Word: ka
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...first words the giant black eagle Garuda utters after his birth at the beginning of Roberto Calassos latest book Ka are: "So many things are happening, so many stories one inside the other, with every link hiding yet more stories." Garuda's musings may be extended to the book itself, which is a collection of all the stories of Hindu mythology--some bizarre, some beautiful, many grotesque and all thoroughly engrossing--recast with an eye for the postmodern reader and his impatient but eager sensibilities. Taking a cue from the Mahabharata--a seminal Indian text containing many of the major...
...Ka is the third and central work of Calasso's five-book project about mythical and intellectual beginnings. The first book in the series was the critically and popularly acclaimed The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which recounted with proper flair and fervor the entire chronology and theogeny of Greek and Roman mythology for over-stimulated postmodern audience. Next came The Ruin of Kasch, which told of how modern culture and ideas can spring from the complete decimation of a past culture. In Ka, Calasso tackles the myths of the Indian subcontinent and traces the theological origins of that culture...
...Ka is neither a treatise nor a text-book. Actually, no one is really sure what the book is. What can be said is that Ka contains a fascinating collection of stories at once comical, mysterious, unnerving and erotic, told by a brilliant modern narrator. The book actually reads like a post-modern Hindu campfire story. The fifteen sections of the book recount all the stories contained in the major theological and mythological texts of India, but Calasso does not assume any prior knowledge of the Rig-Veda, the Mahabharata or the like, nor does he linger on the stories...
...incorporation of Western texts and ideas into a decidedly Eastern way of thinking. Thus Proust becomes a Vedic prayer-chant master; the great creator-spirit Prajapat faces Kafka-esque dilemmas that lead him to be compared to The Trial s K. The gods and mythical figures of Ka are not the heavy-handed, wrathful gods of the West. These are thinking, breathing creatures who can bitch and moan, laugh and cry, love and be loved just like us--not so exotic, after...