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R. K. Narayan: A Critical Appreciation
R. K. Narayan, author of more than a dozen novels and numerous short stories, is a writer of international stature. Only recently, however, has he received the critical attention that is his due.
This lucid and often eloquent study provides both new and devoted Narayan readers with an introduction to his life and work. William Walsh, who makes generous and apt use of quotations from Narayan's work, traces Narayan's artistic development and brings into clear relief the qualities that characterize his gentle irony, humor, and a tolerance of human foibles. Both a criticism and an appreciation, this work will prove valuable to those already acquainted with this delightful and important novelist and will lead others to his work for the first time.
This lucid and often eloquent study provides both new and devoted Narayan readers with an introduction to his life and work. William Walsh, who makes generous and apt use of quotations from Narayan's work, traces Narayan's artistic development and brings into clear relief the qualities that characterize his gentle irony, humor, and a tolerance of human foibles. Both a criticism and an appreciation, this work will prove valuable to those already acquainted with this delightful and important novelist and will lead others to his work for the first time.
184 pages, Hardcover
First published December 31, 1971
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About the author
William Walsh
9 books1 followerWilliam Walsh was successively Professor of Education, Professor of Commonwealth Literature and acting Vice Chancellor of Leeds University.
His first specialty was education and later Commonwealth literature, including works on V S Naipaul and R K Narayan.
His first specialty was education and later Commonwealth literature, including works on V S Naipaul and R K Narayan.
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September 1, 2024
The first thing that hit me about this tome and kept me cemented to it is the gorgeousness and brevity of language. Consider the following lines:
“In writing of R. K. Narayan, an Indian of the purest Brahmin stock who has spent his life in the city of Mysore in South India composing fiction in English, one must begin with the language. Literature in the end is only — only! — the most powerful, the
most human, the subtlest and the most inclusive use of the language.
It was only when the language itself had been organically nourished by the life of the people and brought to a point of readiness, early in Chaucer and mature in Shakespeare, that these two geniuses could appear.
How just is Samuel Alexander’s comment that Shakespeare did not invent Hamlet, but discovered him in the English language.”
Thereafter, the author writes:
“Literature can be read as the chronicle and the embodiment of the state and the history of the language. New movements in literature are new uses of language, and this is as true of Chaucer, of Shakespeare, of Donne in the seventeenth century, of Pope in the eighteenth century, as it is of Wordsworth in the nineteenth and Lawrence and Eliot in the twentieth. The new mind requires the new voice, and the new voice is discovered by the writer’s genius for intimately registering the idiom of his own world…”
The book has been organized into the following chapters:
1) Personal Matters
2) Beginnings
3) Development
4) Other Work
5) Arrival
6) Maturity
7) Conclusion
The inaugural chapter consists of a biographical sketch. Chapter 2 proceeds to a confab of the novels in a humble chronological categorization. The third chapter provides an investigation into ‘Mr. Sampath’, ‘The Financial Expert’ and ‘Waiting for the Mahatma’. The next chapter, dabbles with the world of the short stories of Narayan and his translations from the epics. Chapter 5, reproduces an exploration of ‘The Guide’. The discussion in Chapter 6 is regarding ‘The Man-Eater’ and ‘The Sweet Vendor’. The last chapter speaks about the inner details of Narayan’s art.
These are the following nuggets that we carry from the book of Mr. Walsh:
**Narayan is a pure artist. He remains unperturbed by political movements and isms. He is free from Anand's propaganda as well as Bhabani Bhattacharya's vigour. Like Manohar Malgaonkar he does not disparage the Indian politicians nor does he believe in exalting the importance of Indian spiritual heritage like Raja Rao.
**The basic theme of his novels is the place of man in this universe and his quandary. Narayan himself remarked in an article that "the mood of comedy, the sensitivity to atmosphere, the probing of psychological factors, the crisis in the individual soul and its resolution are the necessary ingredients in fiction". He wants to suggest that life is illogical and man is always trying to translate his fantasies into reality. So, through the reversal of fortune, Narayan completes the story of man's rise and fall and thus presents a total view of life.
**Narayan may be labeled as a novelist of the middle class. His novels present members of the Indian middle class as engaged in a struggle 'to extricate themselves from the automatism of the past.
**Most of Narayan's characters belong to middle class, especially to the lower middle classes of South India. Chandran belongs to a middle-class family. Editor Srinivas also is bothered with the idea of earning his bread and butter. Mr. Sampath's whole life is centred round the problem of making money and Raju, the guide, is not always beyond monetary cares. These human beings are the usual sort of human beings, prudish, cunning and prosaic.
**Narayan is a novelist of common people and common situations. His plots are built of material and incidents that are neither extraordinary nor heroic. The tone of his novels is quiet and subdued. He selects day-to-day incidents that happen to almost every one of us one time or another. His heroes are average human beings and they do not possess extraordinary capacities, but through some accidents attain greatness very soon to return to their original state. If we take the life of a school boy like Swami, we find nothing extraordinary or strange in his life. Similarly Mr. Sampath, Chandran, Raju, Rosie, Savitri, Ramani and others live, love and suffer in a maze of incidents which are just commonplace.
**Narayan's plots do not follow any standardized formula, because Narayan starts with an idea of character and situation and the plot progresses on the lines he conceives to be the logical development of the idea. It may mean no marriage, no happy ending and no hero of standardized stature. Accidents, coincidences and sudden reversal of fortune are used only to a very limited scale; his action mainly develops logically from the acts and actions of his characters. In this respect, Narayan is as much a 'materialist' as Henry James, H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett.
**Narayan's craftsmanship in plot construction does not reveal a consistent quality. He began in a tentative and episodic manner in Swami and Friends but developed an architectonic sense in his second novel, The Bachelor of Arts, and his third, The Dark Room, reveals definite signs of technical maturity. His predilection for the fantastic, already suggested in The Bachelor of Arts, becomes relatively prominent with The English Teacher. Usually, his plots split into two parts the realistic and the fantastic-"the realistic vein being carried alongside the fantastic and then dropped altogether." It is not always that he succeeds in fusing the two into an organic plot. He is eminently successful in The Financial Expert, The Guide, The Man-Eater of Malgudi and The Painter of Signs but not so in Mr. Sampath, Waiting for the Mahatma or The Vendor of Sweets. However. these technical inadequacies cannot detract from his inventive ingenuity. Even the most loosely constructed of his plots such as Waiting for the Mahatma and Mr. Sampath are highly enjoyable in parts as most of Dickens's novels are.
**Narayan's novels are principally the novels of characters. His characterization may not be as great as that of Shakespeare or Charles Dickens, but it is only next to the greatest artists. His range of characters, like that of Jane Austen, is limited. He chooses his people from the middle classes of South India. But they are drawn with a convincing psychological consistency. These characters are beset with life and vivacity. They are thoroughly human in their likes and dislikes, and are neither saints nor sinners, but beings as ordinary or extraordinary as we are. Narayan is able to draw complex characters too. Krishnan, Ramani, Savitri, Sampath, Raju, Rosie, Marco Gajpathi, Shanta Bai, Margayya are some of his memorable creations.
**Narayan excels as "an artful delineator of character." He says, "My focus is all on character. If his personality comes alive, the rest is easy for me." And what a richly varied portrait-gallery he has created over the years-students, teachers, parents, grandparents half-hearted dreamers, journalists, artists, financiers, speculators, film-makers, adventurers, eccentrics, cranks, movie stars, sanyasis, and women-pious and suffering. coquettish and seductive. It is a veritable world of men and women, both real and exotic, brought to life with uncommon dexterity. "His eye and ear are almost flawless" an eye for visual detail and an ear for how they speak. "Not only does Narayan not enter his characters, he is very reticent even in talking about them.". As a result most of his 'unheroic' heroes like Srinivas, Sriram, Nataraj and Raman live but do not grow."
**His minor characters that people the world of Malgudi are almost as unfading as its familiar landmarks. They are fine cameos and, together, make a delightful bunch. They are mostly flat caricatures but very human, amusing in their idiosyncrasies and oddities. They impart colour and diversity to the scene as well as suggest its continuity and permanence.
**The heroes of Narayan are never drawn on a heroic scale. Narayan is the creator of unheroic heroes. These are average human beings and they do not possess extraordinary capacitics, but through some accidents attain greatness very soon to return to their original state. The way they achieve greatness and manage to reach the top of the ladder is fantastic. Narayan's heroes do not control the events, but the events control them. They are helpless creatures torn by their desires and tossed by their fortunes.
**There is recurrence of the role of Fate in Narayan's novels. This is copiously exemplified by Raju. Everything happens to him. He never looked for acquaintances; they somehow came looking for him. He never wanted to be a guide but accidentally frequent enquiries from the visitors made him a Railway Guide. Raju's narrative of his life till his landing in jail is pervaded by a sense of fatalism and Raju is more a bewildered man at the queer and accidental experiences than rendered helpless. His sense of humour and ability to put himself at a distance for review and analysis makes his story a delineation of Narayan's comic vision. Man is fundamentally puny and his self-esteem and vanity are the major forces that make him get involved in variegated experiences and it is through the uneasiness of the ordinary that the mystery of life can be assumed. Narayan knows that life is routine and on the whole dull, but he also knows that the possibilities of life are immense and those who translate imagination into reality are also ordinary men and women.
To conclude: Narayan believes that man is the actor, and that he should perform his role well. That is why Raju does everything very sincerely. He proves to be a successful guide. In his love for Rosie he is quite warm. As an impresario he is quite popular and successful. In his capacity as a prisoner too he is an ideal prisoner and performs the role and duties of a prisoner thoroughly well. During his last phase, he is a successful Sadhu, although he has accepted this role unwillingly. Narayan views life as a complex affair and by focussing attention the absurdity of human situation as on well as rationality he maintains that nothing abides and everything is accidental-fame, power, and money. Man can attempt, even at the cost of his life, but will not understand the mystery of life.
This book shows us that Narayan is a class in himself. He is a writer of average emotions. He springs surprises and even gives mild shocks, but he never indulges in those aspects of life which are morbid. The author hits the nail on its head by depicting that unsocial activities, perversion or physical violence do not find any place in his fiction. He does not indulge in sensations. Narayan believes in domestic harmony and peaceful relations. He is the only major writer in Indo-Anglian fiction who is free from didacticism or publicity. He has no desire to preach, to advise, to convert…
Great book!! Awesome language!! Recommended.
“In writing of R. K. Narayan, an Indian of the purest Brahmin stock who has spent his life in the city of Mysore in South India composing fiction in English, one must begin with the language. Literature in the end is only — only! — the most powerful, the
most human, the subtlest and the most inclusive use of the language.
It was only when the language itself had been organically nourished by the life of the people and brought to a point of readiness, early in Chaucer and mature in Shakespeare, that these two geniuses could appear.
How just is Samuel Alexander’s comment that Shakespeare did not invent Hamlet, but discovered him in the English language.”
Thereafter, the author writes:
“Literature can be read as the chronicle and the embodiment of the state and the history of the language. New movements in literature are new uses of language, and this is as true of Chaucer, of Shakespeare, of Donne in the seventeenth century, of Pope in the eighteenth century, as it is of Wordsworth in the nineteenth and Lawrence and Eliot in the twentieth. The new mind requires the new voice, and the new voice is discovered by the writer’s genius for intimately registering the idiom of his own world…”
The book has been organized into the following chapters:
1) Personal Matters
2) Beginnings
3) Development
4) Other Work
5) Arrival
6) Maturity
7) Conclusion
The inaugural chapter consists of a biographical sketch. Chapter 2 proceeds to a confab of the novels in a humble chronological categorization. The third chapter provides an investigation into ‘Mr. Sampath’, ‘The Financial Expert’ and ‘Waiting for the Mahatma’. The next chapter, dabbles with the world of the short stories of Narayan and his translations from the epics. Chapter 5, reproduces an exploration of ‘The Guide’. The discussion in Chapter 6 is regarding ‘The Man-Eater’ and ‘The Sweet Vendor’. The last chapter speaks about the inner details of Narayan’s art.
These are the following nuggets that we carry from the book of Mr. Walsh:
**Narayan is a pure artist. He remains unperturbed by political movements and isms. He is free from Anand's propaganda as well as Bhabani Bhattacharya's vigour. Like Manohar Malgaonkar he does not disparage the Indian politicians nor does he believe in exalting the importance of Indian spiritual heritage like Raja Rao.
**The basic theme of his novels is the place of man in this universe and his quandary. Narayan himself remarked in an article that "the mood of comedy, the sensitivity to atmosphere, the probing of psychological factors, the crisis in the individual soul and its resolution are the necessary ingredients in fiction". He wants to suggest that life is illogical and man is always trying to translate his fantasies into reality. So, through the reversal of fortune, Narayan completes the story of man's rise and fall and thus presents a total view of life.
**Narayan may be labeled as a novelist of the middle class. His novels present members of the Indian middle class as engaged in a struggle 'to extricate themselves from the automatism of the past.
**Most of Narayan's characters belong to middle class, especially to the lower middle classes of South India. Chandran belongs to a middle-class family. Editor Srinivas also is bothered with the idea of earning his bread and butter. Mr. Sampath's whole life is centred round the problem of making money and Raju, the guide, is not always beyond monetary cares. These human beings are the usual sort of human beings, prudish, cunning and prosaic.
**Narayan is a novelist of common people and common situations. His plots are built of material and incidents that are neither extraordinary nor heroic. The tone of his novels is quiet and subdued. He selects day-to-day incidents that happen to almost every one of us one time or another. His heroes are average human beings and they do not possess extraordinary capacities, but through some accidents attain greatness very soon to return to their original state. If we take the life of a school boy like Swami, we find nothing extraordinary or strange in his life. Similarly Mr. Sampath, Chandran, Raju, Rosie, Savitri, Ramani and others live, love and suffer in a maze of incidents which are just commonplace.
**Narayan's plots do not follow any standardized formula, because Narayan starts with an idea of character and situation and the plot progresses on the lines he conceives to be the logical development of the idea. It may mean no marriage, no happy ending and no hero of standardized stature. Accidents, coincidences and sudden reversal of fortune are used only to a very limited scale; his action mainly develops logically from the acts and actions of his characters. In this respect, Narayan is as much a 'materialist' as Henry James, H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett.
**Narayan's craftsmanship in plot construction does not reveal a consistent quality. He began in a tentative and episodic manner in Swami and Friends but developed an architectonic sense in his second novel, The Bachelor of Arts, and his third, The Dark Room, reveals definite signs of technical maturity. His predilection for the fantastic, already suggested in The Bachelor of Arts, becomes relatively prominent with The English Teacher. Usually, his plots split into two parts the realistic and the fantastic-"the realistic vein being carried alongside the fantastic and then dropped altogether." It is not always that he succeeds in fusing the two into an organic plot. He is eminently successful in The Financial Expert, The Guide, The Man-Eater of Malgudi and The Painter of Signs but not so in Mr. Sampath, Waiting for the Mahatma or The Vendor of Sweets. However. these technical inadequacies cannot detract from his inventive ingenuity. Even the most loosely constructed of his plots such as Waiting for the Mahatma and Mr. Sampath are highly enjoyable in parts as most of Dickens's novels are.
**Narayan's novels are principally the novels of characters. His characterization may not be as great as that of Shakespeare or Charles Dickens, but it is only next to the greatest artists. His range of characters, like that of Jane Austen, is limited. He chooses his people from the middle classes of South India. But they are drawn with a convincing psychological consistency. These characters are beset with life and vivacity. They are thoroughly human in their likes and dislikes, and are neither saints nor sinners, but beings as ordinary or extraordinary as we are. Narayan is able to draw complex characters too. Krishnan, Ramani, Savitri, Sampath, Raju, Rosie, Marco Gajpathi, Shanta Bai, Margayya are some of his memorable creations.
**Narayan excels as "an artful delineator of character." He says, "My focus is all on character. If his personality comes alive, the rest is easy for me." And what a richly varied portrait-gallery he has created over the years-students, teachers, parents, grandparents half-hearted dreamers, journalists, artists, financiers, speculators, film-makers, adventurers, eccentrics, cranks, movie stars, sanyasis, and women-pious and suffering. coquettish and seductive. It is a veritable world of men and women, both real and exotic, brought to life with uncommon dexterity. "His eye and ear are almost flawless" an eye for visual detail and an ear for how they speak. "Not only does Narayan not enter his characters, he is very reticent even in talking about them.". As a result most of his 'unheroic' heroes like Srinivas, Sriram, Nataraj and Raman live but do not grow."
**His minor characters that people the world of Malgudi are almost as unfading as its familiar landmarks. They are fine cameos and, together, make a delightful bunch. They are mostly flat caricatures but very human, amusing in their idiosyncrasies and oddities. They impart colour and diversity to the scene as well as suggest its continuity and permanence.
**The heroes of Narayan are never drawn on a heroic scale. Narayan is the creator of unheroic heroes. These are average human beings and they do not possess extraordinary capacitics, but through some accidents attain greatness very soon to return to their original state. The way they achieve greatness and manage to reach the top of the ladder is fantastic. Narayan's heroes do not control the events, but the events control them. They are helpless creatures torn by their desires and tossed by their fortunes.
**There is recurrence of the role of Fate in Narayan's novels. This is copiously exemplified by Raju. Everything happens to him. He never looked for acquaintances; they somehow came looking for him. He never wanted to be a guide but accidentally frequent enquiries from the visitors made him a Railway Guide. Raju's narrative of his life till his landing in jail is pervaded by a sense of fatalism and Raju is more a bewildered man at the queer and accidental experiences than rendered helpless. His sense of humour and ability to put himself at a distance for review and analysis makes his story a delineation of Narayan's comic vision. Man is fundamentally puny and his self-esteem and vanity are the major forces that make him get involved in variegated experiences and it is through the uneasiness of the ordinary that the mystery of life can be assumed. Narayan knows that life is routine and on the whole dull, but he also knows that the possibilities of life are immense and those who translate imagination into reality are also ordinary men and women.
To conclude: Narayan believes that man is the actor, and that he should perform his role well. That is why Raju does everything very sincerely. He proves to be a successful guide. In his love for Rosie he is quite warm. As an impresario he is quite popular and successful. In his capacity as a prisoner too he is an ideal prisoner and performs the role and duties of a prisoner thoroughly well. During his last phase, he is a successful Sadhu, although he has accepted this role unwillingly. Narayan views life as a complex affair and by focussing attention the absurdity of human situation as on well as rationality he maintains that nothing abides and everything is accidental-fame, power, and money. Man can attempt, even at the cost of his life, but will not understand the mystery of life.
This book shows us that Narayan is a class in himself. He is a writer of average emotions. He springs surprises and even gives mild shocks, but he never indulges in those aspects of life which are morbid. The author hits the nail on its head by depicting that unsocial activities, perversion or physical violence do not find any place in his fiction. He does not indulge in sensations. Narayan believes in domestic harmony and peaceful relations. He is the only major writer in Indo-Anglian fiction who is free from didacticism or publicity. He has no desire to preach, to advise, to convert…
Great book!! Awesome language!! Recommended.
June 16, 2025
The book is very suitable for those who want to do academic research on R.K. Narayan and modern Indian literature Geometry Dash Lite. I really like this book.
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