Wednesday, June 25, 2008

So What if Chetan Bhagat's not a real writer?

Chetan Bhagat’s latest novel – his third in a row – has reportedly sold 5,00,000 copies since its release last month(Over-hype? One source says only 60,000 copies of the book have been printed till now). He’s being touted variously as people’s writer, a publishing phenomenon, and young voice of India. His publisher is now sending boxes of candy to media offices to celebrate the huge success of the book. Chetan, on his part, is taking a well-earned sabbatical before he begins working on his next novel. Meanwhile, the Bollywood has decided to film two of his books.

All very nice for Chetan and his publisher, but many people (even some of his fans) have now started complaining. Here is a list:

 His work lacks literary merit.

 His writing style is clunky.

 He cranks out ‘read and throw’ stuff.

 He has little life-experience.

 His books have silly titles (e.g, Three Mistakes of My Life, One Night@ the Call Centre)

 He has no world-view.

 His social critiquing is random and unfocussed.

 He has chutzpah!

Of course, these things suck. But then people should know Chetan is no real writer. He’s simply a pulp-fictioneer with Luck. How can you expect real writing from him?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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S Roy said...

Every thing now a days are of use-n-throw in nature.
Same is true for this publishing industry also, actually Chetan Bhagat understand todays generation and their interest better than others, so is the director /producer who are making films on his lines.

Shibaji Paul said...

What one could expect from a geek other than such an ill treatment of a writer who proved himself as one of the most successful story teller of the time?
Criticism, as told by the masters, always brings in new thoughts, ideas, and values and paves the way for a greater height to achieve for the subject.
So how would one writer criticize a fellow member? Apart from digging out the negative sides we also expect the critiques to burn oil of their night lamp to find out the other side of the bank, yes obviously – the positive side, one expects that too.
I ask the blogger, if the books are having silly titles then why they are the most popular one and amongst the most talking stories of the time? Does the merit of literacy always accountable for a successful writer? Does the blogger expect every one to be at per with Shakespeare or Tagore? Sounds really funny, hold on…
And the height of bunk is the line – “he has little life-experience”, well how old is he? And what the hell one is going to do with his life experience, if the reader still can dig out fun reading his stories? How Julle Verne wrote all his classic adventure stories? Hey Dude, sitting on the chair, with zero experience of traveling. It’s always been imagination rather than experience that remain as the key factor behind most of the artistic work of the world and Chetan has a bag full of that.
The blogger forwarded the list of complain by stating that it was a view of “many people (including some of Chetan’s fan)”, may I ask, who are these people? How the blogger came to know about those opinions? Had he taken any survey amongst the readers with authorized statistical organization? Or simply forwarded the list by just he thought so. What would be funnier than that?
There must be a clear demarcation between the criticisms and nettling, the latter must be filtered away from true criticism otherwise how we could expect betterment of the subject.

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