The Comedy of Misreading in the Fiction of R.K. Narayan Susan Lever [This article was published in R.K.Narayan: Critical Perspectives edited by A.L. McLeod,New Delhi: Sterling, 1994. pp. 77-85 ] In Joseph Furphy's Australian novel Such is Life, the narrator meets a boundary rider living with his wife and daughter in the isolated west of New South Wales. 1 Rory O'Halloran has difficulty identifying the few trees in his paddock, but impresses the narrator with his expertise on the Presidents of the United States and the laying of the Transatlantic telegraph cable. When the narrator visits Rory's hut he finds that his only reading matter is a Dictionary, a Bible, a complete works of Shakespeare and an 1865 volume of Macmillan's Magazine. Of course, this volume of Macmillan's includes articles on the American Presidents and the Transatlantic telegraph. Though Rory is not on speaking terms with his own wife, with the help of the Dictionary, he has written a perfectly-spelt treatise on Woman, based on a comparison of the women of the Bible with Shakespeare's heroines. Furphy's character serves as a salutory example to all critics who are about to embark on an interpretative essay: there is nothing more absurd than the expert who does not allow limited information about his or her subject to interfere with a theory which claims to comprehend all aspects of the matter in hand. This lesson must be taken to heart particularly by the critic who wishes to offer a paper on a writer from another culture. In a sense, of course, we are all Rory O'Hallorans interpreting the universe on the basis of the few aspects of it which have attracted our attention. But an Australian critic, like myself, reading the fiction of an Indian writer, such as R.K. Narayan, ought to be aware that sheer ignorance may create certain comic pitfalls--that the task of critical interpretation may well become a comic role. When Western critics write about the work of Narayan they are likely to mention the way in which he has made the English language and a European literary form, the novel, seem Indian--at least, to Western readers. They are likely to comment that Narayan's achievements lie in the use of one cultural medium to convey the atmosphere of a quite different culture. They might be inclined to marvel, too, that Narayan's Indian fiction seems not so much exotic as familiar to readers from these different cultures--as if some kind of conjuring trick has occurred whereby Malgudi and its people are as recognisable as, say, London and its streets. Sita Kapadia's account of her 1Joseph Furphy Such is Life chapter II (Sydney: The Bulletin, 1903). 2 American students reading Narayan confirms that this Western response to the fiction is widespread. 2 Nevertheless, it surprises me that many readers, who know nothing about India, feel confident that they understand what Narayan says to them and are not assailed by doubts that they may be misreading. At the most, there may be some hesitancy about the moments when Narayan's writing leaves the conventional realist account of experience, those religious or mystical moments when his characters are lifted out of the everyday world by some intimation of a greater existence--for example, when the vendor of sweets crosses the river under the guidance of the image-maker or the maneater of Malgudi emerges as more demon than man. But these moments can be shrugged off as part of the exotic Indian culture. It is, I suppose, an expected difference rather than a challenging one. Somehow Narayan convinces his foreign readers that they have the power to read the signs he offers them. So it is all the more surprising that, often, his characters fail to understand the messages they give each other. The comedy in Narayan's fiction is often a comedy of misunderstanding, in particular a failure of one character to read the language of another, or a reading of that language which is ultimately fanciful to the point of absurdity. Misreading is everywhere in Narayan's fiction, and I want to argue that it operates within several frames: that not only is the subject of the fiction often the misreading of events and characters by another character, but that Narayan also presents the writer as a reader (and possibly misreader) of event and character, and that, at the outer frame, the reader of Narayan's fiction would do well to acknowledge the incompleteness of any reading of the text. Let me begin by describing the way in which misreading serves two of Narayan's best-known stories--'A Horse and Two Goats' and 'An Astrologer's Day'. 3 In 'A Horse and Two Goats' a poor and very old Tamil peasant sits by the roadside tending his goats when a passing American's van runs out of gas. The American decides he wants to buy the mud horse under which Muni sits. After quelling his initial fears, Muni believes that the American wants some conversation and then that he wishes to buy the two goats. Muni speaks in Tamil, the American in English, and they misinterpret gestures 2 Sita Kapadia 'R.K. Narayan: The Endearing Voice', Conference on R.K. Narayan and Commonwealth Fiction in English, Mysore, January, 1992. 3 These stories are published in A Horse and Two Goats (Mysore: Indian Thought Publications, 1970)and An Astrologer's Day and other stories (Mysore: Indian Thought Publications,1964). 'A Horse and Two Goats', 'Annamalai' and 'A Breath of Lucifer' also appear in Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (London: Heinemann, 1985) page references are to this edition. Page references for The Vendor of Sweets are to the Penguin edition (London: 1967). 3 as well as speech. The obvious clash comes from the two cultures--Muni being the poorest member of the tiniest village in India, the American being a New Yorker whose immediate problem is gas for his car. In this story the American's assumptions about Muni and the horse are based on stereotypes of the exotic, while Muni has sat under the horse so long, and known its history so much that he cannot see it as a desirable (or saleable) piece of property. On the other hand, Muni's immediate reaction to the Westerner is to regard him as a figure of authority. The story, I think, offers some gentle criticism of the American while it laughs at both characters. The American talks about technology--power failures and television sets--and he interprets Muni's account of the history of the horse as 'sales talk'. The surprising thing is that despite the fact that the Western reader of this story knows the world of the American best, she or he will be inclined to see the encounter through Muni's perspective. Because Narayan carefully builds up our understanding of the details of life for the Tamil peasant, we are forced to look at this American with new eyes, in effect to look at ourselves and our own assumptions. Yet the story does not satirise Westerners. It suggests that the misunderstandings are based on an essential goodwill and a common inability to control the conditions of life--after all, the American has come to India because a power strike on the hottest day in New York has sent him to look at another civilization. Even Westerners are not immune from the failure of technology. In 'An Astrologer's Day', the astrologer earns his living by reading the lives of others--a skill based on listening to their talk--but his great coup comes at the moment when he manages to read the life of the man he once tried to kill, while remaining safe in his role of astrologer. In this case, the ability to read conveys power and protection to the accurate reader, while the misreader can be sent away harmless. In this case the astrologer is most obviously a reader, but if he also appears to adopt a role like that of the writer, or storyteller, then that seems an appropriate image for Narayan's approach to writing. For it's possible to see him as teaching us to read the mysteries of other lives. There are numerous other examples of this pattern of reading and misreading in the short stories, but rather than list them I would like to draw attention to two firstperson stories where the figure who struggles to read, and never quite grasps the complete meaning of the signs, is the narrator, an autobiographical version of Narayan himself. In 'Annamalai' the narrator gives a history of his servant patterned around a series of postcards from the servant's village. Typically, the postcards begin with elaborate tidings of well-being and prayer only to end with a message of disaster and 4 plea for help. Annamalai knows that the relationship between events and words is a mysterious one and should not be taken for granted. He advises the narrator not to display his name in public, and is careful not to speak his own name unnecessarily. The literate narrator has difficulty interpreting the postcard messages for the illiterate Annamalai, and it seems that literacy gives him a different relationship to the world. Yet he recognises that Annamalai's realities--his family's problems in the village with sheep and sewing machines--have a meaning which cannot be fully explained in terms of legal documents or postcards. In this story, once again, the character who is most like the reader in technological knowledge and literacy has most difficulty in reading the signs. In 'A Breath of Lucifer' the narrator's difficulty in understanding or reading the life of another character, in this case the nurse, Sam, is dramatised by his lack of sight. Narayan tells us that this story is based on his own experiences after an operation on his eyes. 4 Here, the narrator is dependent on Sam until the bandages on his eyes can be removed. Everything he knows and can tell us about Sam comes from voices and interpretations of voices. The narrator tells us: Perhaps if I could have watched his facial expressions and gestures I might have understood or interpreted his worlds differently, but in my unseeing state I had to accept literally whatever I heard. (p.106) The attendant seems a miracle of helpfulness and kindness--disappearing and returning instantly with coffee, solicitous over every aspect of his patient's care. But the narrator can never get him to reveal the factual details of the stories he tells--which war did he serve in? In which campaign did a particular feat of bravery occur? Sam's stories operate on a level above such authenticating detail. At last, Sam's decision to celebrate both his own birthday and the removal of the patient's bandages ends in a new revelation about Sam. His scrupulous modesty disappears under the influence of alcohol and the narrator finds himself led out of the hospital into unfamiliar surroundings, while Sam appears to have entered completely into his war fantasies with the narrator playing the part of a wounded man. The narrator of this story is literally at the mercy of his character and, at the end, has become a character of Sam's fantasies. And the narrator is inclined towards fantasy, too. In his blindness, he imagines himself walking through strange geological formations, pillars of rock or mounds of cotton wool. In this story, the pattern of Narayan's narrator being a flawed reader of signs is more obvious than in other stories. 4 'A Breath of Lucifer: Prologue' in Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories, pp.102-5. 5 The blind narrator tells us not only what he knows, but the limitations of that knowledge. As readers we must trust our guide, but that guide, we are told, can never know the full meaning of what he tells. 'A Breath of Lucifer' is a comic story. Sam's account of his own likeness to Errol Flynn, or his congratulation of his patient for his tidy use of the W.C., even the disappearing drunken voice singing 'Has she got lovely cheeks? Yes, she has lovely cheeks' are very funny. Yet it is also a story which suggests a dark side to the situation--the 'breath of Lucifer' of the title. Where, in a story such as 'Annamalai', the narrator is in control of his own life if not that of his servant, in 'Breath of Lucifer' he is physically vulnerable. And imaginatively he is vulnerable, too. His vision of an immense pillar in his way suggests lewd carvings to Sam, so that the characters seem to be entering into each other's nightmares--one a result of blindness, the other from drunkenness. The story reveals that there are other modes, besides the comic, in which misreading can occur. Where the comedy in a story such as 'A Horse and Two Goats' or 'Annamalai' may come from the different levels of knowledge which the reader or characters possess, 'A Breath of Lucifer' recognises that a sense of security in that knowledge (however meagre or misplaced) allows us a comic perspective. It is when we feel that matters have gone beyond our control that darker ideas impinge. I want to read this story as an image of the reader/writer relationship. The reader is as blind as the narrator being led by Sam. We must trust Narayan--just as the narrator trusts Sam--but it is a very uncertain trust. What if Narayan is a liar, a drunkard, or a guide with a diseased imagination? The surprising aspect of Narayan's fiction is that we do trust him--that this very declaration of the limits of his own narration wins us. This is partly why Western readers feel so confident in Narayan's hands--India may be a mystery to us, but it is also a mystery to Narayan. He draws our attention to his problems of misreading, so that our own are not debilitating. Narayan's novel, The Vendor of Sweets, plays off misreadings of various kinds to achieve its comedy. The principal difficulty, of course, arises out of Jagan's inability to read his son, Mali. The differences between them come not simply from their ages, their educations, and their philosophies but also their perspectives on the world. And both Jagan and Mali have aspirations to be writers--Jagan's book on 'Nature Cure and Natural Diet' has been awaiting publication by Nataraj for years, and Mali tells his father that he is going to America to become a writer of novels. It is worth noting how often Narayan's characters are writers (or storytellers) of one kind or another because it is a sign of Narayan's self-consciousness about his own techniques--a novelist who 6 creates a monosyllabic poet as he does in The Maneater of Malgudi cannot be unaware of the formal demands of his craft. When Mali returns from the USA with a plan to manufacture a story machine, we might think that the novel has moved into the bounds of the ridiculous. But we can also see this story-writing machine as one of Narayan's images for the whole difficulty of reading and knowing the world. It is the moment when the novel seems to leave the familiar limits of realism behind--and it is also the moment when, I think, Narayan warns his readers that he also is a storyteller and cannot be held to the limitations of the obvious, known world. The story machine has four knobs--for characters, plot situations, climax and the fourth knob to find the right combination of these three and emotions. Characters are 'good bad neutral'; emotions comprise 'love, hate, revenge, devotion, pity' and so on. It is a wonderful joke for a writer whose characters simply do not operate to these simplicities--and a warning for the critic who wants to analyse Narayan's fiction into similar categories. If we need further evidence for Narayan's distrust of such mechanical approaches to literature, we might note that his essay 'A Writer's Nightmare' speculates along similar lines about a government ministry of story writing. 5 In The Vendor of Sweets the reader shares Jagan's perplexity and doubts about the story machine, and begins to abandon sympathy for Mali, whose view of the world is fundamentally mechanical and materialistic. We also learn that Grace has been the author of the postcards which Jagan has treasured as signs of his son's interest and concern in his well-being. Writing can be lies; stories can be misleading rather than insights into truth. There are other indications about the nature of reading in the novel. Jagan reads the Bhagavad Gita in his shop each day, even telling his staff that 'There is no such thing as reading this book finally; it is something to be read all one's life' (p.73); he relies for information on out-of-date reports like Poverty and UnBritish Rule in India, and his commitment to 'Nature and the Nature Cure' stems from hearing the 'word' from Gandhi in 1937. Jagan's bits and pieces of knowledge come together in a world-view which is both well-meaning and mistaken--his suggested cure for his wife's brain tumour appears cruelly inadequate, and his concern for simplicity does not prevent him from presiding over a successful sweet business. But we sympathise with Jagan's 5 In A Writer's Nightmare: Selected Essays 1958-1988, (New Delhi: Penguin, 1988) pp.68-71. 7 attempt to read the world, and his confusion when so many false messages are offered to him by his son. After Jagan's experiments in price-cutting his sweets, he meets the imagemaker/hair-dyer who takes him to the garden on the other side of the river. At this point in the novel, Jagan prepares to change from a maker of sweets and a gatherer of money into something else, to enter on a new life. The problem of the novel, the gap between a son and father, is not resolved by the events or activities of the characters; instead, it is accepted by Jagan as being irreparable. As well, he accepts his own inability to teach the world about pure water, spinning one's own cloth, reading the Bhagavad Gita and so on. There are two characters in the novel who serve to represent two kinds of greater understanding than Jagan's and whose advice Jagan accepts. The first is the wonderful cousin, who is a great reader of other people, managing to live entirely from his abilities as a flatterer and adviser on practical matters. He is a man of the business world, the commercial world of Malgudi. The second, of course, is the hair-dyer who was once an image-maker--and the cousin warns Jagan of this man's danger to enterprise. The second figure is rather more insubstantial than any other character in the novel. His appearance seems to introduce a supernatural element to the realistic fiction of the earlier part of the novel, and it may seem that it is changing its terms as the crisis of misunderstanding is resolved not by confrontation, reconciliation or mutual enlightenment for Jagan and Mali, but by Jagan's decision to move to another level of existence, a level at which his concern for the world--his business, his money, his ideas for implementing the Mahatma's precepts--no longer matter. At this point, it is as if the novelist is bridging two kinds of fiction, as well as two levels of existence. Yet this supernatural element is not out of keeping with Narayan's comedy of misreading. For the most difficult signs to read in his fiction are those which come from the world beyond the physical senses. In other stories, characters are beset by worries about the astrologer's predictions for wedding days, or by changes in the weather and what they portend. We all may have difficulty in reading other people, but reading the signs of that great drama beyond our control is a humbling experience for everyone--even the masterful reader of people, the novelist. And the problem of interpreting signs from the gods leads to argument and irresolution, which places all of Narayan's characters (including his narrators) in a comic universe. His characters may seize, as Jagan does, on one message from the sacred books, or from Gandhi, but fail to take into account other contradictory signs. 8 Even when in the realm of the supernatural on the other side of the river, Jagan and the hair-dyer discuss tax and its difficulties and we are told that, for all his scrupulousness about his staff, or his diet, Jagan has an habitual, instinctive and inexplicable uneasiness concerning any tax. If Gandhi had said somewhere, 'Pay your sales tax uncomplainingly,' he would have followed his advice, but Gandhi had made no reference to the sales tax anywhere to Jagan's knowledge.(p.83) In The Vendor of Sweets Narayan does not offer us enlightenment through the perspective of Jagan, as one can imagine some Western writers attempting to do. Jagan remains a flawed human being, just as unable to fathom the mysteries of human nature as he was at the beginning. He does not give up his responsibilities to the material world of commerce and ordinary life, but merely changes the balance so that the spiritual world will claim more of his attention. He does, of course, leave Mali to sort out his own problems, and recognises in him a spoilt boy--and that is in itself an achievement. But the novel does not follow a pattern of crisis and redemption; the novelist does not have an answer to the puzzles of human relationships, any more than Jagan's theories of natural cure can save the life of his wife. We are not dealing here with the Western, possibly Christian, realist tradition in which central characters learn some moral lesson, or receive some spiritual insight through experience. In Narayan's novel the novelist can read only so far and no further, because he, too, is part of the comedy of incomplete understanding. To the Western reader, some of Narayan's stories may seem artless accounts of the novelist's experiences among his fellow-inhabitants of Mysore/Malgudi. They may treasure them as transparent accounts of Indian life--as Graham Greene put it, of 'what it is like to be Indian'. 6 Though I would not wish to deny the pleasure which the fiction brings to readers who accept it in this way, one should also take due note of the frequency with which the metaphor of misreading is offered to us. Narayan is a writer who presents himself as the reader of character and events, but the meaning of these events and characters is not always clear. We are all, he suggests, likely to misunderstand and misinterpret not only each other, but the meaning of the world beyond our immediate experience, including and especially the world of the supernatural. Narayan has expressed distrust for academic approaches to literature, particularly mechanical ones along the lines of the story-writing machine. One can imagine the 6 Quoted on back cover of A Writer's Nightmare. 9 novelist being suspicious, or at least bemused, by the idea of an academic conference about his work. Critics can, however, take heart from the numerous invitations in his fiction to be wary and critical readers. The many writers and misreaders in his fiction signal to us that we are all participating in a comedy of incomplete knowledge.