The WRath of Authors
The Wrath of Authors: Manjula Padmanabhan
It's a familiar phenomenon: a new book bursts upon the market like a triumphant horde of Goths on a raiding party and a month later its author is heard ranting about the pathetic standards of literary criticism in the country. The most recent example is Tarun Tejpal, whose first novel, The Alchemy of Desire, was received with cautious rather than effusive praise. In his interview with Rediff some weeks after the launch, he referred to Indian reviewers as "out-of-work journos, copy editors in publishing houses, peripheral academics, precious column writers … "
As disgruntled creative spirits go, however, he was fairly restrained. Artists whose exhibitions have received negative reviews tend to be more physical. For instance, my sister Geeta Doctor, who reviews both art and literature, was once almost strangled by a muralist because she dared to ask him how many screws he used in one of his creations, while another one tried to force her to buy one of his paintings as compensation for her review. One reviewer was stalked by an author at the height of his pique against her critique.
What brings on the charge of fury? Why do some authors feel the need to vent it while others manage to contain their feelings? Does venting confer an evolutionary advantage upon its practitioners? Or is it plain bad behaviour, specific to the Indian subcontinent and to our thin-skinned sensibilities, our lack of perspective, our unwillingness to accept anything less than abject, grovelling praise in response to the masterworks we produce with every exhalation?
I'll answer the last question first. No, writerly rage is not by any means limited to Indians. The pages of Western literary journals are spattered with the blood of feuding authors, some of it very blue indeed. Just the other day, for instance, I came across echoes from the Faulkner-Hemingway spat during which Faulkner remarked, "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." To which Hemingway reportedly riposted, "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"
However, unlike the Faulkners and Hemingways of the world, Indian authors writing in English belong to an unusually young and struggling literary tradition. Our nation is only 58 years old and we're using, as our medium of _expression, the language of our colonial oppressors. Even as we grope around for an idiom that defines us in all our complexity, we find ourselves lit up by the bright lights of the international publishing world. While a small handful of authors sign fabulous book-contracts and are swaddled in warm praise, the rest must soldier on to the thin patter of applause from friends and relatives at their book launches while answering raw young reporters who ask, "So … what's the story about?"
Getting a book published is an emotionally and financially draining enterprise, with no guaranteed reward at the end of it. Given this reality, it is no surprise that reviewers must seem, at times, to be unfeeling sadists who squeeze their salaries directly out of the crushed egos of young novelists. Yet the publishing industry is a business, like any other. Critics, literary journals and literary agents are caught up in a game of money-spinning, with authors running like frantic squirrels on exercise-wheels, at the heart of the machine. Praise is the grease that makes all the cogs whirr smoothly. As Kiran Nagarkar, award-winning author of Cuckold says, "Internationally, most reviewers have forgotten the meaning of scale – like advertising people, they can now deal only with superlatives." To call a book merely "good" is, in today's inflated currency of praise, almost an insult. It has to be "the best book of its generation", a "tour de force", a "masterwork" or else it's rat-feed in the distributor's godown.
Against this backdrop, negative reviews are almost a sign of vigour. It means that critics are free to express their honest opinions, and that their main concern is for the readers who, presumably, buy books for pleasure and not just to inflate the expenditure account on their income tax returns. While it's no more realistic to expect authors to welcome criticism of their books than to expect any of us to enjoy going under a dentist's drill, I think most of us recognize that it's better to have vigorous dentists than bad teeth.
There are even times when critical attacks are desirable. At the time that my comic strip DOUBLE TALK used to appear in the Sunday Observer in Bombay, it inspired a constant trickle of angry letters from readers. For the first several months, I can remember feeling like a pincushion, with my self-confidence in tatters every Sunday. But in time, and with editor Vinod Mehta's continued support of the strip despite the attacks, I began almost to look forward to them. People who might never normally look at the comics page would read the complaints in the letters column, then go back to find the item that had inspired the attack. I believe the rhino-hide I developed then has stood me in good stead now that I have books in print. I've learnt to understand that the only cure for the particular hurt that comes from bad reviews, condescending reviews or (worst of all) no reviews is … to keep on writing.
But complaining has its uses too. While writing this article, and mulling over the reasons why so many authors put their reputations on the line with public attacks on their critics, it occurred to me that it is, after all, one more tactic to keep a book in the public eye. The author might sound like a peevish brat deprived of his rightful lollipop, but to the extent that the ploy keeps a book from sinking altogether from sight, it works.
The Overcrowded Bookcase: Nilanjana S Roy
"He began to look for a book at random; noted the motto, 'Everyman, I will be thy guide'; stared, with some scepticism, at some
of the books by Indian writers; 'They not only look light, they feel lightweight as well,' he thought, weighing one in his hand…" –From 'A New World', by Amit Chaudhuri.
Amit Chaudhuri's protagonist, Jayojit, could be every Indian author's nightmare reviewer. Never mind that these days "books by Indian writers" can look as bulky as a wrestler on steroids; the fear of being weighed and found wanting is common to all authors, regardless of language or location. If it's a little stronger in Indian writers who're building their own kind of literature in English, that's only to be expected.
There's a wall-to-wall bookcase in my house that is given over to works of fiction by Indian writers. In that bookcase, I see a reflection of the publishing landscape over the last decade. Some of those books acquired classic status slowly, some were acclaimed at birth; some were pronounced dead-on-arrival, some, like G V Desani's All About H Hatterr, are indestructible even if they spend long years in hibernation until a new generation clamours to be introduced to the book all over again. But the vast majority of the books that have found, and lost, house-room were received with lukewarm appreciation and read by less than a thousand people in the country. It's a hard lesson. If you've poured two, or three, or ten years of your life into writing a book, you don't want to be reminded that this might be your fate.
One of the arguments we often hear from authors, usually when they're pleading to be treated with more respect, accorded a few more superlatives, offered a shade more understanding, is that Indian writing in English is a young, growing body of literature. It needs encouragement, and nurturing, and other things that reviewers in India don't provide. The classic reaction when an author feels that he hasn't received his due is to lash out, sharply, at the one section of his audience that can be held accountable. There's not much point to criticizing publishers or alienating readers; reviewers, though, can always be faulted for not realizing that what lies before them is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
The view from the reviewer's chair looks a little different. All the reviewers and critics I spoke to for this article nailed two things that make reviewing Indian books a very strange business. The first is, as critic and editor Anita Roy put it, that everyone knows everyone else's "co-ordinates". Most literary circles are incestuous; but even by that standard, the Indian literary world is composed of
people who share incredibly complicated, tangled histories.
This should change, once you reach a critical mass of really good writers, and it can't change too fast for anyone of us. Knowing the co-ordinates does nothing for readers or writers except to make everyone paranoid. The writer who has the "right" co-ordinates fears that this might make him or her a target for universal envy, the
writer who doesn't complains about being left out in the cold; and it's a rare reviewer who doesn't resent having to navigate the deep, politically messy waters of this sort of knowledge.
The second aspect of reviewing Indian books, as a writer who shuttles between the US and India puts it, is that you cannot help but set the bar lower. If you review books regularly, you're likely to fall into the trap of being kind, which is the worst sort of insult you could offer any writer—and any reader. Very few of the forty-odd books that come in for review each month are distressingly, painfully bad; very few rise above the mediocre. To be a reviewer in India is to know firsthand the triumph of hope over experience—but when a truly, unequivocally great book does come your way, the joy it brings in its wake is all the reward any reader could ask for.
How good does Indian writing have to be? In the last few months, we saw really brilliant work from writers as disparate as Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan, Orhan Pamuk and Andrea Levy, to name a scant handful. In the increasingly eclectic world of Indian reviewing, these books are also up for review; if you're a reviewer who reads in another Indian language aside from English, as many of us do, you're looking at another 10-15 potentially great books to be read every month.
There isn't space any more for kindness. There isn't the room to make allowances for the Indian writer working in English. And from what I've seen of young Indian writers at home and elsewhere, there'll be no need for grace marks in another few years. Until then, though, if you're an author in search of adulation and you don't get it, follow the advice that V S Naipaul famously offered a fellow writer: take it on the chin and move on.
It's a familiar phenomenon: a new book bursts upon the market like a triumphant horde of Goths on a raiding party and a month later its author is heard ranting about the pathetic standards of literary criticism in the country. The most recent example is Tarun Tejpal, whose first novel, The Alchemy of Desire, was received with cautious rather than effusive praise. In his interview with Rediff some weeks after the launch, he referred to Indian reviewers as "out-of-work journos, copy editors in publishing houses, peripheral academics, precious column writers … "
As disgruntled creative spirits go, however, he was fairly restrained. Artists whose exhibitions have received negative reviews tend to be more physical. For instance, my sister Geeta Doctor, who reviews both art and literature, was once almost strangled by a muralist because she dared to ask him how many screws he used in one of his creations, while another one tried to force her to buy one of his paintings as compensation for her review. One reviewer was stalked by an author at the height of his pique against her critique.
What brings on the charge of fury? Why do some authors feel the need to vent it while others manage to contain their feelings? Does venting confer an evolutionary advantage upon its practitioners? Or is it plain bad behaviour, specific to the Indian subcontinent and to our thin-skinned sensibilities, our lack of perspective, our unwillingness to accept anything less than abject, grovelling praise in response to the masterworks we produce with every exhalation?
I'll answer the last question first. No, writerly rage is not by any means limited to Indians. The pages of Western literary journals are spattered with the blood of feuding authors, some of it very blue indeed. Just the other day, for instance, I came across echoes from the Faulkner-Hemingway spat during which Faulkner remarked, "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." To which Hemingway reportedly riposted, "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"
However, unlike the Faulkners and Hemingways of the world, Indian authors writing in English belong to an unusually young and struggling literary tradition. Our nation is only 58 years old and we're using, as our medium of _expression, the language of our colonial oppressors. Even as we grope around for an idiom that defines us in all our complexity, we find ourselves lit up by the bright lights of the international publishing world. While a small handful of authors sign fabulous book-contracts and are swaddled in warm praise, the rest must soldier on to the thin patter of applause from friends and relatives at their book launches while answering raw young reporters who ask, "So … what's the story about?"
Getting a book published is an emotionally and financially draining enterprise, with no guaranteed reward at the end of it. Given this reality, it is no surprise that reviewers must seem, at times, to be unfeeling sadists who squeeze their salaries directly out of the crushed egos of young novelists. Yet the publishing industry is a business, like any other. Critics, literary journals and literary agents are caught up in a game of money-spinning, with authors running like frantic squirrels on exercise-wheels, at the heart of the machine. Praise is the grease that makes all the cogs whirr smoothly. As Kiran Nagarkar, award-winning author of Cuckold says, "Internationally, most reviewers have forgotten the meaning of scale – like advertising people, they can now deal only with superlatives." To call a book merely "good" is, in today's inflated currency of praise, almost an insult. It has to be "the best book of its generation", a "tour de force", a "masterwork" or else it's rat-feed in the distributor's godown.
Against this backdrop, negative reviews are almost a sign of vigour. It means that critics are free to express their honest opinions, and that their main concern is for the readers who, presumably, buy books for pleasure and not just to inflate the expenditure account on their income tax returns. While it's no more realistic to expect authors to welcome criticism of their books than to expect any of us to enjoy going under a dentist's drill, I think most of us recognize that it's better to have vigorous dentists than bad teeth.
There are even times when critical attacks are desirable. At the time that my comic strip DOUBLE TALK used to appear in the Sunday Observer in Bombay, it inspired a constant trickle of angry letters from readers. For the first several months, I can remember feeling like a pincushion, with my self-confidence in tatters every Sunday. But in time, and with editor Vinod Mehta's continued support of the strip despite the attacks, I began almost to look forward to them. People who might never normally look at the comics page would read the complaints in the letters column, then go back to find the item that had inspired the attack. I believe the rhino-hide I developed then has stood me in good stead now that I have books in print. I've learnt to understand that the only cure for the particular hurt that comes from bad reviews, condescending reviews or (worst of all) no reviews is … to keep on writing.
But complaining has its uses too. While writing this article, and mulling over the reasons why so many authors put their reputations on the line with public attacks on their critics, it occurred to me that it is, after all, one more tactic to keep a book in the public eye. The author might sound like a peevish brat deprived of his rightful lollipop, but to the extent that the ploy keeps a book from sinking altogether from sight, it works.
The Overcrowded Bookcase: Nilanjana S Roy
"He began to look for a book at random; noted the motto, 'Everyman, I will be thy guide'; stared, with some scepticism, at some
of the books by Indian writers; 'They not only look light, they feel lightweight as well,' he thought, weighing one in his hand…" –From 'A New World', by Amit Chaudhuri.
Amit Chaudhuri's protagonist, Jayojit, could be every Indian author's nightmare reviewer. Never mind that these days "books by Indian writers" can look as bulky as a wrestler on steroids; the fear of being weighed and found wanting is common to all authors, regardless of language or location. If it's a little stronger in Indian writers who're building their own kind of literature in English, that's only to be expected.
There's a wall-to-wall bookcase in my house that is given over to works of fiction by Indian writers. In that bookcase, I see a reflection of the publishing landscape over the last decade. Some of those books acquired classic status slowly, some were acclaimed at birth; some were pronounced dead-on-arrival, some, like G V Desani's All About H Hatterr, are indestructible even if they spend long years in hibernation until a new generation clamours to be introduced to the book all over again. But the vast majority of the books that have found, and lost, house-room were received with lukewarm appreciation and read by less than a thousand people in the country. It's a hard lesson. If you've poured two, or three, or ten years of your life into writing a book, you don't want to be reminded that this might be your fate.
One of the arguments we often hear from authors, usually when they're pleading to be treated with more respect, accorded a few more superlatives, offered a shade more understanding, is that Indian writing in English is a young, growing body of literature. It needs encouragement, and nurturing, and other things that reviewers in India don't provide. The classic reaction when an author feels that he hasn't received his due is to lash out, sharply, at the one section of his audience that can be held accountable. There's not much point to criticizing publishers or alienating readers; reviewers, though, can always be faulted for not realizing that what lies before them is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
The view from the reviewer's chair looks a little different. All the reviewers and critics I spoke to for this article nailed two things that make reviewing Indian books a very strange business. The first is, as critic and editor Anita Roy put it, that everyone knows everyone else's "co-ordinates". Most literary circles are incestuous; but even by that standard, the Indian literary world is composed of
people who share incredibly complicated, tangled histories.
This should change, once you reach a critical mass of really good writers, and it can't change too fast for anyone of us. Knowing the co-ordinates does nothing for readers or writers except to make everyone paranoid. The writer who has the "right" co-ordinates fears that this might make him or her a target for universal envy, the
writer who doesn't complains about being left out in the cold; and it's a rare reviewer who doesn't resent having to navigate the deep, politically messy waters of this sort of knowledge.
The second aspect of reviewing Indian books, as a writer who shuttles between the US and India puts it, is that you cannot help but set the bar lower. If you review books regularly, you're likely to fall into the trap of being kind, which is the worst sort of insult you could offer any writer—and any reader. Very few of the forty-odd books that come in for review each month are distressingly, painfully bad; very few rise above the mediocre. To be a reviewer in India is to know firsthand the triumph of hope over experience—but when a truly, unequivocally great book does come your way, the joy it brings in its wake is all the reward any reader could ask for.
How good does Indian writing have to be? In the last few months, we saw really brilliant work from writers as disparate as Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan, Orhan Pamuk and Andrea Levy, to name a scant handful. In the increasingly eclectic world of Indian reviewing, these books are also up for review; if you're a reviewer who reads in another Indian language aside from English, as many of us do, you're looking at another 10-15 potentially great books to be read every month.
There isn't space any more for kindness. There isn't the room to make allowances for the Indian writer working in English. And from what I've seen of young Indian writers at home and elsewhere, there'll be no need for grace marks in another few years. Until then, though, if you're an author in search of adulation and you don't get it, follow the advice that V S Naipaul famously offered a fellow writer: take it on the chin and move on.
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