Vikram Seth: Multiple Locations, Multiple Affiliations. Mala Pandurang. Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2001. Pages 191, Rs 395.

Suniti Namjoshi: The Artful Transgressor. C Vijayasree. Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2001. Pages 189, Rs 375 . (For copies of both books: rawatbooks@pinkline.net)

The Vikram Seth on the cover of Mala Pandurang's book doesn't look like Vikram Seth -- (he actually looks more like the diasporic Indian cricketer Robin Singh). But it is just as well, because although this book is published as part of a series on "Writers of the Indian Diaspora", Pandurang begins by arguing that Seth's work "does not readily fall into a category of diasporic imaginary". She draws our attention instead to Seth's 'mobility' around the globe and across genres and the resultant 'migratory' subjectivity of the writer and the 'transnational' quality of his work. What emerges clearly from Pandurang's argument is that for every 'category-cal' answer Seth has a question.

After noting the points of convergence and divergence among diasporic, immigrant and expatriate writing, Pandurang's study adopts the defining characteristics of diaspora offered by Robin Cohen in Global Diasporas. She also finds Ketu Katrak's concept of 'simultaneity of geography' or "the possibility of living 'here' in body and 'elsewhere' in mind and imagination" useful to understand Seth's literary imagination which partakes of multiple identities, locations, and affiliations.

As the "academic" task of labelling "a polymath" like Seth is "too complex to be summed up in simplistic dichotomies of 'home' and 'abroad'", Pandurang employs a chronological, and as it turns out, a 'locational' approach. She organizes Seth's works into four chapters on the basis of their different geographical settings: China, America, India, and England. And since Pandurang reads Seth's work as "units of creative expression at specific points of time during his personal history", to ask whether Seth's writing offers a cogent world view, a single overarching vision, is to ask the wrong question.

I almost did not read Pandurang's book beyond the second page because of the poor copy editing: in the first three paragraphs, there are nearly ten typos, and several sentences with awkward or faulty syntax. But I am glad that I did, for what follows is a lucid account of Seth's entire oeuvre -- travel writing, poetry, fiction -- and the extensive bibliography (of book and web sources) at the end is a real bonus.

Since the dust jacket of Pandurang's book announced "C. Vijayshree" as the author of the forthcoming book in the series on Suniti Namjoshi, I opened it with great trepidation. But, thankfully this book (by 'C. Vijayasree') is better edited (though not well enough to change my opinion about the in/competence of the publisher's copy editor -- if there is one, that is). As the "first full-length study" of the work of "the first Indian woman writer to have openly declared her sexual choice as a lesbian", the significance of Vijayasree's book can not be overstated. Vijayasree does not get into the troubled waters of diasporic theorizing, except to note the overlap between diasporic and gay lives. She points out that as Indian, Hindu, woman, and lesbian Namjoshi operates from a subject position of "multiple liminalities", and yet instead of betraying any anxiety of 'unbelonging' her work exploits the plural possibilities afforded by the fluidity of her situation.

Vijayasree uses 'transgression' as an inclusive term subsuming "revision, appropriation and subversion", which are central to feminist poetics, and transformation which is the eventual goal of these acts of rebellion. (I wonder, however, whether the use of 'artful' in a positive sense in the subtitle is a similar attempt at subversion). Vijayasree approaches Namjoshi's works in a sequential manner and reads them as stories of power struggle, increasingly moving towards non-hegemonic forms and dialogic texts. Underscoring the intimate relationship between life and work particularly for the marginalized, Vijayasree remarks that the period 1978-79, and the subsequent publication of The Jack Ass and the Lady (1980) are crucial moments in Namjoshi's life and career. In The Jack Ass and the Lady, Namjoshi 'comes out' and ideologically positions her self as a lesbian-feminist writer, and chooses beasts as her poetic persona not only to reject gender streotypes but also to nullify hierarchization of living beings.

From Vijayasree's study Namjoshi emerges as an allegorical fabulator, who employs fantasy and irony in her quest for alternative modes of being, and articulates her resistance through transgression rather than aggression, playfully rather than polemically.

There are several similarities between Pandurang's book and Vijayasree's. To cite only two: both include 'authorspeak' as an important input, and both show an entirely justified reluctance to enforce a closure. These similarities may be only coincidental, but they bring me to the one last cavil: if 'Writers of the Indian Diaspora' is a series, shouldn't the series have a uniform format of documenting sources? - while Pandurang's book has 'Bibliography' at the end of the book, Vijayasree's has 'Works Cited' at the end of each chapter in addition to 'Bibliography' at the end.

T Vijay Kumar
tvk2k@satyam.net.in