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Book Review
Throwing light on Tamil novels
PREMA NANDAKUMAR
THAMIZH NOVEL - JNANI KATTURAIKAL (IV): Compiled by Ki Palanisamy, Pub. by Kavya, 16, Second Cross Street, Trustpuram, Kodambakkam, Chennai 600024. Rs. 350.
One need not always condemn a collection of journalism published between hardcovers as unreadable stuff. When the writer is Jnani, we have a dependable critic, a keen watcher of the Tamil literary scene today. One may not always agree with him but he does not expect that kind of uncritical yes-ministership either. The present volume, fourth in the series, opens with Va. Ramaswamy. From this very first essay and winging through familiar writers like Jayakanthan, Ponneelan,
and Jayamohan till we come to Kavya Shanmugasundaram, it is an uninterrupted flow of story-telling. Which is what makes Jnani interesting, for he is able to give the basic story-line of each novel with electrical ease.
Kavya Shanmugasundaram’s “Andhi”, for instance. The triumph of an unlettered peasant like Arumugathamma who is an excellent homemaker, armed with nothing except native genius. But when age withers her, none of her children is prepared to extend help.
However, after she commits suicide, they build a memorial for her! If fiction is social history, we get to see plenty of self-wrought ruin and decay.
With some novelists we plunge into depression; some novels are beyond critical comprehension. Jnani does use the Marxian strainer quite often and is disappointed that Jayakanthan could not become Tamil Nadu’s Maxim Gorky. He has an aversion for romantic novels which is understandable. The Kalki-formula is a pet aversion. He traces patiently the transformations that take place in our society as recorded in the novels: feudalism does easily give way to capitalism but where is the ultima Thule of a socialist paradise? It is a frighteningly complex world of casteism, class war, religious intolerance, and ethnic tragedy. The heartbreak of Dalit life. Tamilians in Tamil Nadu (most of the novelists), outside Tamil Nadu (Indira Parthasarathy) and outside India (Rajeswari Balasubramaniam).
Jnani has cast his net wide to point out the Tamil novelists who succumb to the pressure of the market. Nor is he happy with the portrayal of the working class and feminism in the novels.
Social crisis
Jnani is never shrill but his anguish is palpable especially in the essays on the novels of the 1970s and 1980s: “Why haven’t we had a Tolstoy, a Dostoevsky, a Gorky or a Solzhenitsyn in our clime? Why hasn’t our society given birth to such genius? There is social crisis aplenty here. But we have not mastered the kind of education needed to understand these problems, nor have we gained the many-faceted knowledge and personal experience. We continue to be escapists … Yet another cause for our social crisis is the government. What does it care for literature?”
Such writing makes Jnani’s ‘Thamizh novel’ a vibrant machine to help us think on the current state of affairs. Hopefully, aspirant writers will make use of this benchmark in a big way.
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