"The Artist of Disappearance," by Anita Desai

Anita Desai’s first novel was published in 1963, and I have been reading her books for about four decades. Desai, whose mother was German and whose father was Indian, grew up in India (much of the time in Mussoorie, in the Himalayan mountains, which is, parenthetically, home to Woodstock School, the friendly rival of the school I attended in India, Kodaikanal School). Her novels are beautifully written, carefully observed, insightful, a little bit “triste,” and a pleasure to read. I have just read her latest fiction, “Artist of Disappearance” (Houghton Mifflin, 2011), a collection of three novellas, all set in India. It did not disappoint. The first novella, “The Museum of Final Journeys,” tells of a surprising art collection found in the deteriorating estate of a formerly wealthy family in a small Indian town. The tone is elegiac, evoking the time of the Raj and its remnants. The second novella is titled “Translator, Translated,” and tells of a scholar and frustrated writer languishing in a minor woman’s college where she teaches Victorian British literature. But reading a collection of short stories by an Oriya woman writer inspires her, and she translates and publishes the novel in English. Oriya was the language of the translator’s mother, and she finds herself inspired and coming alive as she reads and translates this fiction. Unfortunately, this triumph is the high point of her life, as she overreaches and infuses too much of herself into translating the author’s next book. (As a side note: Oriya is the language of one of the places we lived in India, and my parents spoke it quite well at one point; we children spoke a little as well; it is one of four languages that we learned at least a little bit of.) The final novella, “The Artist of Disappearance,” is the sad story of a man whose parents neglected him as a child, and whose only consolation was the beauty of nature in Mussoorie, where they lived. After a few years at college and with extended family in Bombay, and after his parents die, he returns to Mussoorie and lives in the family home as a kind of recluse; he continues there even after most of the house burns down. His happiness is interrupted by the intrusion of a heedless group of young documentary makers, but in the end -- thanks to a faithful servant, and despite a big loss -- he is able to continue his life in private and in communion with nature. These three novellas are all stories of disappointment, of loss, of mourning, and yes, of disappearance. Yet there is tribute to, and honoring of, what was present and vital in the lives of the characters at least for a while: history, art, intellectual and artistic achievement, nature, and solitude. One wonders if Desai feels that India itself has lost some of these -- at least in their past forms -- forever…