Understanding Murakami

What is it that makes a Murakami novel or short story so compelling? Why does he use various signs and symbols to enrich his plots? What is his take on colonialism, capitalism and all that? The Quarterly Conversation dissects all of these things, and more,  in its current issue through a bunch of essays under the caption  MURAKAMI ROUNDTABLE. Recommended for all literary enthusiasts.

Signs and symbols are essential to a Murakami novel. Sometimes Murakami gives us an explanation that’s meant to be a sign: a scientist explains that certain events have changed a character’s neural pathways, and that’s why she’s a new person. Sometimes Murakami gives us a symbol: the narrator of Hard-Boiled Wonderland says that his explanation is just something he made up for convenience’s sake. Occasionally, Murakami makes it very clear that something is to be a sign or a symbol, but far more often he leaves it vague. The essence of a Murakami novel is his exploitation of our uncertainty as to whether a story is a sign or a symbol.

Ian McEwan interview

As you become older you know you only have 20 or 30 summers left, if you’re lucky, and you want the project,the human project, to continue, whereas in my 20s I was quite interested in it failing. It  didn’t trouble me emotionally.

Herta Müller on writing

Eat everything you play with. That could be a definition for writing. Who knows: I have to eat everything I write, and what I don’t write devours me. Even though I eat it, it doesn’t disappear. And even though it consumes me, I don’t disappear. The same thing always happens during writing, when words want to be something else in order to be accurate, when objects become independent and verbal images steal what doesn’t belong to them. Perhaps it’s precisely during writing, when words become something else in order to be accurate, that what’s operating is always the same snow and always the same uncle.

Ron Rash interview

 Novels are so horrible to write. It takes me three years. Very often I’d rather stick pencils in my eyes. But when you finish them, it’s wonderful. Right now I can’t even think about writing one.

E.L James in Nobel list!

Ladbrokes has put E.L James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey, on its list of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2012, though with heavy odds (1/500)

Hilarious!

Or is it a calculated move to dumb down the Nobel Prize?

Howard Jacobson on literary festivals

Literary festivals go on being zestfully attended. New events in London such as Book Slam, the Literary Salon at Shoreditch and 5 x 15 are attracting rhapsodic younger crowds to what are virtually literary nightclubs.  Great fun they are to read at, too. And, in the meantime, just about every living English novelist you have ever heard of has a new book out. Is this what decline looks like?

Boualem Sansal interview

"To look for your history and your identity is also to look for others’ history and identity. You live in a country, an epoch, with people. You cannot know yourself away from this environment. When you get ahead in your research, you discover that your individual history is nothing, only a rustle in general history.  The feeling of belonging to a people, of having an identity, is born from it."

Mathematics and literature

...calculus helped me to cherish the work of Tolstoy. A few pages of Tolstoy might well help learners fall in love with calculus.

How should a novelist approach his/her novel?

With ingenuity. With humility. With a hammer. With energy. With erudition. With naivety. Traditionally, anarchically, adventurously, brokenly, wholly, any adverb you want, but always only with an eye to what the story asks, because that's more than enough. The story will dictate its style. (And you won't need adverbs anyway. Lose them in the edit.)

          -Ali Smith in The Edinburgh writers' conference,

V.S. Naipaul turns 80

“To be a serious writer is not to do what you have done before… I shouldn’t just stay at home and pretend to be writing novels. I should move and travel and explore my world — and let the form take its own natural course.” 

Pankaj Mishra interview

I am now a very different person and writer than I was when I published The Romantics, and the novel I write now would have to reflect that, or it will bore me to tears, not to mention the reader.

J.R.R Tolkien today

"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has gone too far for me. Such commercialisation has reduced the esthetic and philosophical impact of this creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: turning my head away."

- Christopher Tolkien, writer's son

Reading: ALEEK MANUSH by Syed Mustafa Siraj (Bengali novel)

I have heard of this novel long since, but only recently had the chance to read it through. Gripping from the very first line, original and serious, it is a great read. I have enjoyed every page of the novel.

Based in Murshidabad, a backward and Muslim-dominated district of the then undivided Bengal – it offers  a vivid and real portrait of the Muslim cummunity of the time, divided by different religious cults and their leaders, and their multitude of suckers against the backdrop of independence struggle that was then brewing across Bengal. But I read into it a heart-wrenching love story between two pristine souls who by a streak of fate were never united.

Safi, the protagonist, was a rebel, and though born of an orthodox family – his father was a “pir”( a saint) -  left the family in school-going age, lived in different places, came in contact with different  learned men, and studied different religious texts,  literature and western philosophy to finally morph into an atheist.  He was greatly influenced by the philosophy of Henry David Thoreau and strongly believed that the state is a torture machine, the officers in the administration are complicit, and the police and the military are the state-owned hooligans.

Safi got to be a mythical hero in his own right. In course of his life, Safi murdered some notorious men and lived like a sage, attracting a huge following from both Hindu and Muslim communities. Finally, when he was going to kill his hypocrite father, someone called in the police and got him booked. He was subsequently tried and hanged. Massive crowds attended his cremation.

I’m not sure why the author calls him an “ALEEK”(unreal) man. He’s very much a flesh and blood creature, and even adorable despite his anarchist strait. His tumultuous life, so palpable without his dream womanRuku,  resonates long after I was done with the book.

 Translators, please take note: it’s a great literary novel that deserves your attention.

If you like ALEEK MANUSH, you may also like SHADOWLAND.

Chinua Achebe interview

Artists from the developing world do no one a favor by blindly copying Western styles and forms. And let me be clear, because I am often misunderstood: I am not decreeing how a writer should write. I am not suggesting that artists should not or cannot be influenced by other artists from different parts of the world. That is welcome. I am suggesting that an artist should be true to who and what they are and should aspire to produce the best art that they can …that is when the magic in art is released. What I am calling for is an environment where freedom of creative expression is not only possible but protected… where an artist from any part of the worldcanacquire and develop their unique voice and then express themselves on the Great Cultural Stagein full ear shot of the world!

Will Self interview

"I don't really write for readers.I think that's the defining characteristic of being serious as a writer. I mean, I've said in the past I write for myself. That's probably some kind of insane egotism but I actually think that's the only way to proceed – to write what you think you have to write. I write desperately trying to keep myself amused or engaged in what I'm doing and in the world. And if people like it, great, and if they don't like it, well, that's that – what can you do? You can't go round and hold a gun to their head."

Author Gore Vidal passes away

Gore Vidal - the great novelist, iconoclast, polemicist -  died on Tuesday at the age of 86 from pneumonia- related complications at his home in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.

I was saying to somebody not long ago — and this can easily be misunderstood — "You know, I used to be a famous novelist and I'm not anymore." And they said, "Well, what do you mean? People who know about those things know who you are. And your novels are no worse than they ever were." And I said, "What I mean is, the category no longer exists. Famous novelist is a contradiction in terms."

Anna Starobinets interview

 A good writer can’t write “pure” horror, since real literature is always broader than a genre.

Lit news: Big authors charge hefty fees for preface/blurbs.

                                                        IS IT RIGHT?

It seems to be turning into a tidy side-business for award-winning and internationally known authors—some of them charge as much as Rs 8-10 lakh to write a two-page preface for a new book. Back-flap recommendations cost less but many of these are written by publicists, the credited author is just shown the final text.
via Outlook magazine

James Meek interview

“There are no rules in writing. I recently read A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul. He wrote that in his 20s. I think the truth is that there are some people who just live, they don’t get a job necessarily, but they have a particular ability to hear and to see and to feel and to use all their senses and to remember.... And then the final quality, which is to take the words and make them stick to everything they have experienced and even if they’ve been seeming to sit in one place and know nobody other than their family and their friends in their own little locale, they can write something stupendous. Having said that, we can’t all be Naipaul. Some people need more time, more life, more collisions with strangeness.”

Booker longlist 2012: Triumph of the New!

The 2012 longlist, just announced, has interesting features: it includes four debut novels, three small independent publishers and one previous winner(Hilary Mantel). 
Of the twelve writers, nine are British, one Indian, one South African and one Malayasian. The eldest on the list Michael Frayn is 78, and the youngest Ned Beaumen is 27. 
Curiously, the longlist has snubbed the old guard with Zadie Smith, Ian McWan and Martin Amis failing to make the cut.

According to Peter Stathard, Chair of judges, "goodness, madness and bewildering urban change are among the themes of this year's longlist."

Martin Amis interview

Vulture publishes a pretty long interview with Martin Amis, in whom I've grown  a little interest recently (Truth to tell, I've not yet read any of his novels yet). Despite my occasional boredom,  I read through the whole interview. I must admit Amis is well-read, intelligent and great to listen to. But in the end I could not discern if he is a real writer, and if I should add him on my reading list.


I’m not interested in making a diagnostic novel or a concern. I’m 100 percent committed in fiction to the pleasure principle—that’s what fiction is, and should be.

Literary classics as cash cow!

A British publisher is giving literary classics a steamy makeover

How Sartre and Camus viewed the United States

The  Opinionator has an interesting article on Sartre and Camus : their life and experiences in NewYork.
In December 1944, Albert Camus, then editor of Combat, the main newspaper of the French Resistance, made Jean-Paul Sartre an offer he couldn’t refuse: the job of American correspondent. Perhaps, in light of the perpetual tension and subsequent acrimonious split between the two men, he was glad to get him out of Paris. What is certain is that Sartre was delighted to go. He’d had enough of the austerities and hypocrisies of post-liberation France and had long fantasized about the United States. Camus himself would make the trip soon after, only to return with a characteristically different set of political, philosophical and personal impressions.

Toni Morrison interview

" Do you really think that your life is bigger, deeper, more profound because your life is on television? And they do. I really want some meaning. It used to be easy to toss it off. Now it’s harder and harder. You have to navigate just to find something that has nourishment. It’s the absence of nourishment. What do you do in place of nourishment? It’s usually junk. Either it’s junk food or junk clothes or junk ideas.” 

Amitava Kumar on Indian writing in English

"Every week I receive notice of new titles brought out in English by Indian publishers — some with titles so trivial that it’d be embarrassing to repeat them here — and the question that arises is about the ambition of such art. Where’s the desire to touch on life’s sufferings and its meanest pleasures?

If I had money to bet, I’d put it on our vernacular literatures. On reading Morrison, I am reminded of Ismat Chughtai, whose portrayal of tragedy is marked by tender intimacy with life’s small consolations. Those familiar with other literatures — particularly from the South — would name many more contemporary voices. How different they must sound from our Chetan Bhagat wannabes — and, in fact, from Chetan Bhagat himself!"

Shalom Auslander interview

      Q: How did you become a writer?
    A: A lot of really bad shit happened to me when I was younger, and I can’t rap. Also, I don’t likepeople very much, and there aren’t many jobs whose description includesspending long hours alone in a dark room with the blinds drawn.

Alex Miller interview

“One of the pleasures of writing fiction is that if you get the setting right, and if you get the story right – the situation blowing up like a beautiful big storm cloud – characters arrive fully formed.  And you think, Yes, I’ll have that one, and that one; thanks, mate. It’s a wonder. And a great delight to see them. They come in out of the mists of nothing, with gestures already developed.”

Now, an English literary Journal from Bangladesh: Bengal Lights!

  "We plan in the future to expand on this initial groundwork and be a forum that can act at least as a region-wide network for writers. We are planning to have seminars and symposiums in the future, to set up a translation center – from Bengali to English – and a press with a limited imprint for outstanding works. We want everybody with us. Come publish, be with us, we Bangladeshis are also eager to sail on the big creative boat of literature."

Lit News: Garcia Marquez "suffering from dementia".

"He has problems with his memory. Sometimes I cry because I feel like I'm losing him,"

I had just dropped out of the faculty of law after six semesters devoted almost entirely to reading whatever I could get my hands on, and reciting from memory the unrepeatable poetry of Spanish Golden Age. I already had read, in translation, and in borrowed editions, all the books I needed to learn the novelist's craft, and had published six stories in newspaper supplements, winning the enthusiasm of my friends and the attention of a few critics. The following month I would turn twenty three, I had passed the age of military service and was a veteran of two bouts of gonorrhea and everyday I smoked, with no foreboding, sixty cigarettes made from the most barbaric tobacco. I divided my leisure between Baranquilla and Cartagena de Indias, on Colombia's coast, living like a king on what I was paid for my daily commentaries in the newspaper El Heraldo, which amounted to almost less than nothing, and sleeping in the best company possible wherever I happened to be at night. As if the uncertainty of my aspirations and the chaos of my life were not enough, a group of inseparable friends and I were preparing to publish without funds a bold magazine that Alfanso Fuenmayor had been planning for the past three years. What more could anyone desire?
--From Garcia Marquez's memoir Living to Tell the Tale.

Bizarre, the success of Fifty Shades of Grey!

"It is a terrible turning back of the clock for a book like this to have such enormous success. It is as if women are now trying to apologise for the success they have had in a man's world. It is a sort of response to the modern age, but a very primitive response."
-- Estela Welldon, forensic psychotherapist 

Shimmer Chinodya interview

“I perpetually seek a harmonious fusion of theme and style. I’d hate to write a single boring paragraph. I believe a good book should exalt the heart and mind of the reader and not punish him/her and that lazy, boring writers should be dragged out to the market place and flogged in public!’’   

John Banville interview

"I spend two, three to five years writing a book. I know its failings. I know the few areas in which it's succeeded. The only person who can't read this book is me because I bring to it all the history, all the dead cats and slime and that Tuesday afternoon when you said 'Fuck it', and you let the paragraph go." 

Joshua Henkin Interview

The Millions has a great interview with Joshua Henkin, the novelist.


Someone once said that there are only two kinds of stories, Stranger Comes to Town and Person Goes on a Trip — which is really just one kind of story, since Stranger Comes to Town is simply Person Goes on a Trip from a different point of view. I don’t find this particularly perturbing. Yes, every story has been told, but it’s the way of telling — the how — that makes every writer unique, and if you have a distinct voice, if there’s emotional truth to your characters, if you use language in service of this voice and these characters, then your book will be distinct. 

2012 German Peace Prize for Chinese dissident writer

 Chinese  dissident writer Liao Yiwu, who fled China for Germany in 2011, has been awarded  the 2012 German Peace Prize.

Elias Khoury interview

“I don’t know how the events in the Arab world will affect my writing. Maybe I will not write about them but they will affect my style. So things are much more complicated, but I think that writing literature is something much more serious than writing about current events ... It is a very deep thing which is a dialogue with your time and a dialogue with the dead."

Last recorded words of Jorge Luis Borges

I never reread what I publish. Awful to think students are examined on what I write. But what can I do about it? Reading is felicity, and I hate the thought it should be forced on anyone.

more

Mario Vargas Llosa interview/2

The Guardian has an interesting interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel-prize winning author.
The Nobel prize is a fairytale for a week and a nightmare for a year. You can't imagine the pressure to give interviews, to go to book fairs. The first year was very difficult. I could barely write." 


Mario Vargas Llosa interview/1

Roberto Bolano an antidote to creative writing school product?

His premature death also may have had something to do with the excitement around his work, but not that much. He’s a writer who invented a commanding, distinctive style, in the largest sense of the word—a way of organizing experience as well as words—which is a pretty rare achievement. That spoke to many readers, for a number of reasons—I’ve heard, for example, that he is an antidote to the North American model of the professional novelist groomed by creative writing schools. There might be something symptomatic about his success, but I think that the main reason for it is that he is a fascinating singularity.

Of Arab writers and books

In the Fascinated by the Arab World, Prof Roger Allen has an interesting take on Arab writers and literature, and recommends some great books.

Over the decades I met Mahfouz many times; my favorite time was when I went to his Tuesday night session with his friends (including other novelists–Jamal al-Ghitani and Yusuf al-Qa`id, the poet, `Abd al-rahman al-Abnudi, and others) on a houseboat moored on the Giza side of the River Nile (I’m attaching a photograph of one of those occasions, the last time I saw him before his death). Whenever I came, he always reminded me that I had sent him a copy of GOD’S WORLD in 1973 and it had reached him on his birthday!  Above all, he had a terrific sense of humor, and was always ready with “one-liners”…

Ruth Franklin on book criticism

"Not all books are worth reading; some are dull, some are poorly written, and others can actually have a pernicious effect on our culture. It’s the task of the critic to champion books that deserve to be championed, and to take a stand against those that have the power to harm. And anyone who doesn’t believe that books have the power to harm is not taking them seriously enough."

Celebrating 50th anniversary of a novel!

Bestsellers come and go, and readers are never really bothered. But this novel has been on the bestseller list for fifty years, and still enthralls the readers. Through translations, this Bengali novel has now even generated interest in Europe and elsewhere.

The novel is Chowringhee by well-known Bengali author Sankar. It's about an opulent Kolkata hotel, the melting pot of varied and interesting characters.

Deys' Publishing, the publisher of this book since 1970, celebrated on June 9 the fiftieth anniversary of its appearance, in association with Penguin India, which has recently published the English translation of the novel.

"A few Bengali authors have achieved this feat," says the septugenarian author on this occasion, " but today it's special because the book and the author both are present."

The novel is now in its 111th edition in Bengali.

In a recent interview, the author hopes his book would retain its position for at least five years after his death. "That would be the final test for the book," he says.

Why is Gunter Grass so controversial?

Günter Grass is in a very unusual position. It's a position which people would like to take away from him, but can't. You can't take away his company car. You can't deny him a bonus. You can't kick him out of office. He's a self-made man. Now people always say that he should give the Nobel Prize back, since that's the only thing he could do. Or renounce his PEN membership. Grass is a rare example of a fully independent and yet prominent man. And he only has himself to thank for that - he doesn't need to act with regards to others. That's why he provokes controversy.

Ray Bradbury quote

"Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years... I read everything in the library. I read everything. I took out 10 books a week so I had a couple of hundred books a year I read, on literature, poetry, plays, and I read all the great short stories, hundreds of them. I graduated from the library when I was 28 years old. That library educated me, not the college."

Dave Eggers interview

I guess a book needs the time it needs. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that. You have to wait for the fruit to fall from the tree.

Are dead writers remote from us?

 In a recent study, a team of mathematicians from Dartmouth and Wisconsin says that dead writers have no influence on contemporary fiction. Isabel Kaplan, the novelist, analyses the study and offers her viewpoint.

In the world of contemporary literature, the classics are not suffering from an "anxiety of impotence" (to use the paper's terminology) -- but, when it comes to understanding contemporary literature, perhaps this team of mathematicians is.

Literary revolution from below?

"We expect literary revolutions to come from above, from the literary end of the spectrum — the difficult, the avant-garde, the high-end, the densely written. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Instead we’re getting a revolution from below, coming up from the supermarket aisles. Genre fiction is the technology that will disrupt the literary novel as we know it".

Shalom Auslander reviews "The Eternal Philistine"

"If satire, as they say in the theater, is what closes on Saturday night, humor in literature is what gets belittled by reviewers, ignored by the award committees, goes out of print and is never spoken about again. Comedy bravely stands up, speaks the harsh truth, attempts to show things the way they are, to teach us to see and laugh at our own shortcomings and failures. For that it is dismissed. The fate of humor in literature, one could say, is utterly tragic, but then one would be saying something funny, and one would be ignored."

Shin Kyung-sook interview

For me, writing is a path connecting this world to the irreconcilable or forbid­den, and to the oppressed and weak. 

Is it even possible to tailor a book for someone? In whatever circum­stance, I only write a story that I want to write, and I do it in my own style. One of the reasons I chose to become a writer was my desire to be free, without any constraints imposed on me. Now, when I write, I feel infinitely free. I relish this freedom, which I have only recently attained.

Publishing culture is diseased!

"Publishers have such a strong sense of entitlement that they feel perfectly justified in breaking the law to keep things how they are. They abuse their power. Worse, they think their power is deserved, that they alone can deliver rich literary culture to the unwashed masses because their insights are so keen and their judgement is ubiquitous."

Last Carlos Fuentes interview

Of course, it's my assumption: the PW interview, published on May 15 (the same day Fuentes died), is the last  published interview of the great novelist and it relates to his new novel VLAD. It has some interesting observations.

You’re a writer or a filmmaker; literature is the antithesis of making films.

Lit News: Carlos Fuentes dies

"Fuentes leaves behind a large body of work, an eloquent testimony of political issues and cultural realities of our time. Not only are friends but many readers are going to deeply miss him."


Read here an excerpt from Inez  by Carlos Fuentes

Immanuel Mifsud interview

"...we are all concerned with image, not with content."

Orhan Pamuk interview /1

I like when politics is there in my books, just below the surface, something we are aware of, but that does not force itself upon us. Of course, in Turkey, one cannot leave out this aspect.

Originality is dangerous: Salman Rushdie

“Great art, original art, is never created in a safe middle ground. Originality is dangerous, as it is at the edge."

How to write a novel like Orhan Pamuk

I began thinking of this novel in the mid-1990s, when I said to myself, I'll buy a house and imagine a family living there and then chronicle their stories, their daily lives from the kitchen to the street, what they do or say and how they live. So I thought I would collect the objects of their ordinary lives and weave these into my story — place them in the hands of the family. I wrote the novel as I bought the objects and I also wanted to write about the making of the museum as part of the novel. I don't know why I did this. But as always, a djinn entered me and I followed my inner footsteps.”

Alain Mabanckou interview

Everyone has a choice to do or not to do, and we are still struggling between our cultures and what we are doing in fact  So my books are always like that, struggling between the fact that an individual is trying to carry the weight of the world, he's trying to stand still, he's trying to move forward, but he needs to make a lot of choices in order to fulfill his mission."

"The Art of Fielding": just another annual pick?

You cannot be too critical of the literary establishment’s annual picks without being thought an antiquarian, but wouldn’t it be much nastier, much harder on contemporary fiction in general, to say that this stuff really was some of the best writing published in 2011?

Literature thrives on risk

Patrick French, well-known historian and writer, has an interesting (kitschy, though) article called Writings On India (and the Foreign Hand on the Keyboard) in today's Hindustan Times.

If you only work in a pointillist way, you lose any interest towards ambition and risk - and literature lives upon, depend upon risk.

Ann Patchett on reading fiction

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

Lit News: No Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year!

One of the surprises from Monday's Pulitzer Prize announcements was the lack of an award in the fiction category. It's the first time since 1977 that the Pulitzer board hasn't given an award for fiction writing.

J K Rowling writes an adult novel!

I thought J.K. Rowling had retired for ever from her writing. Far from it..She now comes back with an adult novel. What hubris! But no doubt her book would sell by the bucketful, given the gargantuan marketing that goes with Rowling products (books).
I suspect in years to come people will make a link between our plump, comfortable, infantilising society and the popularity of Potter.

The challenge of translating 1Q84 together

 JR:1Q84 was so damn long. Sheer stamina was what I needed, above all. I was so grateful when Phil decided to translate the last volume. The editor spent months going through in extreme detail to give it consistency, and there wasn't a huge gap in style because we both kept close to the original.

JPG: Any two translators, like any two writers, are going to have a different style, and it's hard to go beyond that. But the editor did a great job to have the final translation read smoothly.

Market(share) for literature

 Literature takes up 10 percent of the entire Chinese book market, while it is 40 percent in the United States and 35-40 percent in Europe. 

Rereading as therapy

Rereading is therapy, despite the accompanying dash of guilt, and I find it strange that not everybody does it. Why wouldn't you go back to something good? I return to these novels for the same reason I return to beer, or blankets or best friends.

Alexander Ilichevsky interview

 “I am currently finishing a novel… about why morality collapsed in Russia and how it has shaped my country as it is today. But in fact, it is a tragic kind of ‘love story’”.

Anne Tyler interview

"I don't have intellectual curiosity, I have curiosity about people." 

Lit news: Mario Vargas Llosa donates his 30,000 books

Nobel Laureate  Mario Vargas Llosa  donates the 30,000 books of his personal library to his hometown of Arequipa.

Salman Rushdie's India Today Conclave speech

"This word, freedom. It's a beautiful sounding word, isn't it? Who would be against freedom? It's a word everyone would automatically be "for", one would think. A free society is one in which a thousand flowers bloom, in which a thousand and one voices speak. And what a simple and grand idea that seems. It's like that copper goddess standing in the harbour, enlightening the world. 

But in our time, many essential freedoms are in danger of defeat and not only in totalitarian or authoritarian states. Here in India also, a combination of religious fanaticism, political opportunism and, I have to say, public apathy is damaging that freedom upon which all other freedoms depend: the freedom of expression." 

Ian McEwan on originality

In literature, everyone is first. We do not need to ask who was first to write Don Quixote. Better, in fact, to consider the possibility of being the second – Pierre Menard, who in Borges's famous story independently reconceives, centuries after Cervantes, the entire novel, down to the last word. The worst novelist in the world can at least be assured that he will be the first to write his terrible novel. And mercifully, the last. And yet, to be first, to originate, to be original is key to the quality of a work of literature. However minimally, it must advance – in subject matter, in means of expression – our understanding of ourselves, of ourselves in the world.

Elif Shafak interview

"Extremist ideologies all around the world are telling us that you have to make a choice, but it’s important to recognise that people can have multiple attachments"

Ivan Klima interview

I'm just finishing a book of many very short stories. Now it's 100 pages, and it's more or less finished. Twenty short stories all written in the past two years. What is specific about them is that they are very short, sometimes only half a page or one or two pages. I'm trying to be very strict and brief. Some are very short meditations or very quick observations of something and nothing more. It's something new in my writing.

Programming & Writing

“You’re talking to defined interfaces, not making up a whole world. With code, what it means is what it does. It doesn’t express, not really. It’s a very bounded conversation. And writing is not bounded. That’s what’s hard about it.”

Read an E-Book Week starts today!

"Read an E-book" week kicks in today.  Being an ardent indie, I offer my novel Shadowland (Coupon code RE 100) for free during this period ( March 4 -10) to those interested, especially to readers of  literary fiction.

Thanks for your reading. I'll appreciate any feedback from you.

Shalom Auslander on Franz Kafka

"Everything Kafka wrote began as a joke, that Franz, in his wisdom, took very seriously, taking it, in the words of Milan Kundera, into the "dark depths of the joke". Singing mice, talking apes, men who turn into bugs, cops who arrest you for no reason. This was Kafka's hilarious idea: life itself is a joke, and a joke we have no choice but to take seriously. That, however, doesn't mean it isn't funny."

What can writers do in times of crisis?

 At a panel discussion hosted by the Southeast Europe Association and the Traduki-Network in Munich last weekend,  popular Greek author and "Faust" translator  Petros Markaris , Hungarian author György Dalos and Albanian author Lindita Arapi have their take on writers' stance in times of crisis.
Only two attitudes survive till the end of the battle: "leftist cynicism" and "rightist hypocrisy." Hate leaves little room for constructive criticism and is only exacerbated by political divisions.

Teju Kole interview

"The biggest source of novels is other novels. But, occasionally, I will doff my cap to the other stuff I assume my reader has read. In Open City there is a passage that any reader of Joyce will immediately recognise as a very close, formal analogue of one the stories in Dubliners. That is because a novel is also a literary conversation."

José Edmundo Paz-Soldán interview

"The main character is based on a real serial killer who was an undocumented alien.  "[Interviewers] sometimes will ask you about your moral responsibility as a writer; 'you should create positive, uplifting images of Latinos or Hispanics.' That's not the way I see it. Part of the responsibility to tell the whole story is to show the negative side as well."

A tribute to Adonis

A major tribute at the Mosaic Rooms ( 03 February to 30 March) to the great Syrian poet Adonis, including an exhibition of stunning drawings and a series of literary events. 

Amitav Ghosh on book festival tamasha

" Public life in India is now a whirling continuum that seamlessly unites cricket, politics and Bollywood. Each domain leaks into the other and the major figures are all closely linked. It is no coincidence that many of these elements are also much in evidence at book festivals. The intention evidently is to make the book world another link in the tightly joined whirligig of Cripollywood. It is easy to see the attractions of this, especially for writers who are striving to bring their work to public notice. But there is a price to pay: we need to remind ourselves that Bollywood movies are routinely re-edited to accommodate protests of various kinds. Recent incidents in Jaipur and in Kolkata, where Taslima Nasreen was also prevented from participating in a festival, suggest that Indian publishing will have to adapt its practices to those of the film industry if it is to pitch its tent beside the three-ring circus of the tamasha culture."

Tom Stoppard on writing

"Writing mostly boils down to what will be the next line. If a play works out well, the author should be feeling lucky rather than clever."

Susan Bernofsky interview

" Every sentence takes you on a little journey somewhere, and the question is where that journey is going and in what order are we hitting the landmarks."

Shame! A Jaipur rerun in Kolkata Book Fair!

The ongoing Kolkata Book Fair witnessed Taslima Nasreen getting the same treatment from the State as Salman Rushdie in Jaipur Lit Fest. The organisers of the book fair - claimed to be the largest in Asia - promptly cancelled the scheduled launch of Taslima's autobiography 'Nirbasan"(Exiled) as some fundamentalist groups protested against its release. According to the local media, there was a verbal directive to the organisers from Kolkata police.

But Kolkata being Kolkata, the lovers of literature assembled in large numbers before the office of the organisers, and brought out a procession, with Taslima's book in their hands, shouting protest against their decision. And before the police could take any effective action, the publisher of the book, People's Book Society, had the book launched by Nabarun Bhattacharya, the eminent writer. Sujata Bhadra, well-known human rights activist and other intellectuals were present on the occasion.

Personally I see it as the triumph of literature and free expression over vote-bank politics, but I'm really concerned that the bigots are increasingly invading our cultural space with support from the State.

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Jonathan Franzen on technology

"“The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it." 

Peter Carey interview

''The real anguish is just making the thing and then, after that, well, it's awful to be criticised and it's awful to be not liked, it's awful to be any of those things. Basically, the writer of fiction is the person who comes in every day and puts his head up his bum and goes to work.''

Salman Rushdie interview, post-Jaipur Lit Fest

NDTV's Barkha Dutt has a long and interesting interview with Salman Rushdie soon after the "black farce" in just-concluded Jaipur Literatur Festival.

The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that and then I put it out there and say to you, "What do you think?" I hope that you think well of it, obviously. If you don't that is not great for me but that's the only way to make it. The only way to make it is to make it with the fullness of your personal vision.

What is a lit Fest?

"It’s a private party and even though the line says “Everyone’s Invited”, they retain the right to decide who “Everyone” is. Or anyone. All that money, all that effort, all that energy, organisation, coordination, travelling, planning, operational logistics, talking and debating, sassing and faffing, boozing and schmoozing, it’s not about books at all. It’s about riding on the goodwill and glamour generated by books and literature, great writing and great authors, taking all that classy chic intellectual pride and amortising it into sponsor-sized chunks of social currency."

Rushdie a coward: Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, who is sometimes called female Salman Rushdie, now slams Rushdie for cancelling his Jaipur literary Fest.

"Cancelling his India trip is his latest cowardly act," she says.

It may be recalled here that Taslima's books have been banned in her own native country Bangladesh as well as in India for the same reason as that of Rushdie for hurting religious sentiments of the Muslims, and she has been on exile for a long, long time.

Is Taslima braver than Rushdie, one wonders. But why does she call him a coward?

As we now understand, Rushdie was fooled into believing that he was under threats from the mafia. The fact was, it was a ploy to keep him away from the fest. The cancellation of the visit does not necessarily make him a coward.

Rushdie cancels visit: "a stain on India's international reputation"

"very sad not to be at jaipur. I was told bombay mafia don issued weapons to 2 hitmen to "eliminate" me. Will do video link instead. Damn"
SalmanRushdie Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie dropped from Jaipur Lit Fest?

Salman Rushdie is an unwanted writer right now in India. The Rajasthan Government does not want him to attend the Jaipur Lit Fest (20 -24 January, 2012). Nor do the powers-that-be in Delhi. Do the organizers of the fest want him? Perhaps not, at this moment. So the unstoppable Rushdie has no other option but to skip the fest.

The government says that Rushdie's visit may cause a law and order problem. But if you dig  it a little, there is a series of things that lead to this decision. First, the head of a Muslim group protests against Rushdie joining the fest. Then a Congress leader in Delhi echoes him more or less along the same line. Now it is the turn of the state government to pick up the thread and go ahead with the request to the organizers that Rushdie be persuaded to stay away from the festival. And what do you expect from the organizers? They would go with their jamboree anyway - with or without Rushdie.

But how Rushdie could be a law and order problem? He's a serious writer and thinker. You may not like him for your primitive instincts or lack of intellectual capacities, but how can a government bar him from attending  a lit fest? India is where Rushdie was born, and he has visited India a number of times. And we all know he has always promoted pluralism.

So, what do you read in this Rushdie visit ban decision? First, the Government has scant regard for  writers or artists.Remember how it behaved with Taslima Nasreen or Makbul Fida Hossain in the past?

Secondly,  those in power can bend over to just do anything to appease the minority community - in the interest of keeping its vote-bank intact and unchallenged, literature/art be damned. And now is really election time in five states in India.

And lastly, can we say that  its secularism is a fakery (to borrow a word from Rushdie) of the highest order?

I would like to see what Rushdie tweets on this.

Pakistan's English-language novelists

 Stephanie Nolen has an interesting article on Pakistan's English-language novelists in The Globe and Mail. 

A hunger for access to that reality has, in the past few years, created an opening for Pakistan’s English-language novelists: Intense Western interest in the country has vaulted the work of a handful of Pakistani writers on to prize lists and foreign bookstore shelves. “There’s a collision of talent and interesting times – something is really happening there in terms of writing,” said John Freeman, editor of the British literary magazine Granta. The issue focusing on Pakistani writers was the bestseller of the past three years. 

New, phenomenal interest in Albert Camus!

This phenomenal revival of interest in his work is pregnant with a significance that deserves scrutiny for it can reveal a thing or two about the world we live in today. Clearly, the present generation in France acknowledges Camus as a contemporary. It regards his literary and philosophical output to be of topical relevance to its insecurities. Here, they say in substance, is a man who saw through the conceits of the reigning ideologies of the day, the delusions of religion, the tyranny of dogma, the arrogance of power and the dubious complicities of intellectuals with those who invoked reasons of state to plunder, loot and murder.

László Krasznahorkai interview

Q: Many people have the impression that your books are hard to readand to understand. That’s a myth, but don’t you think you’ve got some bad PR?

László Krasznahorkai: You know, the problem is that anything that’s the least bit serious gets bad PR. Kafka got bad PR, and so does the Bible. The Old Testament is a pretty hard text to read; anyone who finds my writing difficult must have trouble with the Bible, too. Our consumer culture aims at putting your mind to sleep, and you’re not even aware of it. It costs a lot of money to keep this singular procedure going, and there’s an insane global operation in place for that very purpose. This state of lost awareness creates the illusion of stability in a constantly changing world, suggesting at least a hypothetical security that doesn’t exist. I see the role of the tabloid press somewhat differently. I can’t just shrug it off and say to hell with it. The tabloid press is there for a serious reason, and that reason is both tragic and delicate.

Mikhail Shishkin interview

 If you say to yourself: “I will write for such-and-such areadership,” you immediately stop being a writer and become a servant.

Indian publishing to boom in 2012?

"The new thing I have discovered is that Indian writers and readers are no longer taking their cues from the West. They are making their own decisions about what is relevant to them and concentrating on what they enjoy writing or reading."

Tehelka's "Original Fictions :4"

Tehelka, though a news weekly, loves literature ( may be because Tarun Tejpal, its editor, is a literary writer himself) and every year devotes an issue to original fictions by Indian writers writing in English and other languages on a theme pre-determined by the weekly.

This year the theme is romance.

I started casually flipping through "The Foreigner" by Amitava Kumar, and was instantly hooked. Great style, odd but interesting characters, funky dialogue, and perfect story-telling. I had a sense of a well-crafted piece as I was done with the story.

I'm sorry I can't say the same things about any other story. Our Nabarun Bhattacharya, writer of that great short novel Herbert, under-delivered. He seems like a misfit in this group.

Then there were stories which were excerpts of soon-to-be published first novels by their writers. They read like crap. Not original in any way.

Finally, the editor of this issue should have been more careful in selecting the stories. After all, romance has not really disappeared from the surface of our world, and it can still touch our chord if the writer can work it the right way.

Dag Solstad interview

" I may not be the Norwegian writer with the most numerous female readers, but I have the best."

Writing as a career

" If you want a career that makes sense, don’t work as a writer."

V.S Naipaul interview

"But if you’re a writer, you do the one book, then you have to go on to do the second, and then the third… It never ends. At the age of nearly 80, I am still tormented by this need to go on a little bit more... So perhaps a lot of the discoveries about the nature of writing came to me from this need to go on."

Teju Cole in A Public Space

"At this fractured moment, our American agora appears to be dominated by noisemakers. Political debates are “won” by those who shout loudest, op-eds are written on little more than conjecture, and popularity counts more than anything else. The more thoughtful and reflective spaces are being silenced. And yet a self-preserving and self-nurturing instinct tells us that the essential work of interpretation is best found in a culture’s quieter spaces. We need reports in fiction, nonfiction, and photography that are engagé without being ephemeral and are steeped in a proper thoughtfulness."

Another e-book: a plug for myself

I have another e-book out, this time at Amazon.com. It's a novella called Delhi Riddle. It is about an artist who encounters a strange physical relationship between a man and a woman, both married separately, while in Delhi during a group show, and is so deeply moved that he tries to capture it on his canvas.

Of course, it's literary fiction: not the dull, stodgy kind, but an easy, fast-paced narrative. In it, though, I have handled such things as love, sex, art, urban life in post-globalisation India.

The book's cover is done by my artist-friend Basudev Ghosh.

Please read the book if you feel interested, and give me feedback, if you have time.