The Circle of Reason

It may be that the wisest and certainly the most often repeated counsel to writers of all kinds is the advice to "kill all your darlings." That bit of advice has been attributed to Oscar Wilde, Eudora Welty, G.K. Chesterton, and William Faulkner, among many others. It turns out that the origin of this saying dates back to 1914 and a now-obscure lecturer by the name of Arthur Quillen-Couch in his widely reprinted Cambridge Lectures, "On the Art of Writing." His advice to writers was to "murder all your darlings." https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/kill-your-darlings-writing-advice-what-writer-really-said-to-murder-your-babies.html Though Quillen-Couch was primarily referring to passages of writing to which writers have become particularly attached, it can apply to characters in a book or screenplay. While I haven't always agreed with a writer or director's decision to kill off a great character (Game of Thrones' final episode is a prime example), I almost always respect it. Somebody has to do it or plots inevitably become dull and predictable- an exercise in producing literary comfort food. Hey, I am not opposed to comfort food; I am just not interested in a steady diet of it. You have to respect Amitav Ghosh's willingness to apply that piece of advice to this book. The Circle of Reason (TCOR)’s plot offers a veritable bloodbath of beloved characters. Ghosh is a literary serial killer of darling characters. If you skim through reviews on this page, you will find plenty of readers who positively hate his willingness to kill off his characters. I wasn't put off by any of Ghosh’s decisions in this regard, not in the least. I am not quite sure why, but I think I have come up with a pretty good hunch. Read on for that hypothesis. TCOR seems to me to share the same narrative scheme that can be found in the great epic of Indian national identity, the Mahabharata. Listening to "Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata" was one of the most memorable experiences of my book listening lifetime. TCOR strongly reminded me of the way that the Mahabharata’s epic sweep is built up over a mix of individual fables, mythic origins, ethical counsel, and spiritual challenges, so that when the final stage of the tale unfolds and, in the end, only one character makes it out of the long tale alive, one is gifted with a profound religious experience. In the end, the Mahabharata becomes its own character, which takes precedence over all of its heroes and villains. In similar fashion, Ghosh spins layer upon layer of great yarns, not simply good stories. In doing so, the author builds a kind of pantheon of heroes whose lives, however short-lived they may be, add to the gestalt of the tale. Furthermore, it seems to me that TCOR establishes a dialogue between the modern circumstances of the Indian diaspora and the Mahabharata. I loved Ghosh for his audacity in attempting such a bold move. In the process I also found myself thinking about the role that chance and fate play in life. Ghosh's characters struggle amid lives that are shaped by a combination of brave decisions, bone-headed blunders, and circumstances over which they have little control. In that regard they share challenges like the ones the Pandava clan faces in the Mahabharata. Yet Ghosh's characters are not epic superheroes and heroines. They are instead a rag-tag assembly of very ordinary human beings who often resemble Don Quixote or Sancho Panza much more than they do Yudhisthira or Krishna, for example. For me, these similarities lend the closing section of TCOR a particularly profound and poignant quality. I must hasten to say here that I am not Indian, never have set foot in India and certainly cannot claim any intimate knowledge of Indian national consciousness, so take the thoughts above for what they are worth in that context.