Volume 47, Number 17 · November 2, 2000
A Passage to Colombo
By John Bayley
Anil's Ghost
by Michael Ondaatje
Knopf, 311 pp., $25.00
The art of writing about distant places, exotic places, has always been widely practiced in the novel. In the days of 'the mysterious East' Kipling and Conrad and many a lesser writer made their reputations in this way. They knew about the East at first hand, but they deployed their knowledge in skillful and colorful ways which would not unduly disturb the naive images of distant places which their homebound readers had already formed. A fine example is the climax of Conrad's novella Youth, when the crew of a ship burned at sea at last bring their boat into the safety of a small harbor. Utterly exhausted they collapse into sleep, still in the lifeboat, and 'the East watched them without a sound.' Youth is a wonderful story, the title itself suggesting an innocent dream of hardship and adventure, but the East is brought on to take the part of a picturesque backdrop: its existence is entirely two-dimensional.
Review, 3255 words
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