Love in a Dead Language [Hardcover]

Lee Siegel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226756971 | ISBN-13: 978-0226756974 | Publication Date: May 15, 1999 | Edition: 1

Love in a Dead Language is a love story, a translation of an Indian sex manual, an erotic farce, and a murder mystery rolled into one. Enticing the reader to follow both victims and celebrants of romantic love on their hypertextual voyage of folly and lust-through movie posters, upside-down pages, the Kamasutra: Game of Love board game, and even a proposed CD-ROM, Love in a Dead Language exposes the complicities between the carnal and the intellectual, the erotic and the exotic and, in the end, is an outrageous operatic portrayal of romantic love.

"Rare is the book that makes one stop and wonder: Is this a literary masterpiece or do I need my head examined? But such is the alternately awe-inspiring and goofy thrall cast by Lee Siegel's Love in a Dead Language. . . . His work stands out as a book that is not simply a novel but its own genus of rollicking, narrative scholarship . . . it is just the cerebral aphrodisiac we need." —Carol Lloyd, Salon

"Immensely clever and libidinously hilarious. . . . [T]he most astonishing thing about Love in a Dead Language is its ingenious construction. Insofar as any printed volume can lay claim to being a multimedia work, this book earns that distinction." —Paul di Filippo, Washington Post Book World

"Now along comes Lee Siegel, who mixes a bit of Borges with some Nabokov and then adds an erotic gloss from the Kama Sutra to write Love in a Dead Language, a witty, bawdy, language-rich farce of academic life. . . . Whether it is post-modern or not, Love in a Dead Language is pulled off with such unhinged élan by Mr. Siegel that it is also plain good fun, a clever, literate satire in which almost everything is both travestied and, strangely, loved by its author." —Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

"Love in a Dead Language deserves space on the short, high shelf of literary wonders." —Tom LeClair, New York Times Book Review

1999 New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Philip Roth has done it. So have Updike and Nabokov. Now Lee Siegel joins the ranks of novelists who write novels that pretend not to be novels at all. Love in a Dead Language, for example, purports to be the work of one Professor Leopold Roth, and comprises both a translation of, and commentary on, the Kama Sutra, as well as the professor's more personal annotations concerning his amorous yearnings for one of his students. Siegel himself appears in a foreword, protesting vigorously that "I would never permit my name to be associated with a book such as this." This squeamishness is understandable when it becomes clear the entire purpose for this translation is to aid Roth in seducing young Lalita Gupta while leading a study group in India. Seduction, betrayal, and eventually death all follow on one another's heels; when Roth rather abruptly dies midway through the "translation," Siegel refuses to finish it and the task is left to a graduate student, Anang Saighal. So now we have yet another author who is not Siegel adding another layer of commentary to both Roth's professional work and his private journals--contradicting, criticizing, footnoting, while at the same time revealing details about his own unhappy life.

Though there's plenty of story in Love in a Dead Language--romance, transformation, and even a murder mystery--a magical delight in language in all its myriad forms is at its heart. From the academese of professional papers to the more intimate epistolary communications between friends, colleagues, husbands, and wives (letters between an earlier translator of the Kama Sutra, Richard Burton, and his wife--who later burned the translation--are included), Siegel--or is it Roth? or perhaps Saighal?--covers the gamut. Readers who love complicated plots, soaring language, etymological puzzles, and academic tomfoolery will have a ball with this playful instance of literary smoke and mirrors. --Margaret Prior

From Publishers Weekly

"General observations, copulation, seduction, marriage, adultery, prostitutes, and erotic arcana," the seven subjects treated by the Kamasutra, are also the motifs of Siegel's whimsical farce. Presented as the unscholarly annotated version of the Indian erotic lexicon as translated by deceased professor of Asian studies Leopold Roth, the novel interpolates the commentary of Roth's skeptical literary executor and former student, Anang Saigha, with notes from ancient translators of the text. Roth's Kamasutra bears little resemblance to the original Sanskrit. It is, in fact, a hymn to entirely uninterested college senior Lalita Gupta, whom Roth construes as the vessel for all his romantic, Eastern fantasies. Ditsy, foul-mouthed Lalita cares nothing about her parents' native land, but to Roth she is a goddess, repository of the East's erotic and spiritual wisdom. Half-mad with love, Roth carries Lalita off to India for a "summer study course" (she's the only pupil) and seduces her in a hotel at Khajuraho where a famed erotic sculpture stands. Upon their return to L.A., Roth is suspended from teaching, Lalita's parents charge him with rape, and his wife, SophiaAwomen's studies prof and chair of the sexual harassment committeeAdumps him. While inserts and footnotes heighten the absurdity (the book is dense with cartoons, Hollywood memorabilia, news clips and 19th-century travelogues), Siegel's criticisms of orientalization and exoticism are serious. And Roth has more than just Lalita on his mind: his daughter Leila was murdered at the age of 12, leaving Roth, his wife and Leila's twin bereft. This multifaceted novel is also a whodunit, for Professor Roth died no natural death. His body was found in his office, hit from behind with a Sanskrit-English dictionary. While this ribald romp, satire on Westerners' spiritual hunger and sendup of academia may prove too rarefied and serpentine for some tastes, others will find it a sophisticated treat.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226756971
• ISBN-13: 978-0226756974
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #905,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lee A. Siegel (born 1945, Los Angeles, California) is a novelist and professor of religion. He studied comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and fine arts at Columbia University. After receiving a D.Phil. degree in Indian Studies from Oxford University, he was hired as a professor of Indian religions at the University of Hawaii where he continues to teach. Siegel has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, a writer-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center, and a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Virtuoso Feat of Methodical Madness, October 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Love in a Dead Language (Paperback)

One of the most striking things about Love in a Dead Language is that it has, not one, but five, dedications. This is the first indication that this book is going to be something completely out of the ordinary. And it is.

The first dedication is from Lee Siegel, a professor of Indian religions at the University of Hawaii, the author of this very unusual book. The second is from the Hindu sage Vatsyayana, author the classic (and silly) treatise on love, the Kamasutra. Then there are also dedications from the novel's own cast of characters: Leopold Roth, a fictional professor of linguistics who attempted to translate the Kamasutra; Pralayananga Lilaraja, a medieval scholar; and Anang Saighal, and Indo-Jewish graduate student, who, according to this story, has just put the entire volume together.

After this rather unorthodox beginning, Love in a Dead Language just keeps getting better and better and more and more inventive. It is, reportedly, Roth's failed attempt at translation, along with his commentary. Together they form, not his own view of the Kamasutra, but rather his obsession with, and seduction of, a beautiful Indo-American girl, Lalita Gupta. (Yes, this is an allusion to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and it is not the only Nabokov allusion in this novel, all to the good.)

These two texts are accompanied by comments and footnotes from Pralayananga, also autobiographical, and Saighal, who completes the narrative after Roth is murdered when an unknown assailant hurls a Sanskrit-English dictionary squarely at his head.

Interspersed among this madness are extracts of Hollywood movie scripts about India, posters of Mira Nair's film, Kamasutra, a term paper complete with the teacher's notes and pages from a comic book Kamasutra (as if the original isn't comic enough). Then we have the real and imagined quotes from the real and imagined writers on India from various centuries, letters, including one from Siegel, and, most hilarious of all, bits and pieces from the memoirs of a ninety-five year old movie star which are, amazingly, dedicated to a porn actress. The above are already more surprises than almost any book packs, but Love in a Dead Language packs even more. A little more than halfway through, we must turn the book upside down, since one of the chapters is printed that way. Deliberately, of course.

Siegel's inventiveness and originality of style are not the only thing that distinguishes this book. His use of language is nothing if it is not brilliant and creative. Siegel masters so many styles and voices it's difficult to believe he created them all. There is the erudite academic, the barely-literate jock, the silly campus newspaper, the just-average student. Amazingly, Siegel writes parodic Hinglish, American slang and flowery Victoriana with equal style, wit and aplomb. The result is both hilarious and hysterical.

The book ends with a bibliography that is so convincing you will be tempted to take it seriously. Don't. It would only spoil the fun. And fun, above all else, is what this book is about. There are more jokes, puns, asides and riddles in this book than any one person can possibly mine. It is virtuoso feat of the highest order. A sweet, methodical madness that will leave you laughing so hard you'll find it difficult to keep on reading.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unfu-kin' Unbelievable Says Lalita!!, August 6, 1999

By 

"gideonrw" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love in a Dead Language (Hardcover)

I just finished Love in a Dead Language and pulled up the reviews to see the superlatives used to describe it. I was blown away at the poor reviews! Based upon the other reviews, it is clear that this book clearly isn't for everyone, but I found it erudite, challenging, engaging, laugh-out-loud funny and very entertaining. I couldn't put it down. With the weaving together of all the different authors/commentaries/texts/footnotes -- I kept asking myself if this was really fiction. Prof. Siegel should be praised and encouraged to do it again! I especially loved Saighal's scarcasm. Literary Reader: Do not be put off by the negatives. A fantasy world awaits you!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Clever, Funny, but Ultimately Illuminating, February 7, 2001

By 

Corinna Byer (Cullowhee, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love in a Dead Language (Paperback)

First, let me say that Lee Siegel's novel is something of a tour-de-force of cleverness and humor which will especially appeal to a reader who has spent any time in the world of academics. It may sound almost like a put-down that I didn't also mention how deep, or moving I found it, but that feeling has to come later, after one has already read this novel, had a chance to think it over, and considered the intensity behind its glibness.

The novel's format is rather ingenious; each chapter consists of a portion of character Leopold Roth's somewhat strange translation of the Kama Sutra, followed by a section of commentary, which is where the novel's real story occurs. All of this, however is footnoted, sometimes sarcastically, sometimes seriously, by one of Roth's assistants. It reads pleasantly and humorously, like a very strange, rather messed up academic collaboration. The story? Well, no problems with that either. Roth, an unappreciated professor of Indian religions, with a loving wife, and stable existence, also has a great obsession with India itself, which translates itself into a huge infatuation with one of his students, a beautiful, but decidedly sullen and uninteresting Lalita Gupta. Roth contrives and succeeds in getting her to go to India with him (long story), where he intends to seduce her. This is where the fun begins plot-wise, and I could go on for pages about Siegel's wonderful depictions of the beautiful contradictoriness of India and its people, and how it transforms the characters. Siegel's insight into human nature goes so far beyond what the clever humon of the book would allow its reader to believe, that I was stunned.

I won't give away how the book ends, but most reading this review already know that it ends somewhat tragically. But don't expect to be weeping at the turn of events: the book carries on with just the same hutzpah and humor, right until the very end. In fact, as I said before, it's only afterward that one starts to consider the depth behind the words, Roth's great disappointments, and the sadness of people who can never quite connect with each other. This can be enjoyed on many levels.