Dark Room

I suppose this blog is going the way of most - I haven't posted anything in a week. I've actually made two batches of beer since I last posted, and another sign of progress - I've finally broken (temporarily, I'm sure) the fatal hold P.G Wodehouse had exerted and now have a new obsession - R.K. Narayan. I came across him at random at the library, where somebody sharp and kind had turned a collection of his short novels face out at the end of the aisle. Narayan is one of these kooks who seem set on recreating a particular patch of the world, with all its inhabitants, in fictional form. This is a funny thing to do - I have no idea how it benefited James Joyce to make somebody like me feel I understand an entire city-full of 1904 people, or what advantage Narayan derives from my delight in Malgudi, but I'm happy he bothered.

"Swami and Friends" is a great classic schoolboy story of friendship, jealousy, hatred, daring, despair, bravery, all on the 12-year-old scale (i.e., about 10 times life-size). "The Bachelor of Arts" revolves around a young man's obsession with a young girl, but the relationship that killed me most dead in this book was that between the boy and his father. "The Dark Room" is about a painful situation - the abject slavery of a woman in her marriage with a callous husband - and ends in despair, more or less, but is so vivid that tragedy is eclipsed by pragmatic considerations, such as how to commit suicide; failing that, how to avoid entanglements; failing that, how to find a place outside of the home of her marriage; failing that, how to find enough rice to live. And how to leave young children in the care of an uncaring man; failing that, how to surrender. It's a great book! Still, I didn't name either of the last two beers 'Dark Room' - that would certainly have made them too bitter. Instead I made Swami IPA last weekend and Bachelor of Arts IPA today, and named this post Dark Room. I am unlikely to make an English Teacher ale next weekend, but only because all my carboys are full.