writing

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
-Jorge Luis Borges

A head start for everyone here: I LOVE books. Always have and always will. In fact there’s ever been a constant passion and hobby I’ve cultivated in my life, it is reading (among other things).

From childhood, when the likes of Hardy Boys, Secret Seven, Archies, Tin tin ruled the roost to teenage when I moved on to the more “mature” works of Sidney Sheldon, Arthur Hailey etc and then to Ayn Rand, I’ve pretty much been through the whole drill. As I grew older and read more eclectic stuff and as my tastes developed, I’ve probably started more diverse books but one things that has remained unchanged is the eternal charm of reading. Books were and have been the easiest form of escaping into your own utopia. Whenever I read anything I was transported into my world, made out of my choice of colors, my thoughts, my feelings, my views. In it my whims and wants were of the highest priority and life was stabilized at an all time happy mode.
As life’s almost endless, the treasure of books is also abundant in this world of ours. Influence is the keyword that is synonymous with millions of words put down in writing by writers world wide. Where Enid Blyton influenced my young world, John Grisham helped me in fostering my aim to be a lawyer, Shakespeare’s writing introduced me to an ancient world in an ancient tone that I could somehow closely relate to while Ayn Rand helped me realize and actualize my own way of life and thought.

All this while the world of writing and publishing books has undergone a sea change. There has a been an emergence of many new and interesting trends while at the same time it has signaled the end of many others (whether for the good or bad is an issue for another post.) What got me thinking in this direction was an event I attended recently, It was group discussion with two of the finalists of this year’s Commonwealth Prize (Marié Heese, Rana Dasgupta), Shormishtha Panja (Professor with the University of Delhi and President, Shakespeare Society of India) and Jai Arjun Singh (author of the popular blog, Jabberwock). The topic for the discussion was “Globalization- Writing And The Right To Be Read”. Although the discussion rarely conformed to the aforementioned topic (as it normally happens at such “intellectual events”), it did manage to bring out a few interesting topics pertaining to the modern writer and the new media for accessing writing worldwide.

Over the few years, of the many emerging trends that have come up, the most prominent one is of the Global Indian Author (however oxymoronic that may sound). The phrase in question refers the increasing number of foreign educated Indians’ writing gaining prominence and acclaim. Suketu Mehta (Maximum City), Vikram Chandra (Love & Longing…, Sacred Games), Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Rana Dasgupta and the garnd daddy of them all V.S. Naipaul among many more. These authors have an “hyphenated identity” eg Dasgupta is a Bitish-Indian. What this does it creates a unique space in the writer’s mind and gives their views a unique edge. The topics they write on may seem alien if viewed with respect to their cultural origins but are valid nonetheless as it corresponds. On the other hand we have a relatively home grown set of writers like Chetan Bhagat et all who write primarily about the experiences of the “Indian Middle Class” and around that. The main problem with the domestic writers like Bhagat is that they often raise the jingoistic and archaic pitch that anyone with even a shred of Indian DNA should confine himself to the Indian Middle Class and its experience. What they don’t see is that the global Indian author, as a direct consequence of his global upbringing is naturally equipped to write about that. This trend is not limited to just India but the sub-continent notably expatriate Pakistanis like Mohsin Hamid, Mohammad Hanif. What these people have in common with the India lot is a shared sense of existential angst as a result of the tough conditions young people face in South Asia. This also seeps into their work which gives it a unique flavor which is essentially a part of their shared experiences. That is one of the most wonderful aspect about writing, you can shed any tags you might have and let thoughts and opinions flow.

Another burning issue at the moment is about the emergence of the “new media” (Web Logs or Blogs, ebooks, Twitter, Facebook) and their impact on the way we read. A popular perception is that the age of Twitter and text messaging is dummying down our population, and destroying the written word. Many believe that this may be the last era of fine literature. And whereas, that maybe true, it is also good to see that the average citizen is getting at least some practice writing, even if it is only in their electronic journal or blog, which may (or may not) lead to a spillover onto writing. We must remember that it’s never been as easy as today to get published (and how!). We also see that there is a gap between the quality of writing, for instance those that learned how to write by posting on their blog, and those that have learned how to write from journalism college courses. Online writing has gotten completely interesting in that the articles you read, and the content that is available runs from atrocious to the superb quality you'd find in a literary writing contest. What these new forms of media have done is bring about what I like to call a “democratization of reading”, wherein the no one is left out of the “reading elite” rather is a part of the whole creative process.

Another observable trend is obsessing over how much money a first time author receives as an advance when it's brought up in the news. Yeah, Lindsay Lohan will no doubt be offered like 100 grand for her memoirs, a tiny percentage of which will go to the ghost writer who fills in everything between "got first role as trick or treater dressed as garbage" on a Letterman show, and "signed book contract." If there’s something which almost everyone agrees on is that fame helps a whole lot in landing book deals. It’s an undeniable fact. You have to be market-able to some extent. No one extends out freebies anywhere. PR is an essential part of any literary quest. It’s an unwritten rule. We may condemn it in intellectual circles but you can’t run away from it.

A fashionable tendency nowadays seems to be distancing yourself from your niche by describing your chick-lit novel as "a first person, contemporary journey through this hectic world where searching for real love shows a single mid-30s blonde the meaning of friendship and loyalty – but it's not chick-lit". It's chick-lit. Deal with it already. There’s nothing worse than reading some far fetched pompous gibberish summary on the cover which has nothing to do with the story! Describing your post-apocalyptic zombie novel as "a journey between a father an son" Cormac McCarthy, I'm looking at you. And guess what, zombies trump father/son bonding when it comes to book jacket marketing. Misleading is a shameful and damaging activity in the long run.

On the other hand an unfortunate trend is where one sees in writing profession is the use of artificial intelligence software that produces content. Interestingly enough, these AI software systems are getting better, and soon they will be able to produce creative works, or novels. How the future pans is out is only something we speculate and not predict.

No one in India has pinpointed the next homegrown prize-winning writer, but the recent trend seems to confirm, rather than undermine, the place of novelists writing in India now. They appear confident that there are new things to say, that people are interested when they say them, and that they can produce books as good as writers living in the west. In fact, they are beginning to write back to the west: perhaps the next big book to come out of India will have nothing to do with the country. Pankaj Mishra's new book is about China and Rana Dasgupta's second novel, written from Delhi, is set in Bulgaria.

"I have a lot of pressure from my publishers to write about India," Dasgupta admits, but "it is a colonial hangover in publishing to think that writers in India, Africa and the Caribbean must write about their home cultures while writers from the West could write about anywhere. Mature literary cultures should feel like they can write about the world." Whatever be the result of this tussle, one thing that is certain is the fact the times for an avid reader have never been more exciting and diverse.

Happy Reading!