63she offers “How to Talk Dirty” and “Lesbian Pool
Party,” which spoof contemporary sexual fantasies
and their sometimes comical manifestations. The
desire for fame likewise comes in for a ribbing,
especially as it leads to cheesy results: Tonya Har-
ding’s B-movie endeavors, the rise of spurious “tal-
ent” agencies, and the inane success of Baywatch.
“Los Angeles is the best place in the country to
nurture the kind of fame you make yourself,” Loh
declares at the start of “How to Become Famous”
(198), and then provides step-by-step instructions
for seizing one’s own moment of notoriety.
Though its focus is regional, Depth Takes a
Holiday is a sharp and savvy reading of popular
culture and its ruling passions in American culture
at large. As Loh admonishes, “Wake up, America!
Admit it. ‘We have seen David Hasselhoff, and he
is us’ ” (x).
Bibliography
Loh, Sandra Tsing. Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays from
Lesser Los Angeles. New York: Penguin, 1997.
Janis Butler Holm
Desani, G. V. (Govindas Vishnudas)
(1909–2000)
Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Desani moved at the age of
four with his family to the province of Sind, India
(now Pakistan). During his two-year stay in En-
gland when he was a teenager, he was found to be
an exceptionally talented child prodigy and gained
a readership at the British Museum. Back in India,
he worked as a journalist and correspondent. He
continued in journalism when he returned to Eng-
land at the beginning of World War II. At that time
he gave numerous lectures while working for the
BBC. During the war he also wrote his only novel,
ALL ABOUT H. HATTERR (1948), which received
immediate critical acclaim from writers such as
E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot. Besides his journalism
and the novel, he published the poetic play, Hali
(1950), short stories collected in Hali and Collected
Stories (1991), and some nonfiction.
Very little is known about his life as he did not
disclose information about himself, much like H.
Hatterr—the first-person narrator of his novel.
However, Desani returned to India in 1952, and,
apart from his prose poem Hali (1952), he kept si-
lent, dedicating the following 10 years to studying
mantra yoga. In 1962 he emerged as a columnist
for The Illustrated Weekly of India, writing com-
mentaries until 1967. In 1968 he was invited as
a Fulbright Exchange Visitor to the University of
Texas, Austin, and lectured on Eastern philosophy
and religion. He was appointed professor of phi-
losophy there in 1970, from which post he retired
as a professor emeritus in 1978. Desani died in No-
vember 2000.
Desani was a nonideological critic of religion
and society and an opponent of Gandhian politics.
His single novel, All about H. Hatterr, has become
a legendary cult book especially among Indian
English writers such as Amitav Ghosh and Salman
Rushdie, who admit the influence the novel has
had on their art.
Joel KuorttiDivakaruni, Chitra Banerjee (1956– )
Divakaruni was born in Calcutta, India, into an af-
fluent middle-class family. After graduating from
Presidency College in India, she joined the gradu-
ate program at Wright State University in Dayton,
Ohio, where she met her husband, Murthy. The
two moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1979,
and she earned a Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature
from the University of California at Berkeley.
While she was at Berkeley, her grandfather died
and she was dismayed at her inability to recall his
face. To better remember her life and past, she
began recording her memories in written form.
She joined the Berkeley Poets Workshop and
started sending her poems to Calyx, a women’s
magazine in Oregon that was so impressed by
them that they republished an earlier volume of
her poetry entitled Black Candle (1991). She has
published three other volumes of poetry: Dark
Like the River (1987), The Reason for Nasturtiums
(1990), and Leaving Yuba City (1994). The last
volume imagines the lives of the first wave of In-
dian immigrant farmers who settled in Yuba City,Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee 63