Hamlet (the Facebook Edition)

Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.

Hamlet thinks Ophelia might be happier in a convent.

Ophelia removed "moody princes" from her interests.

Hamlet—Facebook News, Feed Edition by Sarah Schmelling.

Book Review: The Flood: A Novel by David Maine

Many writers have taken a story from the Bible, layered it with their ideas and interpretations, developed the characters, and fleshed an entire novel from a few lines. Of these Biblical stories, the tale of Noah and the Flood, from Genesis, surely is one that has be told and retold many times before. Julian Barnes, for one, did a wonderfully irreverent account of the story through the eyes of a stowaway woodworm in A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. 

David Maine, in his debut novel, The Flood: A Novel, too tries his hand at retelling the world's best-known disaster story. Unlike Barnes, Maine is not particularly sacrilegious or flippant. He does occasionally poke fun at the story and the characters but largely uses the tale to muse on the nature of faith and god, families, relationships and how people cope with a catastrophe created by a god intent on scrubbing the world clean.

Maine's Noe (as Noah is called in this tale. Some research showed that Maine names his characters from the Douay-Rheims Bible which was translated in English from Latin) is a 600-year-old paterfamilias who is introduced to us while he is peeing. A cantankerous and churlish Yahweh talks to Noe whenever he needs to express displeasure with his creations. A few pages into the book, when Noe hears Yahweh outline his plans to cleanse the world — that humanity is to be destroyed in a flood, Noe pees himself. This, along with the blurbs, prime the reader to expect that the author is out to have some fun with his source material. That expectation is however soon belied. While Maine does occasionally have some fun with his story and his characters, we soon realize that he is not treading that path. Maine is rather looking to flesh this Biblical episode in a way that allows him to raise questions on the role of God and faith in human lives, the nature and stuff of relationships, and (often) the role of women in this story. He achieves this by rarely departing much from the original tale. Rather he explores the psychological detail that such a story offers.

When the Yahweh tells (orders) Noe to build the ark, he pisses himself, then weeps, and then calls his family together and orders them to start building. Noe may be 600 years old, but hurries with the project of building and readying the ark believing "great age was not an obstacle to great deeds." His family lets out a collective groan, privately think he's nuts — his wife remarks "So when Himself starts with the visions and the holy labors and the boat full of critters, what am I supposed to do? Talk Sense?" — but don't dare disobey him. Noe, anyways, can't tell them much, except that the boys have to build a colossal boat, and that the girls (the wives of his boys) have to travel to their respective homelands, gather, and bring back every species of animal they can find. 

So the sons start on the boat. Cham designs and oversees the building of the ark with Sem to assist him. Jahpeth goofs off. Sem's wife, Bera, travels south and finds a menagerie in her savage father's kingdom. Cham's wife, Ilya, goes to the north and returns with bears and wolves. Jahpeth's wife, Mirn, looks for insects and other critters under rocks and in the soil. People gather around to watch and to jeer – "It's not every day you see a ship growing in the desert." Some offer to buy room on the ark. Noe refuses, explaining that one can board the ark only "with a pure heart." As the clouds gather and build in the sky, Noe's family debates about how the animals ought to be packed in.

Eventually the rain starts and the waters rise and the world becomes a waterscape. Unlike the Bible, Maine does justice to the enormity of the catastrophe. In Genesis, the story of Noah's ark and the wiping away of all life save that is safe on the boat, is narrated, if I am right, in about 4-5 verses. Here we watch the community that had gathered around the Ark wash away. The world's population is swept away, and Noe rejoices: "They were unclean in the sight of the Lord. . . Old is this world, a thousand years or more. It had grown heavy with filth and weary with sin. Now it has been scrubbed clean."

 

Maine also beautifully conveys the humanity of it all — of the characters trying to get a perspective and understand such an event. Ilya reflects "A pang cuts me whenever I remember him, or the matriarchs, or my uncles. All gone now. But I can't give in to grief about them - if I start I'll never stop, there are just too many dead, whole peoples, whole civilizations. I hold their memory off, at arm's length, and concentrate instead on measuring rainfall and striving to understand what is happening. If such a thing can truly be comprehended."

Maine re-tells this catastrophe and the events before and after it, in eight voices — The Flood is divided into succinct chapters told from the perspective of the various characters. While Noe's wife, three sons, and three daughters-in-law  —  tell their own stories in their own voices, a narrator takes over the chapters devoted to Noe. It is an eminently readable and clever narrative allowing the reader for a 360-degree perspective on episode. 

It allows Maine to explore two fundamental ways (within the boundaries of the world depicted in the novel) of looking at the world. One view which believes that god reigns over everything (primarily held by the men in the novel). Another which believes that god rains over everything (primarily held by the women in the novel). And why these perspectives matter — for it is the viewpoint which decides how one tells and how one listens to a story. The book attempts to explore this by often having chapters with these juxtaposed viewpoints follow each other (It is subtle and not as explicit and blatant as I have made it out to be). 

Apart from earnest explorations into theology and faith, this narrative of eight voices comes together, naturally and strongly, to form a marvelous description of a family trying to cope with a crisis of worldwide proportions. Once confined to the boat, and with nowhere to go, they tire of each other, bicker, grow bored, complain about the sameness and the paucity of the food, the stink and try to cope with the irritation of having to put up with each other and the animals and the hopelessness of the situation. The sons have a crisis of faith — in themselves, in Noe, and in Yahweh. The women are altogether more practical and often provide witty and acerbic assessments of the situation and the other characters. It is the three daughters-in-law (who are not named in the Bible) that are the most fascinating characters in the book — practical, focused, clever, crafty and cunning, tough and more capable than any of the male characters. Bera, Ilya, and Mirn (and to an extent Noe's wife) are arguably Maine's most engaging characters and serve to bring in a feminist perspective to this Biblical tale. Their interactions with one another and the other characters in the novel give the book its primary strength — an examination of the dynamics in the interrelationships amongst the characters.

While The Flood questions and probes the tale from Genesis and contemplates and muses on life and relationships (the nature of love) and God and faith, Maine, every now and then (very rarely), seems to remember the immense ironic and comic potential of his source material and sprinkles a few funny episodes (Noe's vision of Yahweh as a testy ant) in the story. This however, to me, is where the book fails. It is as if Maine couldn't decide if his novel was to be a deeply serious affair — with solemn observations on faith, God, and insights into relationships or a totally postmodern, irreverent, and funny take on the flood. In trying to include bits of both he doesn't do enough justice to either.

There is, however, a lot to enjoy in this novel. It is energetic and fluent and easily read in a sitting or two. While it is serious in some parts and irreverent in others, and it may well be confused whether it wants to be more of one or the other, The Flood is never uninteresting and makes for an engrossing read.

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Nuggets from David Maine's The Flood: 

On the Nature of Love

How to Kill a God

Men are so Amusing

Is God in Everything?

Book Review: Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Wicked
The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Wicked, Gregory Maguire's perceptive and captivating take on The Wizard of Oz, became a modern cult classic (and later a hit broadway musical) when it was published in 1995. In L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we read only of Dorothy's triumph over the Wicked Witch of the West. But what about the Wicked Witch herself? What made her so wicked? Where did she come from? And what is the true nature of evil? Wicked, subtitled "The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," is an alternative, imaginative, and clever re-creation of the land of Oz before Dorothy and her dog crash-land in Oz.

Through Wicked, Maguire narrates the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, and her life and experiences in Oz — which is not a fairytale place of happiness and joy, but a dark, oppressive police state full of political machinations. It's a land where Animals, who are sentient and have voices, souls and minds, are persecuted and exiled. It's a place where you are wicked if you are different; if you tell the truth.

Gregory Maguire's fantasy world in Wicked is sketched vividly enough to change the way we look at Oz. For starters, the Wicked Witch has a name: Elphaba, and she is not wicked but insecure and unfortunately green. She may be taunted by others, including her mother, with names like "Little Frog" or "Lizard Girl," but she also has an endearing nickname given to her by her friends — Elphie. She has also not formally trained in witchcraft. Maguire's Elphaba is not a person who dreams of inflicting devilish deeds on the world that refuses to accept her. She is a zealous Munchkinlander who fights for tolerance and who's willing to take "steps" to put an end to the tyrannical rule of the Wizard of Oz. Elphaba is smart, and sassy, an intellectual, an activist, a bit of a revolutionary, who is often misunderstood and not accepted and who goes somewhat mad in the end.

Maguire's tale also fills in numerous gaps in Elphaba's story. We come to know about her tumultuous childhood (born with an unfortunate skin condition and parents who find it hard to accept her). We are told of her school days in the Shiz University — the time she meets Glinda, the good witch. Both are forced by circumstances to become roommates and friends, reluctantly. Shiz is also the place where Elphaba becomes a member of a small circle of Oz' most promising young citizens. Maguire also tells us of Elphaba's beliefs and politics — she becomes a part of an underground resistance movement that tries to get the Animals their rights with whatever means possible, even (attempted) assassination. We are told of her religious zealot of a sister — Nessarose, who leads the Munchkinlanders to throw off the rule of Wizard of Oz, and who dies when Dorothy's Kansas house lands on her. And we are told the story of how she loses her one true love. Eventually we also come to know how Elphaba's life spins out of her control. Her ideals and beliefs lead her to be caught up in events larger than herself, of the kind she is incapable of dealing with. Elphaba's nature and actions ultimately challenge our notions about the nature of good and evil.

Dorothy, whom we see only briefly in the prologue, appears properly in the final part of the book. She is a country girl, good, but a bit dull-witted.

But it would be wrong to assume that what Maguire has achieved is merely a clever creation of opposites: Elphaba = misunderstood heroine, Dorothy = villain.

No. Wicked makes real, three dimensional people out of the original characters. They are as complex as the people in the world we live in. Oz, itself, is a not a world clearly marked by the black and the white, but has its shades of gray (or should we say, shades of green).

Oz' politics is as complex and often as ludicrous as it is in our world. The same is true of Oz' religions and belief systems. The religion of the Un-named God, the pleasure-seekers, the followers of the time dragon, education, the different social and political causes — each has its zealous followers who have their own tenets of Right and Wrong, about Good and Evil.

Part of the appeal of Wicked also lies in recognizing elements from the Baum's Oz and (especially) from the movies [I haven't seen the 1939 version of the movie, but I recollect as a kid watching "Return to Oz" — twice]. Madame Morrible's (the politically-connected headmistress of Shiz University) murdering mechanical servant Grommetik is Tik-Tok of Oz. Young Elphaba, disgusted by an experiment on a Lion cub, rescues it. We know this cub is the Cowardly Lion. In Elphaba's rescue of a monkey and her later attempts to breed flying monkeys by stitching wings on them we can see the origin of the flying Monkey units that eventually will carry off Dorothy, Toto and the Lion.

Wicked, however, is no child's tale. It is darker than Baum's Oz. Wicked's tyrannical Wizard rules with the help of his "Gale Force," his storm troopers (who murder Fiyero, the Prince of Vinkus and Elphaba's love). The Wizard's emblem, a balloon and basket with crossed bars beneath it, looks like a skull and crossbones at first glance. He also hints at having performed human sacrifice. Glinda, the good witch's award of the slippers to Dorothy is a calculated move to help the Wizard crush the Munchkinland rebellion started by Nessarose.

Wicked's asset, however, is undoubtedly its heroine. Unlike the evil figure of our childhood fantasies, Wicked's "Wicked Witch of the West," Elphaba is not evil, but a compelling and honest character. Maguire's Elphaba will make you question the nature of morality. And it will make you wonder what is it that makes a person good or evil? Intent or action?

In Wicked, Gregory Maguire has re-created and populated Oz with the power of his own imagination. Fantastically real, after reading this novel you will be unable to see the Wizard of Oz in the same way again.

I believe, Frank Baum himself would be flattered.

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