THE GOLDEN GATE. [Paperback]

Vikram. Seth (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: NY: RANDOM HOUSE. 1986; Advanced Reader's Copy edition (1986)
• ISBN-10: 0394746139
• ISBN-13: 978-0394746135
• ASIN: B000N2DKHU
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

93 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This amazing book, October 3, 2004

By 

Robert Elgie (Ajax, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Golden Gate (Hardcover)

It is enough to share this unsigned sonnet that I found written by hand inside the copy of this fine novel that I signed out of the Toronto Public Library:

Dear friend, don't be intimidated
By this, a novel penned in verse:
Perhaps you have anticipated
That it will be obscure or worse --
Solemn, pretentious, and "poetic".
Relax! You'll need no anaesthetic.
Our author tells his tale with style
And wit and charm. Before long, I'll
Bet, you'll find yourself engrossed in
Each stanza of this narrative
Of love and lust, of take and give,
Of modern times. Let's drink a toast in
Honour of the nerve it took
To publish this amazing book.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Tribute to The Golden Gate, October 5, 2003

By 

Maheen Mohammed (Karachi, Pakistan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Golden Gate (Paperback)

"Imitation is," they say, "the best
Form of flattery." And so my
Short and humble poem does attest
To my having heaved a sad sigh
On the last page - No more Golden Gate!
Oh What a genius, that Vikram Seth!
He wrote of friendship, love, and life,
Betrayals, love affairs, and strife.
Sex, politics, and other issues-
Yet all the while maintaining rhyme.
So read this book, it's worth the time.
It's sad - you might just need some tissues.
If you liked my rhyme even a bit
Hear this: Compared to Vik's it's ****!

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anne Tyler walzing with Pushkin... a surprise, a delight, December 6, 2001

By 

Daryl Anderson (Trumansburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Golden Gate (Hardcover)

This book is one of a nearly extinct breed: a novel in verse. In that form lie its unique pleasures as well as its uncertain reception at some hands.

The poet James Merrill, in his epic trilogy "The Changing Light at Sandover" has claimed that "forms what affirms". Does this mean that the satisfaction of the novel can only come if the line-breaks are reliably marginal? Linguists Whorf and Sapir have suggested that language constrains our thought - not so much in the realm of vocabulary as, again, in that of form. The radically different forms of, for instance, Hopi or Inuit constrain "what is relatively easy to say" and hence, what is said. Perhaps so. You'd expect that rhyming sonnets would constrain the voice of a novelist, but Vikram Seth has certainly shown here that is not necessarily the case. Chalk it up to a mastery of both form and story, though, not to versification. His technical skills extend to both realms.

Moving, then, beyond form, we wonder about content of such a novel. Will the book wander (or waltz) into the deeply allegorical, the disconnected, the imagistic? After all, aren't those the consequences of poetic license? Have you read your Ashbery? Oddly, this poem is quite prosaic in that regard, it tells a tight, comprehensible story in a manner that is fluid but not embroidered. (By way of contrast, consider that you can easily find yourself spinning away in a vortex of magical metaphor in the latest Rushdie.) Novels, it would seem, are pretty much what we make of them. As one who has never really appreciated the modernist redesign of the novel, I found "The Golden Gate" to be a much more satisfying story - notwithstanding its several-hundred sonnets.

The book is a well-textured story about a number of folks living their lives and relationships - apparently in the 80's. (Some reviewers have made much of the story's use of timestamped phraseology such as the use of "yuppie" and the like. Perhaps. But I'd imagine that the term "Okie" was equally a well-understood, sometimes overloaded, term of the 30's which we, nevertheless, can comfortably accept from Steinbeck.) The lives, loves and trials of these folks are presented with the careful painting and pacing of Anne Tyler and J. R. Lennon.

Seth's verse in this book has been called "masterful". It is, indeed. Consider that the odd rhyme is hardly ever at hand for most of us, much less available when called upon, as he was, thousands of times. But Seth is more than a rhymer - something I noticed by contrast. I'm pretty sure the sonnet scheme he uses is the so-called "Pushkin rhyme." I only know this since I just struggled through a marginal translation of "Eugene Onegin" and noticed the similarity. But the sing-songy'ness of the Pushkin was gladly lacking in the Seth. He uses true poetic craft, line breaks and punctuation and word choice, to allow the reader to flow between a fluid, songlike verse and a more prosaic tale-telling. In other words, he uses the strengths of both forms when they serve, best, the needs of the work and the reader.

So. Don't be afraid of the form. But also don't expect it to seem natural unless you have seen it before. I came to this book via a recommendation of Tom Disch in his essays in "The Castle of Indolence" (a 5-star plug there), and from a background in having sought out and read quite a number of long poems, epic poems and verse novels.

If you taste this book more out of curiosity than experience, good for you! But grant yourself the time to bounce through the first dozen sonnets in the singy-songy phrasing that so many of us learned to be necessarily poetic many years ago. Then, as the story captures you, you will notice that the verse, with the help of Seth's subtle crafting, both lifts and disappears beneath the story. I'll read it again, and again.