Some notes I took during our Zoom meeting
- restraint of Victorian England
- Satirical picture of colonialism and Victorianism
- Characters are likeable
- No heroes in the book
- it’s not post-colonial, not Slaman Rushdie or Vikram Seth
- Great Exhibition is used as a touchstone
- never gets lost in the detail
- Phrenology
- Magistrate condemning all the poetry
- Loved the way that the shells falling on the masonry caused all sorts of problems, when they fell on the earth was best, kind of showing the trappings of civilisation
- The only role of women was to go mad with boredom
- Rank hypocrisy of the the system in which their embroiled
- None of the Indian characters are very developed. This was discussed at length because it denies them a voice and an opinion about what is going on around them
- It really struck me that this was the pomposity of the colonialists
- Why isn’t Ballard better known?
- Victorians putting so much emphasis on the machines they build, exemplified by the World Fair
- The auction of the food was brilliant
- Fleury killing someone is the unbelievable part of the book
- Trenchant critique of colonialism portraying the the characters as being woefully shirt-sighted about the situation they’re in. Putting a spear through the omnipotent
- Discussion about UK versus US humour, Monty Python versus The Office (US), a comment about how in Animal House, John Belushi smashing the guitar of some wannabe musician who’s wowing the girls show the difference: in the US Belushi’s the hero, in the UK it’s the guitarist
- Wanted to ask the author about why things happened the way that they did
- Notable difference between the 70’s (when the book was written) and (say) 1985 when Haneef Kureshi’s “Buddha of Suburbia” was written. It feels like a world of difference between the two world views — the difference between seeing Indians as “other” as compared to a part of society
- Watching the colonial oppressors getting their just desserts
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