Lockdown diary: Books they are re-reading and why- Middle Class posturing

Like most people in corona-imposed isolation but not given to binging on Netflix, I have re-read several old books in recent weeks, including Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses which is as surreal as the times we are living in.

But one book that had been lying with me for many years but which I never got round to reading it because something more fash- ionable came along is Peter Taylor’s A Summons to Memphis. It was published in 1987 and sent to me by a publisher friend who wondered if I could give it some play in my column.

I don’t quite remember whether I obliged him but intrigued (or rather seduced) by its title, I kept it aside to read at leisure. It stayed with me since then —amid a pile of unread books its pages yellowing and fraying. Indian readers may be for- given if they are not familiar with Taylor’s work. Even in the West, he is not widely rec- ognised outside America. British novelist and critic Paul Bailey described him as a “ludi- crously undervalued” writer.

In America, he is best known for his short stories which have been compared to those of Chekhov and Henry James. He wrote only three novels, “A Summons to Memphis” was his second—the third “In the Tennessee Country” came out in 1994, shortly before his death. But he is best known for “A Summons to Memphis”. Like many great American novelists — among them Philip Roth and John Updike— Taylor was essentially a chronicler of the lives of small town and suburban middle class: their foibles, hypocrisies, and family skeletons. In this novel, he returned to his favourite setting —his native Tennessee.

And, boy, what a compelling web of family intrigue, deception and middle class posturing he weaves. And all with a quiet panache brimming with subtle humour, sat- ire, and reflection.

“A Summons to Memphis” encapsulates Tolstoy’s so-called “Anna Karenina principle” that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. It’s the story of a bourgeois Memphis family which sports a happy front, but when the mask falls, we see not-so-hidden skeletons crawling out of cupboards.

It opens with a middle-aged man—an editor in a Manhattan publishing house — getting desperate calls from his two elder sisters summoning him back home to Memphis to deal with an urgent family cri- sis. And the crisis? Their octogenarian wid- owed father has decided to remarry, unleash- ing a cataclysm of conflicting emotions about a man who combined an external charm with an authoritarian mindset.

All three of his children—two spinster daughters and the Manhattan-based son— had been victims of his autocratic attitude. His decision to remarry brings alive their lingering resentments. He had sabotaged their love lives; now they had a chance to put a knife into his romantic liaison. And they do.

The story, narrated by the son in first person, is punctuated with flash- backs to give us a glimpse into the journey of the family, and how it came to be settled in Memphis after being betrayed by a close friend and business partner. Its basic theme—the violence inherent in family life—will resonate with many. I enjoyed it. Oh, the joys of hoarding unread books.

(Hasan Suroor is a columnist and commentator based in London)