Skip to main content

Writers who don't read

 As a teacher of English language and literature in a senior secondary school, my only complaint in the last few years has been that my students don't read anything other than their course books. "Your answers in the writing section possess the thinking levels of high school students at best," I told my class 12 students the other day while returning their examination answer sheets. 

It's not about the style. Style is something that I have stopped bothering about as a teacher. Gone are the days when I could expect from my students a sentence like "A sudden warm rainstorm washes down in sweet hyphens." That sentence, of course, belongs to J M Ledger, no student of mine. A student of mine would have written that as "It rained and there was a wind also". As prosaic and brusque as that. Poetry died long ago. Style died too. Stifled by ruthless pragmatism. 

It's not about style, however. Not poetry either. It's about the content. I can forgive the demise of poetry and style. We live in the age of trolls and memes. Blatant lies and fabricated truths reign in our social media. Poetry cannot survive in post-truth world. What does style mean in that post-truth world?

What is a writer's job in that world? If that world does not sustain poetry and style, doesn't it demand a quality of content from the writer? Why do we need writers to tell us that "It rained"? 

Writing must offer something worthwhile to the reader. Something to think about. Something that pokes the brain. Something that tickles the heart. Writing must move the reader to greater thoughts, greater deeds, greater vision than those she already has. What else is writing for?

A writer can do all that only if he has roots in the great wisdom of the past. A writer who has no touch with the great writers of the past as well as the present can't be expected to give us anything substantial. Writing is not sermonising from a self-righteous pulpit. It is about presenting wisdom in a strangely beautiful way. No one can do that without being in touch with the great masters. 

I want writers to take me to the sunset sky that looks like "a carnivorous flower" [Robert Bolano's metaphor]. 


PS. Written for Indispire Edition 367: Are there more 'writers' than readers today? #WritersToday

Comments

  1. Pradeep NairMarch 23, 2021 at 12:38 PM

    I think the kids read a lot ... The problem is they are reading all the wrong stuff ... Look at the amount of text they devour on social media! ... Very few of them read good English.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 23, 2021 at 3:05 PM

      Can Instagram & WhatsApp messages be considered discourses? You know the answer better. Most of my present students haven't even heard of good writers whom they should have read by now.

      Delete
  2. जितेन्द्र माथुरMarch 24, 2021 at 3:17 PM

    Your views are agreeable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RaghavMarch 27, 2021 at 6:48 PM

    A thought provoking blog!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...
8 comments
Read more

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
122 comments
Read more

The Venerable Zero

Ancient India was a powerhouse of new concepts in mathematics and astronomy, asserts William Dalrymple’s new book, The Golden Road . India stood out most dramatically in scientific rather than spiritual ideas. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, wrote in his classic Discovery of India : “It is remarkable that the Indians, though apparently detached from life, were yet intensely curious about it, and this curiosity led them to science.” Why does the present prime minister of the country choose to highlight the religious contributions? Well, you know the answer. While reading Dalrymple yesterday, I was reminded of a math prof I had for my graduation course. Baby was his first name and I can’t recall the surname. ‘Baby’ was a common name for men in Kerala of the mid-twentieth century. The present General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is a 71-year-old Baby from Kerala. Our Prof Baby was a middle-aged man who knew a lot more than mathematics. One day ...
12 comments
Read more