Malgudi days; not nights. There are dark moments in [the] thirty-two short stories [of Malgudi Days], but the tragic logic is usually broken by a spot of joy in the middle or a bit of puckishness at the end. Ambiguity? The term implies a muscularity of will foreign to Narayan. He does not strive for ambiguity, nor force the action in a tragic direction, nor in a sentimental direction. The salient virtue of his art in these miniature displays is his entire ease before the double faces of existence: the tragic / joyful, funny / sad, good / evil weave of things. If nature could write, someone has said, it would be Tolstoy. But in its calms it might also be Narayan. The sun in these Malgudi days beams from beneath his brow, and its light is generous and steady and benign….
I have two impressions of the place. First, Malgudi is mythical not only in the sense that it is made up but also in the sense that it is a projection of desire. It is in fact an Indian pastoral. Second, I demur from Narayan's judgment in his introduction that the characteristics of Malgudi are "universal." Certainly people from all over can see themselves in these characters. But the first-time visitor is more apt to be struck by the Indianness of Malgudi. The events and the characters' reactions to them: these could take place anywhere. The difference, the Indianness, lies in the structure of feeling and implication the stories exploit.
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Narayan, R(asipuram) K(rishnaswami) 1906–: Critical Essay by Jack Beatty Access Pass.
