The long-presumed dead writer M. Das, is rumoured to have resurfaced in Calcutta, with a significant new body of work to his name.
Fledgling writer Robert Luczak is sent by his editor at Harper's Magazine to meet with the poet, to verify if the work is actually by M. Das' hand and to negotiate the purchase of the manuscript.
With his wife and new-born daughter in tow Robert travels to ancient Calcutta where it soon becomes apparent that there's more to the place than meets the eye.
And what the eye meets is already disagreeable enough; at the height of its raining season, with mountains of garbage and filth coating the streets, drenched sodden one moment, and baked dry by the searing summer heat the next; the place is a reeking dungheap, and a heaving sea of people, the uneducated and the destitute, swarm over every inch of it.
A city at its lowest point in decades, it has become a place of monstrous slums, and it's where Robert swears he can feel an evil intent simmering beneath the surface.
And when it turns out that the poet M. Das might well have been thought dead for a good reason, then that intent is given a name.
Kali.
Four-armed goddess of preservation and nature, and mother to all.
But she is also considered the goddess of death and destruction and the one to ultimately be the devourer of reality itself.
And Robert Luczak is running straight into her waiting arms.
Fledgling writer Robert Luczak is sent by his editor at Harper's Magazine to meet with the poet, to verify if the work is actually by M. Das' hand and to negotiate the purchase of the manuscript.
With his wife and new-born daughter in tow Robert travels to ancient Calcutta where it soon becomes apparent that there's more to the place than meets the eye.
And what the eye meets is already disagreeable enough; at the height of its raining season, with mountains of garbage and filth coating the streets, drenched sodden one moment, and baked dry by the searing summer heat the next; the place is a reeking dungheap, and a heaving sea of people, the uneducated and the destitute, swarm over every inch of it.
A city at its lowest point in decades, it has become a place of monstrous slums, and it's where Robert swears he can feel an evil intent simmering beneath the surface.
And when it turns out that the poet M. Das might well have been thought dead for a good reason, then that intent is given a name.
Kali.
Four-armed goddess of preservation and nature, and mother to all.
But she is also considered the goddess of death and destruction and the one to ultimately be the devourer of reality itself.
And Robert Luczak is running straight into her waiting arms.
----
"Her interest and belief in the supernatural had until now seemed non-existent. I had never even been able to interest her in the trashy Stephen King novels I would bring to the beach each summer."
Dan Simmons is one of my favourite writers and, so far, all his novels have been built with a consistent level of quality and craft. However, unfortunately Song of Kali isn't one of his better ones and I found that I had a few gripes when done with it. In the main, this is down to the negative portrayal of certain elements of the plot. Most of those have reasons for being depicted the way they are but one of them has come about because of a rather narrow-minded focus to it and it honestly doesn't merit much excusing or rationalising.
I'm referring to the malign force at the heart of the story, the goddess Kali. Or rather, that's what Simmons makes of her. She is clearly just demonized and there's no doubt about it. Her better aspects are forgotten or left at the wayside and there's no real mitigating factor here other than that this is how Simmons made chose to tell the story. Maybe he needed a villain, but then he's chosen to represent her in an extremely nebulous manner.
The other main problem is the novel's depiction of Calcutta, which has a reason for looking the way it does and I'll divulge that information in just a moment.
There are spoilers in this post at several points throughout, mostly because of inferring and hinting, but because I've written too much it's become hard to give a good cut-off point. I'll just put the disclaimer here and move on with the program.
The other main problem is the novel's depiction of Calcutta, which has a reason for looking the way it does and I'll divulge that information in just a moment.
There are spoilers in this post at several points throughout, mostly because of inferring and hinting, but because I've written too much it's become hard to give a good cut-off point. I'll just put the disclaimer here and move on with the program.
Outside of the book's themes and elements the writing felt a little austere, unlike Simmons' usual self.
He is usually a comforting writer, mainstream but rather more aware of himself, holding himself to a consistent standard, notable in its readability and yet, holding up to criticism. neither overly poetic nor overly workmanlike.
He is usually a comforting writer, mainstream but rather more aware of himself, holding himself to a consistent standard, notable in its readability and yet, holding up to criticism. neither overly poetic nor overly workmanlike.
Literary Influences
Simmons is a clever writer who loves putting his literary influences on his sleeve and it's pleasant to see that this element has been present in his work since this, his first outing; Song of Kali. The main character is, like Simmons at the time of writing, a beginning writer and editor of a literary magazine with only a small volume of poetry under his belt. Simmons himself sold his first short story in 1982, coincidentally, on the birthday of his daughter, 3 years before the release of Song of Kali.
As Simmons notes in the early pages of the novel; decent, rational people who one used to be able to have memorable intellectual conversations with are reduced into cooing halfwits by the birth of their child. And as it is with those people, so it is with Simmons' first novel as you'll notice when reading that Luczak's little baby Victoria is an ever-present gurgling, burbling and drowsing entity. Also, she's very relevant to the plot.
The various other characters found throughout the novel have, at the very least, a passing acquaintance with the world of literature, occasionally throwing in observations and opinions on various writers and famous works of literature, occasionally tying them into India and its culture. p37:
As Simmons notes in the early pages of the novel; decent, rational people who one used to be able to have memorable intellectual conversations with are reduced into cooing halfwits by the birth of their child. And as it is with those people, so it is with Simmons' first novel as you'll notice when reading that Luczak's little baby Victoria is an ever-present gurgling, burbling and drowsing entity. Also, she's very relevant to the plot.
"I quit in disgust when a fool of a professor would not accept my paper on Walt Whitman's debt to Zen Buddhism..."
But not all writers need to be tied into the setting, sometimes there's a little time for the occasional absentminded barb. p52
It's not a literary novel if the author can't at least throw a barb at a writer he doesn't respect. That it's Stephen King here is ironic, of course, as that gentleman's generous cover quotes grace (or deface) many a Simmons novel.
Most interestingly though, the novel is a homage to Rabindranath Tagore and has more than passing reference to the work of William Butler Yeats, through whose work Simmons likely became acquainted with the former.
Rabindranath Tagore, or Thakur, was an Indian writer, and the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature, specifically for his Song Offerings, which is a selected collection of songs or hymns, much in the same vein as the Biblical Song of Solomon, that were previously published in other volumes in India (the largest part of Song Offerings is comprised out of selected songs from Gitanjali). Written in complete isolation and tranquility on a houseboat, they were subsequently translated to English from his native Bengali by Tagore himself. They were carried with him on his visit to Britain where it was passed to W. B. Yeats who promptly fell in love with it.
It was he who, also generously, graced it (this time without a doubt) with an introduction that might just have been a tad overselling it.
It was he who, also generously, graced it (this time without a doubt) with an introduction that might just have been a tad overselling it.
"I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me."
Whatever your opinion, it was Yeats whose glowing praise introduced Tagore's work to the west.
As you might gather from the quote, the songs/poems are idealistic and uplifting, despite having undertones of loss which are a reflection of Tagore's own. Throughout the novel we are regaled with the events of his life at several points.
Oddly then, it skimps on mentioning something quite important; the death of Tagore's wife and children in 1902 (yes yes, the house boat thing was earlier, but I've got everything hopelessly muddled at this point). Tagore suffered this tragedy and it's easy to see, when read, how this might have influenced Song of Kali's story, but the real reflection lies in Tagore's (and Robert Luczak's attitude towards their loss; even with their pain and their loss, there is still, once past the focal point of the horror in their respective lives, a renewal of hope and self-love; Yeats' 'self-delighting, self-appeasing, self-afrighting' spirit. Love for life itself.
The quote (p 301) comes from Yeats' A Prayer For My Daughter. Witten at her birth, it is full of hopeful and well-wishing sentiment, but this part of the prayer has undertones of tragedy and loss, swiftly followed by hope and self-love, mirroring the arch of the main characters in Song of kali.
Yeats' doom-laden Second Coming poem is also quoted before the climax, but after the worst has already happened. Simmons has a penchant for a good quote, applicable to his own work.
More than that however, he weaves it straight into his narrative, and the poem's bleak prophesying of an apocalyptic future further strengthens, and maybe only because of its inclusion, the tense build-up of the final parts. The suspended breath before the storm, but it's a storm that does not materialize because just like where Tagore's Song Offerings acknowledge the coming end of life, they also acknowledge and, more importantly, hold on to the love for life in and for itself.
Where the song of Kali, in the novel, is one of coming death and destruction, Simmons, after having put us to misery and death, offers up the idealism of Tagore by ending the story with (p 311):
-----
Like in every novel that Dan Simmons delivers, there's been extensive research into the background of the various elements of the novel, as with Tagore, so it is with the city of Calcutta.
However; something that's been noted often and a ready point of contention, is its depiction.
It's the novel's greatest strength and at the same time, its greatest problem.
But you see, the city as it is depicted by Simmons isn't exactly a false depiction. It's in fact a time-period chosen exactly to suit the plot.
As you might gather from the quote, the songs/poems are idealistic and uplifting, despite having undertones of loss which are a reflection of Tagore's own. Throughout the novel we are regaled with the events of his life at several points.
Oddly then, it skimps on mentioning something quite important; the death of Tagore's wife and children in 1902 (yes yes, the house boat thing was earlier, but I've got everything hopelessly muddled at this point). Tagore suffered this tragedy and it's easy to see, when read, how this might have influenced Song of Kali's story, but the real reflection lies in Tagore's (and Robert Luczak's attitude towards their loss; even with their pain and their loss, there is still, once past the focal point of the horror in their respective lives, a renewal of hope and self-love; Yeats' 'self-delighting, self-appeasing, self-afrighting' spirit. Love for life itself.
The quote (p 301) comes from Yeats' A Prayer For My Daughter. Witten at her birth, it is full of hopeful and well-wishing sentiment, but this part of the prayer has undertones of tragedy and loss, swiftly followed by hope and self-love, mirroring the arch of the main characters in Song of kali.
Yeats' doom-laden Second Coming poem is also quoted before the climax, but after the worst has already happened. Simmons has a penchant for a good quote, applicable to his own work.
More than that however, he weaves it straight into his narrative, and the poem's bleak prophesying of an apocalyptic future further strengthens, and maybe only because of its inclusion, the tense build-up of the final parts. The suspended breath before the storm, but it's a storm that does not materialize because just like where Tagore's Song Offerings acknowledge the coming end of life, they also acknowledge and, more importantly, hold on to the love for life in and for itself.
Where the song of Kali, in the novel, is one of coming death and destruction, Simmons, after having put us to misery and death, offers up the idealism of Tagore by ending the story with (p 311):
"The Song of Kali is with us. It has been with us for a very long time. Its chorus grows and grows and grows.
But there are other voices to be heard. There are other songs to be sung."
But there are other voices to be heard. There are other songs to be sung."
-----
There's a part in the novel where one character regales the others with a description of the last days of Tagore, and I'm not sure if we can take that at face value. The other native characters seem keen to drown the teller out, possibly to suppress less than desirable information to get out, but it is more likely rather, to stop erroneous, embellished information to get out.
It was my idea that Simmons had heard this story somewhere and, despite knowing it to be false, incorporated it anyway, to illustrate how stories grow and morph in the telling.
Letting it be regaled to us in the novel, doesn't have to mean that he stands behind the facts as they are told, as the other characters seem to protest against the telling, because they are also him.
Its inclusion is evidence of a rather sly sort of humour.
Simmons has a love of storytelling and an interest on how the tale alters with the telling. There's another part in the novel where we are told the story of a man in three whole chapters, with possible hints of the supernatural peppered throughout, but it could be that, showing one character to be an unreliable narrator, the other narrators might then fall under this as well. Maybe even the prime: Robert Luczak himself (The novel is in first-person past tense).
It gives rise to something I'll talk about later:
Explanations that negate, though with leeway to the contrary, every supernatural element in the novel, to root the story squarely in reality.
Another thing to note is that throughout these stories in specific and throughout the novel as a whole he also shows himself acutely aware of the problems that crop up between languages incorporating both the clash of world languages and the difficulties within a language's varied dialects.
Calcutta
Like in every novel that Dan Simmons delivers, there's been extensive research into the background of the various elements of the novel, as with Tagore, so it is with the city of Calcutta.
However; something that's been noted often and a ready point of contention, is its depiction.
It's the novel's greatest strength and at the same time, its greatest problem.
The city is so well depicted, so ever-present, towering over every scene like the backdrop of a theater production, and so memorably unique, it has become one of the characters in the novel (as much as I hate typing that cliché sentence, it conveys exactly what it accomplishes).
There is garbage and filth towering up at every street corner and clotting shut dark alleyways,
There is garbage and filth towering up at every street corner and clotting shut dark alleyways,
accompanied by an all-pervading smell of corruption and decay, it is swelteringly hot, loud and wild; a veritable human sea of sweat-matted flash, to be cooled only by downpours of biblical proportions.
It's impressive and memorable but there is an issue with this.
For many mainstream readers, this might be one of the first novels that gets you acquainted with India and its culture, it certainly was for me, and here is the problem I spoke of: Knowing nothing of India but the depiction of Calcutta presented to you in the novel, you could be forgiven for thinking India might just be an unmitigated hell-hole.But you see, the city as it is depicted by Simmons isn't exactly a false depiction. It's in fact a time-period chosen exactly to suit the plot.
On a yearly basis the months between June and September are the monsoon season where most of its rainfall happens in June and where maximum temperatures easily exceed 40 degrees (celcius, for you cretins in america) on a daily basis.
For historical Calcutta, now Kolkata, it is also one of the more clearly distinguishable times wherein the city suffers its greatest socio-economic woes in quite a while.
There's an enormous influx of destitute and low-schooled refugees from Bangladesh's Liberation War. who cause an incredible drain on the city's resources and which is hit by severe power outtages and is overal lacking in general infrastructure. Furthermore the city is plagued by severe worker strikes and suffers from violent insurrectionists.
Insurrections, because before the events of the novel in early 1977 the 'tyrannical' government comes to an end and is followed by what became the 'longest serving democratically elected government in the world'.
The populace was so fed up with its own government that it chose it's ultimate opposite, and more than that, it kept it like this for the longest time because everything was better than what was before.
It's an extreme response and clearly shows how deep the divide between rulers and the ruled was.
All these things manifest themselves, their consequences, in the immense squalor that Simmons puts at the forefront of his narrative, with filth and waste covering, seemingly, every square metre of the city and with slums on every other street, leaving the impression on the reader as if the city has been covered in a blanket, of garbage instead of snow.
Simmons puts his tale in one of the periods which serve the tale he wants to tell incredibly well, but which also serves to show the reader an incredibly negative snapshot of a culture and city which the overwhelmingly large amount of the readership might not have been familiar with.
More than that; through the benefit of hindsight, the novel presents a hopelessly negative point of view on the city in some of the worst straits it's ever been in.
In chapter 9 Robert meets with a mr Chatterjee, and discusses, among a host of pleasantries and mutual interests, the state of Calcutta itself.
Robert professes that he feels the city itself might have an evil undercurrent, as if the squalor has a singular source of supernatural intent. which is, through our bias as a reader looking for a supernatural horror element, readily acceptable.
However Chatterjee responds with disdain and, taking a book of his shelf, responds with a quote (p132):
which narrow and tortuous lanes curve and wind. There is no privacy here and whoever ventures in this region find the streets - by courtesy so called - thronged with loiterers and sees, through half glazed windows, rooms crowded to suffocation... The stagnant gutters... The filth choking up dark passages... The walls of bleached soot, and doors falling from their hinges... and children swarming everywhere, relieving themselves as they please.'
When asked by his host if this might be an accurate description of the Calcutta of 1977, Robert Luczak responds that, yes, indeed, the description is an apt one.
Mr Chatterjee then smiles and reveals the quote to be part of an account of London written somewhere around the 1850's.
Chatterjee, at this time in the book, with paranoia infecting both reader and Robert at this time in the book, is an unwelcome element of rational argumentation.
In hindsight, where we might want and expect supernatural horror, Chatterjee provides an alternative.
And time has proven mr Chatterjee reasoned pronouncements correct because today Kolkata is an economically thriving city. India's third city in terms of gross domestic product.
It's problematic in that it almost directly contradicts the novel's suggested premise of a malignant goddess of destruction, decay and violence having sway over the city.
40 years on, in a totally different Calcutta, now called Kolkata, it slaps a time-stamp on the novel that could be called malignant and xenophobe at worst, and giving an unfair view on the city through choice of an unfortunate time frame at best.
(The depiction of Kali as a solely destructive entity is also, of course, a very reductive view on the goddess but I've mentioned that before.)
It's not all doom and gloom though and I wanted to note that occasionally Simmons brings a comfortable and almost magical atmosphere in a scene to then, without much comment, introduce an element of life's many unpleasant truths.
To reflect that with life, comes death and despite of rationalizations, to have the joy that comfort brings usually means that there is someone or something paying a price for the option of having that comfort. He contrasts fleeting beauty with the messy everyday realities that humanity has to deal with on a day by day basis, in order to survive or to progress. It hints, much like the clipped information dumps of violent madness in America at the end of the novel, that none of this is unique to Calcutta and is more a symptom of the human animal's violently 'altering' presence in the world.
World Fantasy Award Winner
Alright, let's deal with the personal nitpick here. The most glaring problem I have with this one.
Published in 1985 it won the World Fantasy award the year after and, it also is nr 44 of the Gollancz' Fantasy Masterwork collection.
This is in spite of the fact that it's not actually a fantasy novel.
In 1986 there were a few other nominees for the award.
-The Dream Years by Lisa Goldstein, which is apparently a novel with surrealist overtones and time travel
-The Damnation game by Clive Barker, Faustian novel set in modern times
-The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, the tale of a vampire, apparently Rice writes well and I love the Interview movie
-Illywhacker by peter Carey, magical realism novel with humour
-Winterking by Paul Hazel, myth, gods and mystery set in scandinavia
As you can see, half of these are easily considered to be works of horror and in my book they should be instantly disqualified.
Illywhacker's synopsis tells me I should probably avoid this novel, even though it has some metafictional elements. And The Vampire Lestat (horror too right?) and Winterking are both sequel novels in a series.
Song of Kali is indeed accomplished and this is notable because it's a debut novel. It's obviously well-researched and its ending, especially if you know enough about its influences, is poetic.
Now, the eligibility of any given work to be considered for the world fantasy award hinges on a few things, but mainly it is up to the discretion of the judges and the nominators.
Broadly speaking: any work of fantastical fiction can be eligible, regardless of subgenre or style, though the wordcount always needs to be higher than 40 000 words. (it also needs to be published or at the very least translated into English but let's not get into that now. mainly because of personally preferring to read in English anyway and I don't have any actual beef with the rule other than to note it here and to say that it's a very non-all-inclusive stance to take.
So technically, as Song of Kali is horror, and horror being a subgenre of fantastical fiction in general, it was very much eligible for the award.
And yet, the very fact that Song of Kali is even here, whether it is as the world fantasy award winner or as an entry of the fantasy masterworks collection, rubs me the wrong way. If it's anything it's horror and it's fantastical elements are subtle and downplayed.
It's a good novel, absolutely. I love Dan Simmons.
But I have the sneaking suspicion that the big draw here with this book, for all these so-called judges of literary fiction, is that its fantastical elements are so marginalized and so easily explained and ciphered away. It's a novel that might as well have no fantasy in it, if you choose to view it so.
It is a singularly elitist stance to have, so dismissive of fantastical literature at large.
As I'm working on this already hugely lengthy post I'm reading the final chapters of the sprawling 'Providence' of Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows and I've hit this particular line of reasoning by the main character, the very heart of what I'm getting at.
As I'm working on this already hugely lengthy post I'm reading the final chapters of the sprawling 'Providence' of Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows and I've hit this particular line of reasoning by the main character, the very heart of what I'm getting at.
It's one of those things that irritates me by the exaltation of this type of fiction, the barely-slip-stream type of genre, where reality is mixed with almost less than a smattering of fantasy. Where it disassociates itself by sidelining all these supernatural elements, as if fantastical fiction is something to be looked down on by the literary elite.
More specifically, those who are responsible for the World Fantasy Award, as it is they who shouldn't proscribe to popular sentiment and adhere more to the 'Fantasy' element of the title.
And lastly, because I don't know how to quit: Wrapping up and thoughts of the novel's inclusion in the Terror 8.
Flat- out Spoilers for the plot.
Alright, alright: The little baby Victoria dies.
This little revolution in the plot is honestly quite unsurprising but it is remarkable to note exactly how Simmons subverts our expectations.
There's inklings in chapter one at what might happen. We're in a horror novel and a friend of the protagonist gives dire warnings not to go to the dreaded city where the protagonist is going but the protagonist goes anyway, and more than that; takes his wife and new born daughter with him.
Once arrived in the dreaded city, we are swiftly introduced to a cult, sprung up around a goddess who seemingly thrives on human sacrifice.
It's really not hard to see where the plot might be going.
But the thing is, nobody gets sacrificed.
Or at least, nobody gets explicitly, literally sacrificed.
The baby is kidnapped from her mother's room and consequently is missing for days.
As readers we expect Luczak to be summoned and to be privy to his daughter's sacrifice, or that Luczak will be summoned and then will be able to stop said sacrifice.
But the little baby is found in the custody of a couple trying to leave the country.
She's been dead for less than five hours and she is stuffed full of contraband jewels.
It's quite an unexpected denouement.
The calamity comes from simple, criminal, human greed and seemingly not from any supernatural source.
The events that follow; The couple returns to America and inevitably drift apart. Then Robert returning to India before halting himself on the cusp of committing a massacre, by the pounding of a goddess' will, can be explained away by mental instability after the death of his daughter and estrangement from his wife, and there would be no supernatural forces at work, only his struggling mind assigning blame where in reality it's all down to bad luck.
But it could also genuinely be an elaborate manipulation by divine forces into having him commit said murder. That in a way, because Kali is the cause for these murders happening, they would be dedicated to her and they would strengthen her. And more than that, if a massacre by an american writer would be committed on Indian soil, it would have repercussions. I'm not talking about political consequences, this is more about the mystery of it all. People would want answers and they would flock to the site of the event in order to find them. Roberts' act would, regardless of his own physical well-being, alive or not, jailed or not, make of him a martyr. He would be the herald of dark things and some individuals would recognize it. They would come and Kali would, through methods same or new, mold them like clay.
He'd be the pebble starting a slow landslide. The age of Kali begins with wanton murder and would end with the annihilation of the universe.
But yadda yadda yadda, as Simmons' intent was to mirror his direct influence; Tagore's idealistic themes, inspired by the pain that comes of being alive, and all that goes with it, and the hopefulness and love for that life in the wake of his personal horror, it becomes clear that Simmons' ultimate goal was to make of this an uplifting novel. Or rather, a human novel, instead of the work of horror it is commonly accepted as.
The story of the novel has its characters and us come face to face with the horrible mortality at the heart of mankind, and it offers that Kali's song is the song of the end, of death and pain (as Simmons chooses to depict it).
Tagore's song then offers love in the face the inescapability of the end.
Simmons' story is the macro-story to the message underlying Tagore's Song Offerings: Love and meaning in spite of the annihilation of that love and meaning.
As such it is an acknowledgement of the very worst in life, without giving in to it, with eyes fixed on hope and the possibility of happiness.
Terror 8 Horror Addendum
So, is it a Terror 8 novel, worthy to be among the 8? Well, at a glance I could say that if Something Wicked's in the eight then sure.
I had problems with Something Wicked being in there, more due to its occasionally juvenile nature resulting from its conversion from an olden times corny script which lead to its own ridiculously cloying, happy ending.
But on reflection, where that one finds its happy ending in succeeding to hold death at abeyance, this one accepts it, runs with it, stares it in the face and then offers up hope and redemption, in full knowledge and despite of its inevitability.
It's better written, not corny and juvenile and though Something Wicked was the far more imaginative work, Song of Kali is likely more worthy to be in here... among the horror novels... but then that kind of undercuts what I said about this novel being a human work rather than a horror one....
Hmmm...
Ah well, don the mask of hypocrisy and popular sentiment.
Sure, if you ask me, it belongs in the Terror 8.
Done, son.
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