Man And Man In Malgonkar's The Cat And Shakespeare

In order to communicate his meditations and thoughts of the innermost gap of mind, the hero-narrator uses the devices of introspective diary entries, self-revealing letters, and jottings of recapitulated poetry quotations from the Vedas, the Upanishads, Indian lore, and French poetry. In his narrative perspective he moves back and forth in space and time. Many critics consider The Serpent and the Rope as essentially a spiritual autobiography. While being interviewed by Annie Brierre, Raja Rao pointed out that everything one writes is autobiographical. But it is a metaphysical novel. In The Cat and Shakespeare, the author goes a step forward and describes the state of spiritual serenity which descends in the life of a man who leads the life

The story is allowed to tell itself, and generally there is little that comes between the reader and the tale. Everything is in organic relation. A good plot presupposes some special tactics-the capacity for vivid portraiture, careful woodwork, subtle motivations, theatrical display, humor, wit, irony, intellectual interpretation and shrewd observations. Malgonkar’s novels have such plots, undoubtedly. He has a lively talent and his novels are carefully contrived, carefully offered. Distinct Drum is a fine example of the old fictional technique which involves the use of memory as a narrative means and helps the author to move to and fro in time and achieve a wide coverage. A Bend in the Ganges is a novel in which plot has primacy over character. Epical in scale, it is intended to offer a panoramic view of the pre-independence period in Indian History. The book The Combat of Shadow is a skillful product of careful workmanship and its style never cramps. Malgaonkar revolts against the psychological novel of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, which he considers a temporary abnormality in the tradition of the novel. His favorite novelists are Kipling, Conrad, Maugham and