[Reader-list] The Unexpected Man

[reyhan chaudhuri]

Yasmina Reza-THE UNEXPECTED MAN

transl by : Christopher Hampton / 27th October,2004.

Just imagine! The eminently respectable and erstwhile book club at the French Resource Centre should choose a book to be discussed, that has 'four-letter words' right on the first page.

                                    Is this obscene? Is it blasphemous? Or is it just a telling message on the times?

                        It may be because there are a lot of 'nouveau' elements in the book.

·        It proclaims to be a Drama. Drama! That is a form of literature (as opposed to prose or poetry) with people, conversations, juxtaposed dialogues and elaborate directions or indications of the set design, tone, nuances and even audience placements.  Here however the author plunges directly into the action, that is if two people seated in a closed cubicle, can be called 'action.

·        If in a play the actors occasionally talk 'asides' (if at all) to express their 'self-thoughts', we have here the entire work contained with ruminant self-recriminations.

·        The tone and style of writing of the book is more like 'blank-verse' rather than dialogues or  'jeu des questions' and repondez s'il vous plait'.

·        The language is terse and snippety, very much like the modern vernacular, of any part of our global world. It teems with ambiguity and half-said contradictory utterances much like most of the concrete but hollow (and not hallowed;) depths of the contemporary world.

·        There is however no sequential suspense or mounting up of a conclusive finale like stereotypic novels. You plunge into ramblings and they end half-said....

·        In consanguineous contradiction, barefaced and bold, it also exposes the multiple layers of the characters or the modern persona, of the new-age Homeo sapien. It reveals, how there are multitudinous consequences of our thoughts. The repercussions of impressions and incidents (however trivial upon the surface) are manifold. It does this plainly, without pompous oration and/or didactic expostulations.

 

A synopsis of the book may be summed up simply as two people 'happen' to be on a train going to the continent. One is a 'fashionable' author and the other is a contemporary woman, who happens to be reading and carrying the latest book by the same author. They eventually talk but conversation is stilted and clumsy, perhaps pointless.

               In any case, the author though 'arrived' is laden-heavy with complexes of envy (remember his breezy friend-'Yuri),' undone achievement' (the secretary: Mrs.Credo) and self-recriminations(on the latest book and the inadequacies of choice of mate, by his daughter).The woman is in turn grappling with mixed emotions. her having lost Serge(more than a friend) the unfinished business with Georges.The  basic unpredictability and half-hearted episodes of modern' life' 

 

On a personal note:  I sympathise with the girl. Her predicament, when she runs into her favorite author ,in an 'ample-time' setting. How do you handle it and express your joy without shrill artifice. It reminds me of one of our contemporary authors-Vikram Seth. Whose poetry, travel book and the more recent novella on 'violinists' ,I've specially enjoyed(though it did not get rave reviews like his other books). The last one because being an avid listener of both Indian and Western classical music. It has always intrigued me, what kind of people become orchesta musicians, how they rehearse, how they eat and sleep.etc.

       In any case, I remember (this was a few years ago ,the world-famous Vienna symphony orchestra in town, in one of the large theatres of our city. It was house-full and because of terrorist threats and the President coming to inaugurate the concert, checking was slow and ponderous. It was just a complete coincidence, after frisking, when we stood in line(with my family) to just enter the hall ,who do you think should be right behind us with his sister and aunties?

                                     I can still recall with amusement, the futile emotions. I mean what do you do? Ask for an autograph?(Most embarrassing!) Do you nudge your family in front, to look behind in excitement? (A bit cheap!) .Or do you grab the 'shifty' chance to momentously exclaim, your views and impressions of his works.(Most pompous that!). I ofcourse just studied the programe and eventually, we found our way to our back ringside seats, under the dimming lights.(The famous author ofcourse probably went to the front / VIP seats, near the page-3 glitterati and papparazzi) 

                   Was it a lost chance?  Not at all! Look at the girl's ineffectual/sheepish remarks to her author at the end. I think convince me ,I saved myself from a very cringing clumsy fiasco.

 

Probable doubts or rethinks: There are certain lines in the book, which may be worth pondering upon or unravelling in the book-club session. Some of them which come to my mind on prior perusal are:-

? 1. The biography of a writer?Absolutely ridiculous. (Pg-3) 

2.That's all they are working at,time takes it's familiar course. (Pg-9)

3.With the face and figure she's got,how could yu be pleasant.She's bound to have complexes,poor woman.(pg-11)

? 4.For a long time,I've been attacked by people who don't care for the the world and are tormented by non-stop suffering.It seemed to me that the desperate were the only profound,the only really attractvie people. ( pg-15)

5. You manufacture yourself,you shape hte raw material,then you lay it open tothe unexpected.( pg-15)

6.The whole evening had gone by under some star unshackeld from time

7.You cover your tracks,you personally invent protective misunderstandings because youre haunted by the fear of being understood. ( pg-27)

? 8. How to accept never being in control of time or loneliness. ( pg-41)

? 9. I prefer whirling dervishes to human rights. ( pg-43)

10.A splinter of life among so many others,a tiny pinprick in time,amid so much pointless loneliness,so many heaped-up splinters,scraps of deadwood scattered around our paths. (pg 47)

11. We keep on talking about other people,because we're made up of other people.Don't you agree? ( pg 51)

12. And if we didn't care what people said to us,why should we struggle on with a pursuit,which is at the mercy of outside opinion? ( pg 55)

13. How ould you account for the need to invent or dream up other lives? ( pg-63 )

14. It's given me a nostalgia for what's never taken place. ( pg-65) 

 

CONCLUSION: This book is a complete turn-around from the last book (My Father's Glory-My Mother's Castle-Marcel Pagnol), we read for the club. If that was wistful and nostalgic, this is cold and cynical, (atleast on the first read). If that was heartwarming , this gets your soul shrivelled! If that was a celebration of life, this is a clinical judgment upon the helplessness of isolation or envy;

                                    It must be added however, (whether with a grudge or a condescension) that on further reflection it gets you thinking. It gets you to have a certain degree of wonderment .A slim book with only two characters that hardly speak 2 conventional dialogues, does manage to make the characters alive and evoke their background, with remarkable 'realness' or facile ease. It perhaps even manages to capture the cynicism and desultory departures of the 'id' of the neo-urban world.

I do not come across a book like this everyday.

 Yours Extricately,

 Reyhan Chaudhuri.

            
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