IndiaStar: A Literary-Art Magazine
Love in a Blue Time brings together stories written in the past ten years by the author of the screenplays for My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, author-director of London Kills Me and two intriguing novels about the lives of men and women of Pakistani origin living in England, The Buddha of Suburbia and The Black Album. Kureishi's subject matter -- sex, drugs, and sometimes rock and roll -- seems intended, as in his films and novels, to shock the establishments of both cultures. His strongest and most memorable story, "With your Tongue Down my Throat," which appeared as the cover story of Granta 22 (Autumn 1987), develops the best of Kureishi's take on Pakistani and English youth culture and presents it in a tour de force of point of view that reveals the same story-telling mastery that made My Beautiful Laundrette such a fresh and bold take on English culture. The overall effect of the collection is to introduce to the rebellious, irresponsible youth of England the sobering, sometimes depressing realities of middle age.
In a Blue Time sets the mood of the book by nostalgically recalling post-sexual-revolutionary London through film-maker Roy's friendship with irresponsible Jimmy. Cocaine is consumed in quantities reminiscent of Hunter Thompson's exaggerations; women are enjoyed with comparable success -- and with Kureishi's characteristic wit: "For years women had fallen at Jimmy's feet; now he collapsed at theirs. Yet even as he descended they liked him as much." Roy, on the other hand, prepares for fatherhood: "`All the same, it's easy to underestimate how casual and reassuring married love can be. You can talk about other things while you're doing it. It isn't athletic. You can drift. It's an amicable way of confirming that everything is all right.' `I've never had that,' said Jimmy. `You're not likely to, either.' `Thanks.'"
In "D'Accord, Baby," first published in Atlantic Monthly, another Roy-like character seeks revenge on his wife's lover by sleeping with the man's daughter. In "Blue, Blue Pictures of You" an aging photographer attempts to capture the passion of two young lovers before it disappears. Even in the last story a middle-aged man is surrealistically still beating back "The Flies" of responsibility to child and post-passionate wife.
To be expected of Kureishi, throughout Love in a Blue Time the usual brilliant one-liners prevail. A dealer supplies Eshan, the photographer "with different kinds of grass that he claimed would make him `creative.' Eshan replied that he took drugs in the evenings to stop himself getting creative." A divorce in "Nightlight" recalls trying to be "the sort of man she might countenance. He wept at every opportunity, and communicated with animals whenever he found them." The weakest of the stories suffer from an overabundance of summary, and Kureishi is at his best with the kind of witty, revealing dialogue that made his screenplays so enjoyable. But summary does not keep "Nightlight" from developing into a fair portrayal of loneliness and desire, surrounding a scene straight from Kureishi's absurdist theater, in which an unnamed man leaves his wife of ten years, picking up the television on his way out, because he must take something, and his computer is attached to too many wires.
Kureishi's one-liners, like his focus on the self-indulgent and self-deluded, are not without some characteristically annoying effects. This middle-aged reader found herself wishing that Hanif Kureishi, with his frequently brilliant insights into human consciousness and unmatched perspectives on the way people live in our fin-de-siecle culture, would grow up: forget about passion; forget chemically altered consciousness; give your readers some wisdom.
"We're not Jews" provides some relief from Kureishi's filmmakers' and minor celebrities' midlife crises, representing the prejudice against Pakistanis in England and an English woman who has married outside of her English working-class origins. Two stories take off from important precursors. "My Son the Fanatic," originally published in The New Yorker, offers Ali as Kureishi's Muslim "Eli the Fanatic," after Philip Roth's story about the difference between secular and fully practicing members of a diasporic religion. "Lately" acknowledges Chekhov's "The Duel" and offers Lisa, who, rather than marry Rocco (who has fallen out of love with her but hasn't told her yet), wants to live, "to learn to sing and dance. To paint. To row on the river. To play guitars and drums. I can't wait to begin my life!"
It is fortunate for those who have enjoyed Kureishi's drama and films that he continues to work in the medium of print. Readers, like this one, willing to be shocked by Kureishi's refreshing unconventionality and enamored of the voice that has made his previous fiction, nonfiction and films unique will enjoy this collection. It is a treat to be able to read "With your Tongue Down my Throat" together with "My Son the Fanatic" as well as "Lately" and new stories not available elsewhere. |