Kali, Lovecraft, and Simmons (not Richard or Gene)

For a more straightforward review of Song of Kali, check the 999 Challenge Blog.

As I mentioned before, my first encounter with Kali came when I was learning about Thuggee to write a roleplaying campaign. Since the Illuminatus! Trilogy (which I was drawing on) featured Satanism, I figured I had found my perfect devil stand-in. I knew that drawing an equivalence between Kali and Satan was rather silly, but I figured 90% of 19th century Europeans wouldn't sweat the difference, so if the Satanists turned out to be Kali worshippers, it would make some degree of sense. (At least within the sort of paranoid, over-determined world of conspiracy theories.)

So, the concept that portrayals of Kali and Kali worshippers in the Western media have been a little on the unfair side has never been surprising to me. I'm not faulting Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom here, whatever its shortcomings as a movie. Since Indiana Jones is an homage to 1930s adventure serials, it seems fair that it relies on some rather archaic or incoherent portrayals of India and Hinduism.

In my review of Song of Kali, I mentioned Dan Simmons verging on racism (or Eurocentrism or Orientalism or whatever you want to call it) and felt that deserved a little more explanation. I am, however, going to veer off a little into some thoughts regarding the horror/spiritual nature of the Goddess Kali.

Because what surprised me on my recent read of the novel was that despite the amount of research that Simmons put into the novel (judging by the collection of facts and quotes) he seems to stick with a one-sided, dated portrayal of Kali. Kali is a fairly rich figure, one whose appearance and attributes vary quite a bit depending on the nature of the devotee. (I recommend David Kinsley's work, such as this essay.)

Not that this makes Kali unsuitable as the bogeyman in a horror story. In fact, I rather think there's some similarities between the sort of spiritual reality that Kali implies and some of Lovecraft's fiction. Quoting Kinsley in Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine:

There is an insistence in Hinduism that the world as it appears to us is a show, that there remains hidden from our normal view an aspect of reality that is... shockingly different from our ego-centered way of apprehending it.

The Mahavidyas... are awakeners, visions of the divine that challenge comfortable and comforting fantasies about the way things are in the world.

Based on that quote, I'd say the biggest distinction between the above and the sort of truth presented in Lovecraft's fiction is that the Tantrica believes that it's ultimately positive to see reality as it is, whereas nothing good ever comes in an HPL story from learning the truth. But ultimately, whether you're gazing on Kali or Cthulhu, I would argue, you're going to get a big batch of truth that is going to unsettle you.

Simmons opts for a simpler portrayal, where Kali alone embodies "the dark underside of an essentially benign universe" (emphasis mine) and "the focus and residue of all the atavistic urges and actions which ten thousand years of conscious strivings had hoped to put behind." Kali here doesn't represent uncomfortable but necessary truths (as in Tantra) or even terrifying but unavoidable truths (as she would if she were a Cthulhvian figure) but a straightforward adversary, the personification of everything we would be better off without but sadly can't entirely eradicate. (Towards the end of the novel, the protagonist begins referring to her as "that bitch," which pretty much sums up the reductionist view presented.)

Of course, if it was only the portrayal of Kali, it might be a missed opportunity but hardly racist. However, Simmons seems to use Kali as a stand-in for Indianness, its primitiveness and barbarity. In its horror aspect, the novel sometimes channels Lovecraft, both for its atmospheric settings and in its notion of non-Euclidean spaces. Unfortunately, it also seems to channel Lovecraft's distaste towards teeming hordes of brown people. In setting up the battle lines between good and evil, Simmons makes it clear that Indian culture stands on the wrong side.

Early on, the protagonist contrasts his wife Amrita's memories of India as a place of "cluttered cheapness of everything" with their current home, which is "as clean and open as a Scandinavian designer's dreams, all gleaming bare wood, comfortable modular seating, immaculately white walls, and works of art illuminated by recessed lighting."*

This contrast of the Western, orderly and good with the Indian, chaotic and bad reaches its peak intellectually about halfway through the novel. The protagonist is sitting down for tea with an Indian writer, who browbeats him into accepting that his horror at the poverty and squalor of Calcutta are do to his own Western prejudices. Then, Amrita, who is Indian-born but Western-educated, interrupts by arguing that Indian culture is utterly dysfunctional. Hers is the last argument. The Indian author has no further arguments, at least none that are shown.

One other detail is worth mentioning in why I think the novel presents an unfair picture of India. Simmons starts each chapter with a short epigraph. Most of these are from Indian sources, often describing the horror of Calcutta. But once the worst tragedy takes place and the survivors must move on and find redemption, the epigraphs switch over to Yeats. This coincides with the image of a terrible and degrading India which can only be escaped in the safe and orderly ways of the civilized West.

Alone, one of these elements--the reduction of Kali to bogeyman, the portrayal of Calcutta as fundamentally horrifying, the arguments about Indian culture, the shift of poetic sources--wouldn't make me think that Simmons is working from his own prejudices. But they consistently create an impression of India and Indian culture as backwards and brutal, something to be avoided, as contrasted with the humanistic, orderly ways of the West.

I'm not really looking to castigate Simmons for his politics, just elaborate on an aspect of the novel that made me uncomfortable. I'd be curious to hear from anyone with any thoughts, even if it's just to call me a PC thug.


*I was surprised at the extent to which reading this description of their house brought out my inner Tyler Durden. Was this image of smug first-world wealth meant to make the principals sympathetic, and if so, why did it so make me want to see them taken down a notch?

Books Compared: Hyperion/Haunted/City of Saints and Madmen

Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted and Dan Simmons' Hyperion are both works of genre fiction structured around a framing narrative. Despite being genre works (science fiction and horror*, respectively) both novelists are unashamed to telegraph literary aspirations, not just structurally, but with reference to literary figures such as Keats (Hyperion) and Mary Shelley (Haunted). Hyperion is an innovative exploration of genre fiction in service of a larger story with philosophical and political themes; the other is a messy affair, intermittently concerned with its genre, poorly plotted and rife with implausibilities.

Hyperion tells the story of a group of people traveling to an important location on the planet Hyperion as the interstellar empire of which they are subjects hovers on the brink of war. Each of the travelers has a particular reason for making this trip, revealed through the respective stories they tell. Simmons uses this structure as an exploration of genre fiction, incorporating elements of hard sci fi, space opera, cyberpunk, philosophical sci fi, even horror and noir fiction. The universe that Simmons creates through these stories is a fairly ambitious amalgam of literary and mythical elements, and though not as innovative now as it was at the time of its original publication, is an entertaining and thought-provoking exploration of empire, technology, and free will.

Haunted tells the story of a group of people at a writer's retreat, all of them participants save for the organizer (Mr. Whittier) and his assistant (Mrs. Clark). The other characters do not use their names but colorful titles (Agent Tattletale, Countess Foresight, etc.) and have signed up believing that this writer's retreat will allow them to create their respective "masterpieces" that will make them rich and famous. (Except for the ones that are already rich and/or famous and the ones that are hiding from the law, mob, CDC, or international arts conspiracy.) The writer's retreat turns out to be an abandoned theater whose decadent furnishings are meant to evoke Poe's "Masque of the Red Death." Some characters rebel against being trapped in a rundown theater, others decide being trapped in a run down theater will be the perfect "real life" story that will make them rich or famous. (While some believe a run-down theater is the perfect place to hide from the law, mob, CDC, or international arts conspiracy.)

What makes Haunted inferior to Hyperion is the complete lack of focus, as the stories veer from graphic or psychological horror (with odd stabs at the supernatural) to tales of callow individuals behaving badly. The framing narrative is meant to provide a coherency to the various stories, but it's inertness compounds the problem. (I personally gave up any hope that the book would redeem itself shortly after a character tales a story about being a werewolf. His animalistic aspect has been sketched pretty heavily up until that point, so it's not implausible that within the main plot he really could be a werewolf. Yet none of the other characters seems to consider that the presence of a werewolf in their midst should be a cause for worry. What should have ratcheted up the tension only ends up draining it of what life it had left.) Palahniuk has a talent for shock value which serves to distract from all of the glaring plot holes. (Why, for example, does the Earl of Slander, who in his story "Swan Song" describes himself as a wealthy, Pulitzer-prize winning celebrity journalist, go to a writer's retreat?) My most generous take on the novel is that it is a "suicidal novel," a novel that refuses coherency and eschews plot or plausibility, in order to repudiate the very idea of writing or art. (Like a Pynchon novel taken a nihilistic extreme, or something the Teatro Grottesco would release in hardcover.)

This may be giving the novel too much credit as its self-mutilation appears to be motivated (as with the characters therein) out of a desire for financial success. As Palahniuk describes it, he was originally wanting to release a collection of short stories. His agent informed him that collections of short stories don't sell as well as novels, so he adapted a story about self-destructing critics into a frame story of self-destructing writers. The term applied to this sort of work is "fix-up novel," which makes Haunted an interesting comparison with Jeff Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen.

City of Saints and Madmen (just City from here on out) lies somewhere between anthology and novel, and I have seen it described as a "kaleidoscopic novel" or "mosaic novel." Like Haunted, City is a genre work of multiple stories, mostly fantasy though of an unconventional sort. (Vandermeer is one of the more prominent members of the New Weird, which defies conventional genre definitions.) However, while Haunted fails to gain coherence from its frame, City achieves a considerable coherency while dispensing with a conventional frame. City is structured as a collection of four novellas and an appendix of supporting material, but this set-up is deceptive. For example, the first story "Dradin, In Love" is a third-person narrative about a missionary having a mental breakdown after returning to Ambergris. (The city of which saints and madmen make up a significant portion.) Only later are we told that "Dradin, In Love" is a work of autobiography published in Ambergris. The third "novella" turns out to be a tourist pamphlet outlining the early history of Ambergris, in whose footnotes we catch a glimpse of another history of academic rivalries among Ambergrisian scholars. City is full of these Borgesian games, which seek to lend a degree of verisimilitude to the most outlandish of elements.

Both novels are concerned with the creative process, as it relates not only to writing but to other forms of art. Two stories, for example, which have striking similarities are Palahniuk’s "Ambition" (Terry Fletcher's/Duke of Vandals' story) and Vandermeer’s “The Transformation of Martin Lake,” both of which revolve around artists who find themselves drawn into shadowy conspiracies which push them into criminal acts. Interestingly enough, the description of the Duke’s paintings makes them sound kitschy, and the story attributes his success to his involvement with the cabal. (His paintings are of his mom, his girlfriend, and his dog named Boner.) Martin Lake’s works are presented as dark, surreal representations of the crimes in which he has become involved, crimes for which his only reward is continued survival. Palahniuk’s story comes off as a cynical take on how the pursuit of profit will manufacture success out of crap, whereas Vandermeer’s story is a more haunting meditation on art, its ability to both reveal and conceal, and the varied inspirations that give rise to it.

The same pattern holds for the two novels as wholes, with Haunted feeling unfocused yet insular, and City feeling like something of a city in itself, cohesive yet open.

* Haunted's failures as a work of horror outnumber its failures as a novel. However, the book was marketed as a horror novel, so I will not quibble whether it really qualifies as one.