My knee is shredded from too much Lock & Key and bruises bite the terrain along my neck and breasts and stomach. My body has been touched, hurt, burnt, stretched, shunned, loved.
I inhabit this decaying shell, and because I cannot save it, I use it.
As if on cue, David texted me: I keep taking bong rips so big that I stop breathing and my body freaks out coz it thinks it’s dying. How fucked up is that?
I replied: It’s beautiful. Use your body; there’s no sense in preserving something that’s already dying. =)
On the face of it, Hedon is a romance about two people – Tara Mullick and Jay Dhillon – who, predictably, take an entire book to decide what to do. Actually, though, this novel is much more of an existentialist ramble through the apparent meaninglessness of student life for the upper class in an American college, and, before that, a Calcutta school for privileged kids.
It’s practically plotless, with the “story” being almost incidental. This makes Tara – the first person narrator – and the entire cast of characters far more interesting than they would have been if driven by the compulsions of telling a single, structured story from start to finish. As Tara and her friends drift through a haze of alcohol, soft (and sometimes hard) drugs, bonds with gay friends, creative writing classes, and (only) occasional sex, it’s this life that becomes the centerpiece of the novel, though the story is bookended by the girl-meets-boy-hearts-go-thump-thump tropes.
The book is rich with contemporary cultural references, poetry written by the characters (Tara wickedly versifies a classic and maudlin Bengali short story as her creative writing exercise), and even a clever self-referential loop in the form of a review of the novel. It tries to capture the surface of a wayward life with both texture and emotions, leading to a lot of not unpleasant randomness.
Hedon is its writer Priyanka’s first book. An interview with the author:
On how Hedon was conceived:
I remember listening to Lady Gaga’s album Born This Way in college, smoking a cigarette and walking to class in my new leather jacket, and I just felt so cool and badass that I wanted to do something. So I skipped class to try and capture the (very awesome) spirit of that album in writing. And while doing that, I realised that writing and creating characters is easily my favourite way to process life, so I kept adding to those initial bits and pieces until it became Hedon.
On why the hedonism for which the book is named isn’t in-your-face:
No particular reason, other than that this presentation and structure is what the story required. One of the things I’m quite happy with is that, despite being pretty angsty and critical of many things, Hedon doesn’t end up passing judgment. Everything is grey, everything is layered and a little bit confusing – which, I think, is how life works.
On whether the complex chronological structure of the book made writing the book difficult:
Well, this book has been an all-consuming, borderline unhealthy preoccupation for half a decade now, so I find myself unable to lose direction of the plot even when I run screaming from it, trying to take a break. The difficult part for me is exercising restraint in the face of the dangerous level of freedom a blank page holds. And while I often fail at that, my amazing editors hack long stretches of incoherent rambling into nicely readable chapters so I can shamelessly and gleefully take the credit for their hard work.
On whether young adults have a greater need to prove themselves as they move through life, compared to those who were teenagers in the 1980s:
I think it can definitely seem that way, what with the contracting of the world via the internet and especially social media. But I think that the fantastic thing about being a teenager is the surfeit of emotion that has and always will be an inextricable part of the experience.
Whether you’re constantly on Snapchat or waiting till your parents are asleep to use the landline, it’s still so universal, this raging desire to do well, to look good, to somehow fit in and stand out at the same time.
On why the character of the older man, Jay Dhillon, seems rather distant:
I think Jay is an embodiment of the way people are prone to project all the things they themselves want to be onto likely, albeit unsuspecting, candidates. Honestly, I suspect this fallacy underlies a great number of obsessive crushes and unrequited loves. The further away the person is, the easier it gets to imagine up a storm around them. And then, if life conspires to bring you together – well, that’s when it gets interesting.
On whether Hedon is actually a book for young adults or not:
I’d love to be incredibly lofty, put my nose in the air, and sniff about how Hedon defies classification. But I think it falls pretty much squarely in the genre of New Adult fiction, which is an important import into a country with the world’s largest youth population.
On whether it’s easier to reach out for decadent pleasure only if one’s basic needs are met:
Maslow would say so, and who am I to argue with him? However, I do find that there are more sides to this question than appear at first glance, which is why certain characters in Hedon dwell on it at length. Is a hungry stomach the best cure for a broken heart, or vice versa? I can’t really say.
On how she sees this novel after it’s been published:
It’s brave. Obviously I can’t have unbiased perspective about it, but I know there were safer, more pleasant ways to tell this story, and when I read it now, I’m always glad that the difficult choices were made.
