This may seem like an odd pairing of books, and in fact I have to admit that it is an odd pairing of books. But these are the top books of 1924 among Goodreads and LibraryThing users respectively. (Third is We, by Evgeny Zamyatin.)
The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Boxcar Children is:
“What shall we do? Where shall we go?” thought Jessie.
I had never heard of this book before starting this exercise. It is a short children’s novel about four siblings (and their dog) whose parents have died and who take up residence in an abandoned railway boxcar. The local doctor takes an interest in them and there is a happy ending. A bit improbable – surely even in 1924 there were government authorities looking out for orphaned children – but very wholesome.
It is the first in a series of, wait for it, over 160 novels, still being published, where the children mostly solve mysteries during the school holidays, which are hugely popular across the pond. I understand that the children have not aged much since 1924. I found it a naïve and hopeful tale. A novel written today about four homeless siblings would be a lot grittier, even if aimed at the same 7-10 age range. You can get it here.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of A Passage to India is:
“I want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the Turtons will arrange something for next Tuesday.”
I remember seeing the 1984 film starring Judy Davis and Peggy Ashcroft, possibly in the course of a week I spent at the English public school Downside. To be honest the only bit of it that I remember is the climax of the trial scene, when Judy Davis’s character recants her testimony. I also remember how strange it was to watch such an imperial film in such an imperial setting. Downside itself seemed spiritually rather unhealthy – this was of course decades before the sexual abuse scandals emerged.
I started off rather liking the book, which clearly critiques the British presence in India and sees its imminent end, twenty-five years before it actually happened. The portrayal of the snobbish and racist Anglo-Indian community is clearly based on close observation. But the more he got into writing about Indians, the more the book slipped into Orientalism, and the final section, set around a festival in an Indian-ruled state, seemed to me much less humane than the earlier part of the book. Also, of course, I am spoiled by decades of reading Indian (and Pakistani and Bangladeshi) writers about India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh), rather than white people’s commentary.
This also poisons the portrayal of the relationship between the English and Indian male protagonists, which again is based on Forster’s personal experience, of deep friendship with Syed Ross Masood, but ends up not very satisfactory to either the fictional characters or the reader.
Anyway, you can get it here.
I was surprised to discover that the title of the book is taken from a Walt Whitman poem, “Passage to India”, which is actually not about India at all but compares the opening of the Suez Canal with the manly expansion of American power across the continent. I thought it was the usual doggerel from Whitman – “The gigantic dredging machines” “Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God” “Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?” – but when I said so on social media it turned out that he still has his fans. Judge for yourself.
The three top books of 1924 – The Boxcar Children, A Passage to India and We – could not be much more different from each other; a happy kids’ book, a grumpy reportage on colonialism, and a dystopian vision of the future. (Compare 1923 when I had two murder mysteries and mystic poetry.)
