Vikram Seth’s latest book, “Two Lives,” is generally described as a memoir. But that category is too narrow to capture the essence of a work that melds personal experience with researched biography and history. Seth, whose recent book tour brought him to Denver describes his book as a “memoir- cum-biography.”
Seth spent much of his childhood in India but was sent to England to attend a boarding high school. “I was one of the very few nonwhite boys in the school. It was in a different country all together, the holidays were long. My uncle and aunt being there, they were in loco parentis to me. This relieved my parents and also gave me an anchor,” he said.
He is speaking of the people who are the focus of “Two Lives,” his Great-uncle Shanti and Aunt Henny. The two first met when Shanti boarded with Henny’s family while attending dental school in Germany before World War II. Shanti fought for the British in the war, while Henny escaped to England. The two eventually married, and the union was severed only by Henny’s death in 1989.
Seth hadn’t really planned on writing about his aunt and uncle. He had finished “A Suitable Boy” and found himself facing writer’s block – and his mother grew tired of listening to his complaints. She said to him, “There’s Shanti Uncle. Why don’t you interview him? He’s grieving for her (Henny). You clearly lack direction as well.”
In 1994, that’s exactly what he did. The resulting work is a love story and an analysis of history and courage. And, as Seth points out, a serendipitous howdunit. “Uncle destroyed all of Auntie’s letters and her photographs and everything after she died, in an extreme reaction to grief. And when I asked him, ‘Surely there must be something of Auntie Henny’s left?’ he said no. It was only a year later that my father discovered in the far recess of the attic, cobweb-ridden, almost like a mystery story, a trunk which contained some letters that had not been destroyed, up to 1950, the crucial period.
“This formed one of the twin cores of the book. So the discovery of the trunk and the strange way in which, had Auntie Henny been alive, I couldn’t have questioned her about these matters.
“Had Auntie Henny been alive, I doubt she would have let me read the letters. Had Uncle found the trunk, he would have destroyed it. Had Papa not explored it, it sooner or later would have been thrown out. Had he not seen these letters in German, and brought them down to Uncle, thinking they might be of use to Uncle or Vikram because he’s writing this book, I wouldn’t have seen them. And then had Uncle not given me permission to take the letters and to use them as I wished, again I wouldn’t have been able to,” he said.
The resulting story is told in five distinct sections. Part One gently introduces Shanti Uncle and Aunt Henny, as seen through young Seth’s eyes. “Part Two is Uncle’s life; Part Three is Auntie Henny’s life, again up to the same point, largely told through her letters. Part Four is a portrait of a marriage, which includes testimony from both of them. The last part is a study of old age, Uncle by himself, his decline physical and mental,” said Seth, “describing the kind of legacy one leaves behind.”
“Two Lives” is quite different from Seth’s previous works, but then he has long been a writer who defies easy categorization. He said he would probably best be described as a “writer who followed his muse – or muses, you might say. If my muse, he or she, European, or Indian or Californian, comes visits me, I should not turn them away with the instruction to go back and come back with something more suited to my nationality, or a genre I’ve already written in. I’ll say, ‘Well, I’ll try.”‘
Seth seems long accustomed to taking the unexpected path. He was accepted at Oxford to study English, and ended up pursuing a degree in politics, philosophy and economics. His love of literature is long-standing, but he said he avoided the undergraduate study of English for several reasons: “If you read English, you have to read certain books at certain times. And it may not be the best time in your life to read them. … You have to read a huge amount of criticism, which is boring beyond belief, especially the modern kind. … You have to write about what you read. I’m disinclined to do it. And lastly, I didn’t want to lose my love of literature by having it treated as a subject on which I’d be marked and judged,” he said.
After Oxford, he pursued a Ph.D. in economics at Stanford, an experience that is reflected in his writing. “I like embedding my stories, whether fiction or nonfiction, in the actual world in which the characters live.
“In other words, it’s not just love and emotions and ambitions and death and grief and joy and all that, but they’re set against some kind of background of the world as it goes past. Whether the world impinges on it, whether the protagonist affects the world, or whether the world is indifferent. And then I would say in addition to that, I like the fact of work. We very often define ourselves not just by love but by work. … I sometimes feel that too few books talk about the importance of work to people.
“It’s all love. Love is the crux of our lives, but work is as important. We probably spend more time working than loving, or even thinking about love. Work and money are a very important part of people’s consideration; economics and politics feed into these different aspects.
“I write realistic novels, and I want the compass not to be too narrow,” he said.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
