in this country that the fuzz aren't allowed to stick chilli-powder smothered devices up suspect's jacksies (or do they?). But this happens to our hero within a few pages because that is how the Indians do things. And at least Maximum City prepared me for it, along with practically everything to do with life in India (a brilliant book, if it does flag towards the end with the story of a rich Jain businessman who gives everything up to disperse his family and go on a spiritual journey after having every hair on his head plucked out).
Initially, I had thought it was a rich-to-poor fairy tale dressed in modern pop culture clothing and I still do, even if there was patronising guff about the difference between people's sphere's of knowledge: quiz and normal people's know-how versus that of the mean streets. For these are mean, dirty and unforgiving streets. Ram never quite escapes it and in the end, his aim is not to.
The prose irked me on occasion. In Maximum City, there is the Western-modulated prose influenced by years of reading the New Yorker that makes Swarup's words seem clunky and over-cooked at times. For example:
" I feel as though an oxyacetylene torch has pierced my brain". You what?
"I squeal with delight". Heroes don't squeal. They never squeal.
And he talks of a martial artist who who gives his "opponents a licking". Licking? LICKING? Porn stars and pet dogs lick. Bruce Lee kicks the living crap out of those who cross him.
But you do get over that. Eventually. Indian writers tend to write in such ways, and you can't really mark them down for their peculiar writing proclivities.
Q&A takes the old quiz comment "how do you know that" to its logical and fictional extreme. He knows the answers because of the unbelievable twists and turns of his short life.
Ram answers each of the 12 questions that makes its way to the billion rupee jackpot by relating how meeting a cricket-loving hitman, an aging and suicidal Bollywood actress, a 17-year-old prostitute who lives in the red light district of Agra, a nameless railway-robbing dacoit, a Fagin-like gangmaster who maims his charges to make them more profitable beggars all gave him the answers. He knows nothing else, not even who the president of the USA or what the currency of France is. His street smarts and unnatural good luck (despite all the tragedies that befall him) ultimately make for a just and huge reward.
At the start I was worried that it was just one long chain of stories involving his and his friend Salim's attempts to avoid buggery by the retinue of adult predators that litter the pages, but after three such stories (yes, even deviant Catholic priests make it into the mix), it did swerve away from worries about arse-protection. But maybe that's what life for orphans is all about in the land of the Peacock throne (joking...).
Swarup is a canny fellow for using the game show drama of WWTBAM to write his book, having asked himself: "Why not tap into the global phenomenon of the syndicated televisual quiz show?" He was also inspired by a certain army major, for if they couldn't believe such a man of high standing (snicker ... military men ain't that respected here ... they're all killers and upper class twats aren't they?) then what would happen if a poverty-stricken teenager won the big prize? People wouldn't believe it.
(I was thinking that if the same was asked of me, I would say, Q.1 Read it in a book Q.2 Saw it on UC Q.3 Saw it on Fifteen-to-One Q.4 Read it in an encyclopedia, and so on and so forth. Real life ain't that exciting. A coal-mining analogy comes to mind)
In fact, I'm surprised a lot of other writers haven't picked up on the fictional possibilities, although I believe that Mitchell Symons has in a book called The Lot.
In effect, Q&A is a book made up of a dozen stand-alone short stories taking in the whole, sordid and wonderful panoply of modern Indian life and a lot of references to chapattis. It is about those who have to survive, and those who often don't, in the murky filth at the bottom of the food chain, and the age-old fiction hallmarks of 'nothing is what it seems', 'everything goes wrong but gets better, won't it?'
Ram could have cried a lot less. His lacrimal glands were working overtime all the time. He weeps like a big baby, but, it has to be said, with good yet relentless reason.
My final thoughts? It's a good read, nothing more. The twists at the end make for a surprising dramatic undercurrent, with one coming after the other, and there's nothing wrong with twists you can't see coming (even if you feel you should have seen them coming like any good student of movies like Seven or The Sixth Sense - I knew I should have kept the mysterious, nameless man who likes burning women's breasts with his cigarettes.) Entertainment gives us coincidences because we love them so.
I am also minded to say that the production company is as bent as a £2 note. Not at all like Celador, who I have been told are above suspicion due to their squeaky clean practices and are therefore worthy of extreme praise when being compared to other shady TV makers.
If you want to know what the dozen questions are that have to be answered by our hero, well let's just say, they are utterly reasonable. None made me want to fling the book across the room, then stamp on it and set it on fire. None at all.
Wait a minute, how much is a billion rupees worth? I still have no idea.
A. The Taj Mahal
(This is my 100th post. I am knackered. This blog is an insatiable monster)
Quiz-related fiction, a small but existent genre, is dominated by David Nicholls's Starter for Ten, a horrible recipe of concocted and obvious cliches, e.g. the hero has his way with the beautiful girl of his dreams but ends up with the mouthy one who he is really so much better suited to. I hated it. Even putting aside the University Challenge qualification system faux-pas shag-ups.
It was the spec for a film, to star James McEvoy I believe, who is far from the spotty social incapable that the book envisages (or maybe that was me). The show, the sacred and wonderful UC, was just a Macguffin for the Working Title-style love story. Did I not like that.
Looking at Vikas Swarup's Q&A, I felt a kind of Pavlovian reflex. Another bad novel that uses a quiz show conceit to play out a story about a poor, lovable lad trying to find his way in the world. I recoiled and I dismissed it.
Yet I did read it. I really had no choice. And, indeed, it did use the conceit of How Will Win a Billion to play out the colourful, oh my it's colourful, life story of a poor 18-year-old Indian waiter.
But this was different. Setting it in an alien culture did it a lot of favours.
It tells you something about the police and the justice system in this country that the fuzz aren't allowed to stick chilli-powder smothered devices up suspect's jacksies (or do they?). But this happens to our hero within a few pages because that is how the Indians do things. And at least Maximum City prepared me for it, along with practically everything to do with life in India (a brilliant book, if it does flag towards the end with the story of a rich Jain businessman who gives everything up to disperse his family and go on a spiritual journey after having every hair on his head plucked out).
Initially, I had thought it was a rich-to-poor fairy tale dressed in modern pop culture clothing and I still do, even if there was patronising guff about the difference between people's sphere's of knowledge: quiz and normal people's know-how versus that of the mean streets. For these are mean, dirty and unforgiving streets. Ram never quite escapes it and in the end, his aim is not to.
The prose irked me on occasion. In Maximum City, there is the Western-modulated prose influenced by years of reading the New Yorker that makes Swarup's words seem clunky and over-cooked at times. For example:
" I feel as though an oxyacetylene torch has pierced my brain". You what?
"I squeal with delight". Heroes don't squeal. They never squeal.
And he talks of a martial artist who who gives his "opponents a licking". Licking? LICKING? Porn stars and pet dogs lick. Bruce Lee kicks the living crap out of those who cross him.
But you do get over that. Eventually. Indian writers tend to write in such ways, and you can't really mark them down for their peculiar writing proclivities.
Q&A takes the old quiz comment "how do you know that" to its logical and fictional extreme. He knows the answers because of the unbelievable twists and turns of his short life.
Ram answers each of the 12 questions that makes its way to the billion rupee jackpot by relating how meeting a cricket-loving hitman, an aging and suicidal Bollywood actress, a 17-year-old prostitute who lives in the red light district of Agra, a nameless railway-robbing dacoit, a Fagin-like gangmaster who maims his charges to make them more profitable beggars all gave him the answers. He knows nothing else, not even who the president of the USA or what the currency of France is. His street smarts and unnatural good luck (despite all the tragedies that befall him) ultimately make for a just and huge reward.
At the start I was worried that it was just one long chain of stories involving his and his friend Salim's attempts to avoid buggery by the retinue of adult predators that litter the pages, but after three such stories (yes, even deviant Catholic priests make it into the mix), it did swerve away from worries about arse-protection. But maybe that's what life for orphans is all about in the land of the Peacock throne (joking...).
Swarup is a canny fellow for using the game show drama of WWTBAM to write his book, having asked himself: "Why not tap into the global phenomenon of the syndicated televisual quiz show?" He was also inspired by a certain army major, for if they couldn't believe such a man of high standing (snicker ... military men ain't that respected here ... they're all killers and upper class twats aren't they?) then what would happen if a poverty-stricken teenager won the big prize? People wouldn't believe it.
(I was thinking that if the same was asked of me, I would say, Q.1 Read it in a book Q.2 Saw it on UC Q.3 Saw it on Fifteen-to-One Q.4 Read it in an encyclopedia, and so on and so forth. Real life ain't that exciting. A coal-mining analogy comes to mind)
In fact, I'm surprised a lot of other writers haven't picked up on the fictional possibilities, although I believe that Mitchell Symons has in a book called The Lot.
In effect, Q&A is a book made up of a dozen stand-alone short stories taking in the whole, sordid and wonderful panoply of modern Indian life and a lot of references to chapattis. It is about those who have to survive, and those who often don't, in the murky filth at the bottom of the food chain, and the age-old fiction hallmarks of 'nothing is what it seems', 'everything goes wrong but gets better, won't it?'
Ram could have cried a lot less. His lacrimal glands were working overtime all the time. He weeps like a big baby, but, it has to be said, with good yet relentless reason.
My final thoughts? It's a good read, nothing more. The twists at the end make for a surprising dramatic undercurrent, with one coming after the other, and there's nothing wrong with twists you can't see coming (even if you feel you should have seen them coming like any good student of movies like Seven or The Sixth Sense - I knew I should have kept the mysterious, nameless man who likes burning women's breasts with his cigarettes.) Entertainment gives us coincidences because we love them so.
I am also minded to say that the production company is as bent as a £2 note. Not at all like Celador, who I have been told are above suspicion due to their squeaky clean practices and are therefore worthy of extreme praise when being compared to other shady TV makers.
If you want to know what the dozen questions are that have to be answered by our hero, well let's just say, they are utterly reasonable. None made me want to fling the book across the room, then stamp on it and set it on fire. None at all.
Wait a minute, how much is a billion rupees worth? I still have no idea.
A. The Taj Mahal
(This is my 100th post. I am knackered. This blog is an insatiable monster)
posted by That Quiz Guy at 2:27 PM
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