Kalimantaan is a first novel that took Christina Godshalk upwards of a decade (some say two) to write. She lived for 20 years in
History informs the setting & context, which she renders with Joseph Conrad’s richness & skills of conviction (Lord Jim). Though her eye for human detail may occasionally exceed his. Deft with her command of pacing, Godshalk can cross the ocean, wipe out 118 people & the heroine's children in a short paragraph (Sengat) & then focus at contemplative length on “the gibbon countersong turning church bells to tin”, or an elephant eating a durian whole.
This is an increasingly old-fashioned example of a real novel. With its omniscient narrator, succulent description, & cycle of forms (the fragment images, letters, prose, genealogies, glossary), it makes full use of what’s unique to the form of literary fiction.
I read Kalimantaan on the
Again, I’ve given you more than you’ll need for one session so you can pick & choose the discussion you'd prefer. I’ve concluded once more with a brief note on the upcoming book, House Mother Normal.
Enjoy!
-- A. Campisi
Discussion Questions & Subjects
The Stranger. The narrator rarely if ever enters the mind of a native character. For all her breadth of research, she remains an outsider, & makes sure we remain one ourselves. What do you think of this choice?
The Beginning. How did you like the fragmentary, anti-chronological opening (maps, quotes, fragment images, genealogy, letters)?
Characters. In a book with dozens to choose from, who were your favorite characters & why?
Maureen. Talk about Maureen Dolan: her inner ‘appreciation of the luxurious” & outer ‘niggardly pinching and halving’; her temper & cooking, her fastidious house & oasis of English order in the middle of the jungle; her love with her husband; her secrets; her relationship to Hogg, who loves her; her widely varying relationships with her children; her being taken as a witch & once playing the part. What is her part of the larger story?
The Mad Missionary. Considering our theme & reading as a writer, I’d pick the mad missionary my favorite character. One of them, anyway. He’s minor, but I find his arc one of the most symmetrical & satisfying. You could almost lift him out of the book as a stand-alone short story. Allegorical, he most neatly describes the paradoxes of alienation & assimilation (or conversion). Trace out & discuss his tale.
Plot. This is not a plot-driven narrative, nor a book with a single hero or story. In some ways this lends it a verisimilitude—life may have purpose & reason, but it has no plot. Yet the choice carries some significant disadvantages. It distances us emotionally, for example. And it's daring (commercially fatal) in the current market, which privileges rapid plot development, short, tight narrative arcs, transparent storylines, & long, springy tracts of dialogue. So to the extent that you did find yourself pulled into this novel, what was it that pulled you in?
Purity. Colonial regimes put a fine point on hierarchy & identity. In this story there’s a premium put on purity (especially in one’s off-spring & peers) but also on assimilation (in the rajah’s outpost men, for example). Some characters assimilate (or remain ‘pure’) better than others, but no one’s native culture (or dreams, psychology, cosmology) escapes the influence of the Other.
The English, the Chinese, the Dyak, the half-caste, the Malay, the white women, the missionaries …or, more specifically: Melie; the boys recruited to serve at remote posts in the jungle, forbidden to marry for 10 years, & then coming back wild & alienated to their ‘own’ English society; the black sorceress, Ajar. Who remains “pure”, how & why? Discuss the ebb & flow of this cross-assimilation.
Strangers: Who is the greatest ‘stranger’ in the book? Who is most at home in this colony?
The Supernatural. Talk about how dreams & visions play active roles for many characters, native & English alike. “In this atmosphere, out-of-body flights were common. She herself flew above the green roof of the little mosque the night the child was born.” (Nepenthaceae)
Children. “It was a rain of infants,” she writes in Cinta, “a torrent of sweet young flesh, to be flushed out in storm drains, gills flapping in the mud. They were everywhere in cribs, in rattan cradles, stuck hard to teats, the survivors toddling forth in a year like the little turtles at Talang Talang, the vast number to be snatched up and swallowed in their rush to the sea.”
Consider Melie’s children, in order. When we get to the twin boys with the knife, both showing distinct & disturbing signs of a blended culture, I suspect we’re being shown a morality tale in & of itself, with its own arc & subtext. How might her children’s natures, characters, & fates tell a story all by themselves? What themes does her story of motherhood reflect or enhance? Is there a moral component?
Images. Godshalk is a master of single, riveting images. She’s especially talented at very specific, emotionally-complex images. What are some of your favorites?
* You might talk, for example, about the king crocodile eating the English toy dog…and then its capture & dissection. This is not only captivating in & of itself, but speaks volumes to Barr’s power, the borderland frictions between colonial & native cultures, the state of their marriage, & the local cosmology. Talk about the dynamics this image dramatizes: gender, marital, imperial, spiritual.
* Or: Melie catching sight of a servant’s simple flare of nostrils—his catching the scent of her menses—which mortifies her & says so much about her thrice-alien presence. What does it mean to be a woman here? What are the difference between her—part of the memsahib vanguard—and the more demanding, pampered group that comes later?
Facts in Fiction. In historical fiction, what do you think is the author’s obligation, if any, to the facts?
Freud: Talk about Barr’s relationship with his mother & how (you or Melie believe) that might motivate his actions in the raj & in his marriage.
Melie. From her outsider / insider’s perspective, Melie observes things & has opinions that she virtually never shares. Yet in rare moments, at the start of Simanggang, for example, she takes forceful initiative herself (turning a raiding party by threatening (a bluff) to destroy them with the guns of the fort). Talk about her power as a Rani, a woman, a wife, a foreigner, and / or an individual personality.
Letters. What do you think of Melie’s letters to her mother—both as a writerly choice &, separately, as a method of the character dealing with being a stranger in a strange land?
Heads. What to you think of how Barr’s raj manages the taking of heads?
Names. What do you think of how infrequently the narrator uses the principal characters’ names (Barr's & Melie’s, esp). Why might she have made this choice?
Marriages. What do you think of the marriages (especially Melie & Barr’s, the Dolan’s, Hogg’s)? How they began, how they evolve, & how they end. Discuss the varieties of Love we’re shown. How is it different for the women & the men? Melie has happy times (sakit tuan) & many bad times. It wouldn’t cut for most of us today, but taking on its own terms, what do you think?
Marital Crimes. At some point, Melie apologizes as though it were an equal marital crime for her ‘accounting’ of his slights & flaws. How does this measure up against what she’s endured from him? How do you think the book intends us to judge this confession?
Affairs. Talk about the affairs, sexual & emotional, especially Barr’s with the sorceress, Ajar, & Melie’s affair (Jawing) vs. her near affair with Darwin’s peer, Lytton, the ‘scientist’ who takes orang-utan heads, whom Barr calls the “gentle wooer of pregnant matrons” (Nepenthaceae). How is it different for the women & the men?
Women. When the memsahibs protest the number of native women & children killed in his campaigns (Sengat), Hogg retorts:” My war is on women…these people hunt heads because no Dyak female will accept a man without an extra head…you are the deadlier gender, madam[.]”
Chinese. How do the Chinese fit into the story of colonization & assimilation? They have lived here for generations, since ‘[the Malay] lived in caves’, speaking the language & commanding a significant economy, yet they continue to be strangers in their own land.
The Attack. Talk about the murders & attacks at the raj itself. The relationship of the English with their servants & the choices that entails. The dogs guarding the children. The boat of warriors dressed as Englishmen who call out as English mimics to the hiding women & children, and then behead them at the moment of ‘rescue’.
Home. They go ‘home’ again, many of them. Can they truly be home again?
A NOTE for approaching
House Mother Normal: A Geriatric Comedy
Formally speaking, this is the list’s most experimental book. It’s short, but bound to explode some heads. Even if 'experimental' is not your usual style, I encourage you to dive right in with the confidence that Johnson is not just being perverse; the madness is methodical. Look for the patterns.
If the style frustrates you, however, & you'd rather have some directions (& a few spoilers), 2 of the 3 reviews on the Amazon site are thorough primers. If you're NOT stuck, though, you might put off reading those until you're done.
I first read this book in a graduate seminar on experimental fiction. Students in the course—all of them writers—were initially outraged at the blank pages. Myself included. I was uncomfortable with our unanimity, however, & so made a passionate argument in their defense. I ended up convincing myself & now think this particular example kind of genius. This book has stayed with me for years & I’m excited to pass it along to you now.
Have fun with it! --AC
