Humble writer's dilemma

The first feedback I received on my new book, Black Hole, is that I put off the lay reader with too many allusions and references which are not made clear enough. "All your readers are not going to be people of English Literature," the message went, "nor are they going to be all Christians." My mention of Kipling's 'white man's burden' and Henry VIII's murderous lust were cited as examples.

The feedback came from a very good friend who was with me through thick and thin for over a decade. But she is a person with a double Masters in English language and literature. While I agree with her that my novel is not an easy read at all (I didn't mean it to be either) and concede also that quite a few of my allusions are likely to put off some Indian readers who are not acquainted with Christianity, the fact that a person of her knowledge and literary background made the remark continues to amuse me even now.

The feedback made me sit and think for a while.

Okay, Black Hole demands quite a bit of patience and literary skills from the reader. Literary skills would mean familiarity with standard literature as well as related subjects like history. But the demands made by Black Hole are far less in comparison with those made by, say, Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness or Salman Rushdie's Quichotte. In fact, my novel doesn't extract a fraction of the patience required to understand any of the good writers of today whom I admire like Kazuo Ishiguro or Javier Marias or Julian Barnes. And these are writers whose books sell in millions. Why can't at least a hundred people endure my much easier writing?

I think the answer lies in the simple fact that I am not as famous as them or anywhere near that fame. A writer who hangs on an illusory hook in the ominous vacuum between the readers and the galactic limelight has no right to write difficult books!

Anyway, I didn't intend to write a difficult book. The allusions and references came along as I went on. It is possible that a writer who relies so heavily on so many allusions and references is an inferior one. It is possible that I don't know the art of novel writing. I am not a trained novelist at all. Black Hole is my first novel, completed as I turned a senior citizen. All the while, as I was editing it, I was under the impression that anyone who can appreciate Roy and Rushdie, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan will find my book just a breeze.

I am grateful to the friend for disabusing me of my self-assessment. The feedback will definitely help in my future writing.

Comments

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below. Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Subhuman Social Media

Illustration by Copilot Designer I disabled Facebook on my phone yesterday. There’s too much vulgarity, subhuman crudity, on it. And the first thing I read this morning was a Malayalam weekly – Samakalika Malayalam from the Indian Express group – whose editorial lamented the treatment meted out on social media to Dr M Leelavathi, renowned Malayalam writer. Leelavathi refused to celebrate her 98 th birthday because she said she was distressed by the pictures of innocent children dying of human-made hunger in Gaza. She was trolled by the Hindu right wing in Kerala for saying that. The editorial mentioned above requests the “Hindutva handles” to leave alone Leelavathi. If Kerala’s beloved poet and educationist was moved to tears by the sight of little children behaving like insane creatures as soon as they espy some food, it only reveals the deep humanity that sustained her poetry as well as her world vision. The editorial went on to mention that 20,000 children were killed by Is...

Death of Humour and Rise of Sycophancy in India

Front pages of Newspapers in Delhi on Modi's birthday Yesterday the newspapers in Delhi (and many other places too) carried full page photo of Narendra Modi to celebrate his 75 th birthday. It was sycophancy at its zenith in the history of India’s print media. At no other point in the country’s history had the newspaper industry stooped so low. The first Prime Minister of the country was a man who encouraged the media to be critical of him. Nehru appreciated cartoons that caricatured him mercilessly. Criticism, particularly in the press, helped Nehru keep his ego under check. Shankar’s Weekly was the best cartoon magazine of those times. Launched in 1948 by K Shankar Pillai, the weekly featured political cartoons, satire and humorous articles. It criticised politicians mercilessly by caricaturing or satirising them. Nehru was a prime target. And the PM wasn’t upset. On the contrary, he appreciated Shankar Pillai’s efforts to make the nation, particularly its political leade...

A Man Called Ove

Book Review Title: A Man Called Ove Author: Fredrik Backman Translation from Swedish: Henning Koch Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, London, 2015 Pages: 295 Ove is a grumpy old man. Right in the initial pages of the novel, we are informed that “People said he was bitter. Maybe they were right. He’d never reflected much on it. People also called him ‘anti-social’. Ove assumed this meant he wasn’t overly keen on people. And in this instance he could totally agree with them. More often than not people were out of their minds.” The novel is Ove’s story It is Ove’s grumpiness that makes him a fascinating character for the reader. Grumpiness notwithstanding, Ove has a lot of goodness within. His world is governed by rules, order and routines. He is superhumanly hardworking and honest. He won’t speak about other people even if such silence means the loss of his job and even personal honour. When his colleague Tom steals money and puts the blame squarely...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault. For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy. Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves? Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian. In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically. Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification. In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog