Struggling with Amitav Ghosh

Maybe because I have picked tough, big novels that I have had trouble completing books these days (reading, of course :-).

David Copperfield is still unread. I don't even remember the last book I read fully. Was it "A tale of Two Cities" or was there another, smaller read?  A youtube addiction - mostly Steven Colbert, Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah - is partly to blame. An aspiring-author's-envy (my expression) could also be leading to this - a tearing urge to leave off reading anything interesting, and to yourself try and write something instead.

But the choice of novels could be a reason for sure. I can't imagine having so much trouble with Vikram Seth's  'A Suitable Boy' if I were to read it now, as I am having with Amitav Ghosh's 'River of Smoke' - I somehow manage to finish a 'Sea of Poppies' sometime in 2017.

There's just too much detail in Amitav Ghosh - it's like drinking juice concentrate when you were only interested in experimenting with a new juice flavor.  There's so much detail - the surroundings, the foods, the smells, the clothes, not to mention difficult local-language words, the historical figures - that it is difficult to sift out the story, the human element. And there in lies another problem I am having. I cannot figure out how much of the book is direct transcription from historical records and sources, and how much is Ghosh's own imagination. Ghosh also attempts to weave all his research into his story, which kind of leads to the whole story sounding like a perpetual coincidence.  Ghosh is also a habitual name dropper as far as historical figures go. An author often reflects his own personality to his characters. Of course a multi-faceted author should be able to break up his own personality into many characters, but what if in doing this, the characters themselves start merging into once another? I believe this happens with Ghosh.

Seth used a lot of references too - a lot of parliamentary records I think - but I don't remember being so utterly overwhelmed by details in 'A Suitable Boy'. I must read that book once more at a later point to make a comparison.

All my complaints aside, the Ibis books are certainly very enriching in terms of historical information, and helping create an image of Canton and India and Mauritius in the 19th century. This part of India's and World history are certainly not taught well enough in school. My visits to China, Singapore and Malaysia in the last couple of years combined - combined with these books certainly help me to understand South East Asia enough to think consciously of these countries. Perhaps India thinks about the West more since the West is what has troubled us?

However, while quite amusing, and with interesting enough characters - yet Ghosh's work has yet to provide me an intense literary or poetic vision, far from convulsions of literary ecstasy or moving me to tears.  Is that not a fair expectation from literature? Are Seth, Dickens and Marquez the exceptions rather than the rule?

So should I read Ghosh as a history book then? Why not actually write a historical non-fiction like Dalrymple?

For now my problem is I can't make out Ghosh as an author and a style. I'll give it some time, I suppose. But that's (one thing) holding up my reading list.