A Passage to India

So I've just finished E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, taking longer than I would have liked, mainly because this book was such a slog.  Right off the bat I started this and Grapes of Wrath and thought "ugh, here is some stuffy, heavy-handed, self-serious, obsolescent crap."  And at least in Forster's case it held true.  Grapes of Wrath gets much more interesting after the first couple chapters, but more on that in another entry.

Let's provide a brief synopsis, shall we?  Imperialist British India, in a small city called Chandrapore, is home to local Hindus, "Moslems" (or sometimes Mohammedans), and the white aristocracy with their stuffy clubs and racist aspirations.  A young British woman comes over to discover the "Real India," goes on a day trip with some locals, and accuses our hero the good doctor Aziz of assault.  This "assault" involves her binocular strap being ripped off by someone who follows her into a dark cave, although what really happenned is unclear, as the girl can't remember.  The trial to try Aziz brings everybody's racist and petty flaws to the fore, and at the last minute the girl testifies that Aziz is innocent and she was confused, hooray!  Every character is left disillusioned at the end, and the Empire is exposed as immoral in a (did I mention) heavy-handed, ominous tone.

So why did I hate this classic portrait of colonial India?  Let's start with the dialogue; reminiscent of Edith Wharton, Henry James, and D.H. Lawrence (these are what come to my mind, there are many others), the way people talk and act in peri-Victorian times seems so ridiculous to us 21st century denizens.  All these writers are lauded for exploring the depth of human psychology functioning in a social setting with rigid rules, but the problem is these social strictures seem so old-fashioned that certainly the impact is lost in portraying the heroes' struggles against them.  At least Lawrence had a lot of libido in his work.  This book goes right up there with The House of Mirth and The Ambassadors as least-favorites on the list.

Here is a completely different point of view: a review of the book from its time of publication.

I would be closer to finishing Grapes of Wrath, but I got sucked into "The Essential Chomsky" which I will not discuss here, but damn, what a guy.

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