Customer Reviews

The Alchemy of Desire: A Novel

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Intro
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of reading an exciting new Indian author, and subsequently requested that the Category Leads add it to this website.

Tarun J Tejpals The Alchemy of Desire was published in 2005, shortlisted for the Prix Femina and won Frances Prix Millepages for Best Foreign Literary Fiction. Tejpal worked in journalism for about twenty years before writing this novel; in 1997 he published Arundhati Roys The God of Small Things and currently runs Tehelka, the leading weekly independent newspaper in India.

The Story
Setting is contemporary India, between 1979 and 1999. Also late 19th- early 20th century America (Chicago), Paris and India. The action takes place mainly in bustling, crowded Delhi, small rural villages and lower Himalayas.

When it opens, the novels protagonist (whose name is never mentioned  unless Ive missed it somewhere) is reflecting on the day he discovers he no longer desires his beautiful young wife, Fiza (or Fizz). Since theirs is a relationship built on intense eroticism something is obviously very wrong.

The couple have moved from Delhi to an old house in the Himalayan foothills. Here they can give full vent to their lust while the husband (a former journalist and editor who has lost creative inspiration in the city) tries in vain to write yet another novel. During this time the house is being renovated and in the process an old trunk filled with diaries is unearthed. As writers block sets in, the husband becomes disheartened with his work and begins reading the diaries, written by the houses previous owner (Catherine, a wilful and adventurous American woman). Over time he becomes so immersed in the diaries which document Catherine's extraordinary life and unbridled sexuality, he gradually loses interest in Fizz.

Hurt and uncomprehending, she packs her bags and leaves, and for the next five years he works his way through Catherine's notes. After much reflection on his life, marriage and work, he comes to realise how physical desire has been transformed into something stronger and more meaningful.

How Its Done
This is an amazingly rich and complex novel which does not follow a linear storyline and is full of digressions and reminiscences. Written in the first person it is narrated by the protagonist (except for the section on Catherine's life - third person).

The plot contains a second story which impacts in an unexpected and disastrous way on the couples relationship, with vignettes and asides running parallel to the action, and occasional lapses into stream of consciousness or internal commentary. The prose is brilliantly textured and diverse, shifting from the serious or erotic to irony or humour, keeping the reader intrigued and wanting more. Starting with the end of a relationship and a search for literary inspiration, the novel concludes its cycle with the narrator's reminiscences of how that relationship began.

Numbering over five hundred pages, the book is divided into five sections: Love, Action, Money, Desire, Truth, with the narrative moving back and forth between them. The bereft husband ponders past events, recalling the early years of his relationship with Fizz, their mutual manic passion, his time as sub-editor in a highly competitive office (described in wonderfully satirical prose) and the tension created by the disparity between driving lust and loss of creativity.

India in all its colour, smells and diversity is evoked: cuisine, vegetation, dust and mayhem, along with a series of characters, from the crazy to the endearing. The question of national identity is raised as well as the factors which have shaped it, and while Tejpal mocks those who persist in clinging to British ways, he is equally scathing about the politicians of the day and their followers. All of which provides a rich and complex backdrop to the story.

As one would expect from an ex-journo, reporter or editor, the language used here is confident and innovative; the prose shifts effortlessly between lyrical, erotic, humorous and descriptive. The following example typifies the chaos of Delhi's infrastructure:

All through the journey the road was flanked by unfinished buildings. Iron rods sticking out, floors half-finished, walls unplastered, windows and doors missing, terrace balustrades half done. The roadscape suggested no one wanted to finish a building any more  everyone wished to keep open the option of endless addition. As Hindus know, we live forever: there is no hurry to complete anything. But what appeared now on the last stretch, on both sides of the highway, was a half-made urban sprawl that was devastating. Harsh, without a trace of green. Tiny, naked houses, their bricks stitched together with ugly cement, jostled with each other to gain some air. Most were boxes, two storeys high, with barely a window. The paths between them were unpaved; the sludge clogged the open gutters; garbage heaps grew where they could find purchase; black hairy swine nosed in them for succour; small green-black ponds played host to man and buffalo.

[...]

But perhaps the most powerful element of Tejpal's writing is how he brings eroticism to the page. As all writers (and wannabe writers) know, sex scenes are hard to do tastefully and convincingly, yet Tejpal turns raw lust into poetry, using smells and textures to heighten the readers senses: I put my hand on her hair and ruffled it slowly, lifting the bunched black curls and dropping them. Like her flawless skin, her hair was alive. It moved in the hand, as if caressing you back.

...and The room was dark and my mouth was everywhere and the white cotton she was wearing was crisp and thin and I was firm and insanely in love and she was wet and impossibly beautiful and our hands were potters and our flesh was clay; and then there were voices outside the door and she was on the edge of the bed and I could smell her love and I could taste her love and I could hear her love and my love was straining for her love and then I was where I belonged and where I wanted to live and where I wanted to die and the world was a slip of skin and the world was two slips of skin and the world was only slips of skin and the world was liquid and the world was tight and the world was a furnace and the world was moving and the world was slipping and the world was exploding and the world was ending and the world was ending and the world had ended.

There's lots of humour which often derives from situations and quirky characters as well as some brilliant imagery:

The vehicle my friend had deployed to transport us to Delhi was a Second World War truck converted into a bus. [] It had a snout. Slightly open, as if it was having trouble breathing. A recent paint job  blue  that could not conceal its age. Fat round tyres with no tread on them. And two-by-two seats running its length along a narrow aisle.

The colonel examined it like a horse, walking all around it and feeling its flanks. He even tried the doors, opening and shutting them. As if lifting skin flaps to check gums.

He said, We used to have a couple of these in the regiment in the fifties. Solid fellows. They served Monty well at Alamein.

Should they be on the road? I asked hopefully.

In a museum, in a museum, he said, This should be in a museum.

But in India we know everything that should be in a museum is out on the roads being abused. From ideas to artifacts to buildings. People too, actually.

I said, Colonel sahib, will it make it to Delhi?

All the characters are lovingly and convincingly drawn: the husband, with his deprecating and often mocking self-perception; Fizz, in her vulnerability, integrity, innocence and sweetness; Catherine, a sexual parallel in the past, described with astonishing insight and understanding. The secondary personalities provide colour and depth to the story, reflecting India's complex and diverse melting pot.

Conclusion
There is so much to say about Alchemy that I cant possibly do it justice here, except to say that it has immense power and is hard to put down; moving, funny, erotic and satirical, it catches you in its momentum so that when its over all you can do is go Wow!

The book has been enormously successful in Europe and should be released in the US some time this month. Readers who enjoy contemporary Indian literature are likely to get really passionate about this one.

Look out for it in the bookstores!

Prema.Karma.Artha.Kama.Satya. These forms the sections and essence of Tarun Tejpal's first literary work. He is a major contemporary editor and publisher and well known for his uncompromising journalism in carrying out the most controversial sting operation (Tehelka in the March of 2001) that exposed the corruption in the Indian Defence Ministry.

The Alchemy of Desire has many intertwined layers: the role of sexual attraction in love, the role of love in desire, the struggles of the emerging writer, past shadowing the present and its aftermath, the problems of India at the turn of century.

The narrator fulfils his desires of being a writer by working passionately on a novel with different subjects at different stages; his all other desires find solace in his wife's (Fizz) mind.body.soul. But soon the sound writer senses that his writing is unsound, leaving him deeply restless. Hence the couple's nomadic quest ends with an ancient worn-out country home in the lower Himalayas. During renovations of the new home a chance discovery of set of old diaries written by an American woman Catherine triggers a strange weight, and the man finds himself irresistibly drawn away from his wife and forced into another world and time. Slowly he begins to uncover dark secrets and finds himself all alone engulfed by the remains of his life without the presence of his one and only Fizz.

The novel celebrates the Indian ness that's contemporary and sharp and is poetic in descriptions of simple things: bus & bicyle rides, walks, talks, balconies, drives on mountain roads, the usual politics at the newspaper office where the narrator works, the struggles with writer's block and the daily business of life in general. Another aspect of Tejpal's art that is appealing is his narrator's capacity to make imperious statements like "Words cannot forever supplant living" or "Only one venom poisons all people - the urge to own" or "Life lived versus Life calculated" or "There is nothing so grand that will not soon perish" or "In the peculiarly false way great fiction/love is true" and the novel's initial lines "Love is not the greatest glue between two people. Sex is." turn into a suitable concluding observation: "Sex is not the greatest glue between two people. Love ... " marks for a perfect closure. Tejpal succeeds in revealing undertones of every character including the narrator but leaves him without a name, a new different stroke indeed.

The explicit sexuality is perhaps unusual for novels from India and definitely unusual if it's slightly over done, which is the case here. With the amalgamation of past and present there are lot of characters that instead of providing a clear picture, leaves it a little unclear.

Tejpal excels in turning his hand to fiction making it an ambitious work by and large, only if the ambition was discreet by and large.

The nameless protagonist starts the book with "Sex is the greatest glue between two people!" He describes his love life and sex life (Prema - Love), his struggle to be a writer because he wants to write an epic, a book of mythic proportions and not about small things! He is also trying to hold a job (Karma _ Duty). Then he gets the windfall (from his alienated and dead Grandma). (Artha - Money). From this money they buy a house built in the colonial times in the mountains and start renovating it. Now another windfall! The journals of a white woman who once lived in that house are discovered. The author becomes obsessed both with the contents and its author and is alienated from his wife. The journals contain the detailed descriptions of the woman's childhood, her love and sex life and finally her possessiveness of her married lover and where it leads her. Her journals also contain her gay husband's life and sex life etc. (Desire - Kama). In the final chapters, the author finds the missing pieces of the puzzle (not found in the journals) by talking to people whose parents either were her employers or lovers. Now that he is done with the journals and found good material for the book, he has time for her and ready to reconcile with her. He ends the book with "Love is the greatest glue between two people!" (Satya - Truth). Like all great truths this realization comes only after much lust, loss and struggle. Of course! The windfalls helped him. It would have been better to have a name for the hero whose journey ends with the realization that it is not Sex, but Love, which is the glue between two people.

I found the writing about the house and the mountains very good. The protagonist when struggling to be a writer trashes two books he has written, but not only after letting the readers know the stories, but also repeatedly bringing them up in other contexts which I thought was totally unnecessary and irrelevant. Just like a dish, which is too spicy, or a cake with too much icing, there is too much sexual explicit material all through the book. The details are more graphic from a man's perspective, but when it comes to the woman, it is more in clichés, for e.g., "she served a dish fit for a king" etc.

Last but not the least, I disagree with the statement I found on the front cover of the hardback edition. "At last - a new and brilliantly original novel from India." I don't think this is the first brilliant and original novel. There have been others. What about the book by Ms. Roy? In many ways, she was the first one to come out of the closet and dared to call "a spade a spade". Since then there have been more brilliant and original books from India and Indian Diaspora.

If you can put up with some excesses, it is a good read, but I think some parts are more comprehensible if you are familiar with Indian history and politics.

I have known Tarun's journalistic work for over a decade, and it was exciting to see a veteran of journalism trying his hand on fiction.

I must say that it was the sexual passion of his book that made me take up this wonderfully narrated "Alchemy of Desire" since I had just finished reading "The Couples" by John Updike (Economist said on his obituary that he wrote mostly 'salacious literature'.... how prudish these Britisher's can be? I wonder how they breed) and "158 Pound Marriage" by John Irving, and I wanted to dialate in lust(I am using more of lust since i also read a pro LUST book by British Philosopher Simon Blackburn)for some more time.

But the book was much more than all those graphic sexual narration, 'eating' instead of 'doing' and all. And I found that he beats both John's in his dscription. I had recently visited Almora and lower Himalayan places and I was surprised by his sharp observation of places and life, infact those hills made me so nosatlgic and out of air that I also read I. Alan Sealy's "The Everest Hotel"

I don't want to write the story itself but the way it has been written has reminded me some of the great essays and narrative fiction.

A worthwhile reading for somone who really relisesh...written words...hills ...musing on forgotten love.....

Bhole

On a flat marble slab, in a thick black Gothic style, busy with curlicues, was engraved: "Who can ever hold the essence of fire? Who can ever know the alchemy of desire?" Below it was written: "Catherine of Gethia, wife of Syed, daughter of John. Died 1942."--From the final chapter.

In The Alchemy of Desire, Tarun J. Teipal, who lives with his wife and younger daughter in New Delhi, has written a stunningly original novel. Containing torrid homilies on hedonism, and bristling scenes of erotic passion, the story skates dangerously over the thin ice of pornography, threatening to sink into its brackish waters.

Indeed, moralists will brand The Alchemy of Desire an obscene work--not a story to be read aloud in genteel society. Others will argue that Teipal's literary artistry lifts it above the crude and the common, thereby confirming the truth of Nietzsche's aphorism, "What is done out of love always happens beyond good and evil."

But therein lies the rub. One of the key relationships portrayed in this novel happen not out of love but out of a demonic obsession to squeeze the last drop of pleasure out of besieged and battered flesh. The frenzied, desperate pursuit of sensual delight is doomed to failure:

"But pleasures are like poppies spread, / You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed; / Or like the snow falls in the river, / A moment white--then melts forever; / Or like the borealis race, / That flit ere you can point their place; / Or like the rainbow's lovely form / Evanishing amid the storm."--Robert Burns, "Tam O'Shanter: A Tale."

The unnamed protagonist (let's dub him "T.T" or "The Fool") is enchanted with Fiza ("Fizz"). Theirs is a beautiful relationship, one in which true love and desire meet in harmony. She encourages him in his attempt to write The Great Indian Novel, but he experiences writer's block and consigns one failed work to the waters of a lake and the other to the fireplace flames.

T.T. and Fizz move to Delhi, where T.T. finds a job as a subeditor for a newspaper and Fizz is employed as a proofreader and researcher for a publishing firm. They struggle financially, but are supremely happy in their reciprocal love.

In a seemingly fortuitous turn of events, T.T. becomes the heir of a fortune, a financial windfall that allows him and Fizz to purchase a sprawling old house situated 5,438 feet high in the foothills of the Himalayas. As they work to renovate the estate, they believe it will be the perfect place to embody their perfect love.

But then, as in the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, fate knocks at the door. "The Fool" (for that is what we must now call T.T.) discovers a cache of long-abandoned diaries, 64 identical tan-leather notebooks packed into a wooden chest, in four stacks of 16 each. They are the erotic diaries of the previous owner of the estate, a beautiful American woman named Catherine.

Over the next six months The Fool becomes obsessed, night and day, with deciphering the wordwheels of the diaries. His desire for Fizz dwindles and she, rightly feeling ignored and rejected, packs up her bags and leaves. For the next three and a half years, The Fool immerses himself in his "magnificent obsession," slowly deteriorating in body and mind, possessed by Catherine's nightly incubus.

A servant wisely tells The Fool, "Men must know the difference between gold and brass, or be forever doomed." Slowly but surely, The Fool sees the skull beneath the skin, the serpent in the garden, the decay inherent in the act of creation.

At first intriguing, the story within a story--the various encounters between Catherine and her lover, an Indian named Gaj Sigh, described in the leatherbound notebooks--begins to pall. The fascination of their frenzied couplings becomes banal; the chemistry of their unbridled sexuality ends in ennui.

One thinks of Schopenhauer's arresting theory, in "The World As Will and Representation": "Life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain [the emptiness and suffering caused by need] and boredom [the satiety following the quenching of desire], and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents."

As The Fool wipes the dust off of his neglected typewriter, he senses the presence of his returning muse: "I rolled a sheet of paper through the smooth platten of the Brother, put the quivering tips of my fingers on the shining black keys, and began to hammer. The clacks ran out like rifle shots. Sex is not the great glue between two people. Love ..."
The Fool, let's now call him The Wise Man, has begun to write The Great Indian Novel. And, as a working title, he may even have called it "The Alchemy of Desire."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tarun J. Tejpal has been a journalist for 23 years. He is the founder of Tehelka.com, a news-and-views magazine that has garnered worldwide acclaim for its journalism. Previously, he was editor of India Today and managing editor of Outlook, one of India's premier newsmagazines. He has also written for several international publications, including The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and Prospect. In 2001, Business Week declared him among the fifty leaders at the forefront of change in Asia. His older daughter studies at Hampshire College, Amherst, while the younger lives with him and his wife in New Delhi.

This book is one of the best I have read in my life. The way the author tells everyone's story is superb. The erotic content so vivid and so classy at the same time.

Yes, it could have benefited from some editing and yes, it did drag a bit a third of the way through but then the narrative began to gel and by the time we are reading Catherine's journal, the dovetailing plot and philosophical underpinning is clear. A masterful trip thru contemporary Indian history and a fascinating dissection of human desire, most notably sexual desire, but also ambition, power, greed and control.

You'll have to stick with the book, but the ride is definitely worth it.

I may be jumping the gun in writing this review before I have finished the book but in all honesty I don't know if I will be able to. I am about half-way through and am exhausted by the sheer wordiness of the story. This novel would have benefited from some judicious editing, especially in the overly detailed descriptions of landscape, architecture, secondary characters, etc. There is an overuse of words and expressions that only someone familiar with India would be familiar with and the inclusion of the "story within a story" that he ended up discarding was totally unnecessary. There is minimal character development of Fizz other than being the receptacle for the main character's constant and abiding lust (I haven't gotten to the part where this ceases). If I do finish the book I will come back and amend the review. LATER: OK, I've finally finished the book, and the only amendment is the deduction of a star - the site won't let me change to a 2-star rating, but there you are! Wish I had back the hours spent muddling through this mess!