Global Novel

The need for a novel to have universal and international appeal is a subject close to my heart. I have blogged about how writers from non-English speaking countries are often pushed to pander to the sensibilities of their English speaking readership at the cost of the art and craft of their writing . This post by Tim Parks on the global novel and how it fails to deliver addresses this issue :

As a result of rapidly accelerating globalization we are moving toward a world market for literature. There is a growing sense that for an author to be considered “great,” he or she must be an international rather than a national phenomenon. This change is not perhaps as immediately evident in the US as it is in Europe, thanks to the size and power of the US market and the fact that English is generally perceived as the language of globalization, so that many more translations go away from it than toward it. However, more and more European, African, Asian and South American authors see themselves as having “failed” if they do not reach an international audience.

Parks argues that the lack of "culture-specific clutter and linguistic virtuosity" take away from the quality of the writer's output. The idea being that a writer must be allowed to tell their story in the language and the atmosphere that they feel closest to. They should not be forced to simplify and dilute in the interests of reaching international readers. Shakespeare and Austen are held out as examples of writers who have have failed the international appeal test in today's world.

That is probably not true - the fact that both these authors have survived the test of time and are read around the world is evidence that having universal appeal is driven by the theme and its handling by the author and has less to do with culture specific tropes. What has happened to the garden variety global novel lately is that that writers have either abandoned local color to reach a wider audience or over-done it to claim a niche. In either case, the themes they are dealing with lack in broad appeal and the telling of the story itself is seriously lacking. With substance being the real problem, the style does not help or hurt them a great deal.

Catcher In the Rye

Reading about J.D Salinger's death, brought back memories of the time when I got my first opportunity to read Catcher in the Rye and just as quickly lost it. I was twelve then and was visiting with Uncle D and his family. In my sleepy little town, his bookshelf was the best stocked library I could have access to. His tastes were eclectic and he always made great recommendations. On this particular evening he asked me "Didn't you just have your twelfth birthday ?" and I said it had been a week ago.

"Great. No time like now for you to read Catcher in the Rye" he said handing me a well-worn paperback copy of the book. Even before I could flip through it, his sister scooped it out of my hands reprimanding Uncle D as she did so. "Do you have no better sense, D than to give a child this young Catcher in the Rye to read ?" she asked him.

Now Uncle D's sister visited them sometimes and was a formidable woman in every way. She had several master's degrees and taught English literature at a fancy Delhi college. Anyone who knew her for any length of time knew better than to mess with her. Uncle D protested feebly that he had been about my age when he first read the Catcher and she retorted "That would explain a lot !" and walked away in a huff along with the book leaving him more than a little embarrassed.

I may not even have read the book had it not been snatched away from me under such dramatic circumstances. But now, I simply had to check it out if only to see why it was so inappropriate for a twelve year old. I was able to get hold of the book a couple of years later and loved it. Thanks to that incident, I became very curious about books that had once been banned. To that end, I made sure I read Lolita, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Fanny Hill, Flowers In the Attic and much more well before I might have been considered old enough to read any of these books.

Uncle D and his sister taught me a valuable parenting lesson early on. It is usually safer to hand kids books that might be objectionable than to take them away because kids will find a way to read what they have been forbidden to. Having an adult in their lives to discuss their understanding and reaction to the book is very important and to deny them that opportunity is to distort their emotional growth.

It never ceased to surprise me that a highly qualified woman who was an educator herself, would choose to take the approach she did with the Salinger book. Uncle D was an engineer who had loved literature and had the good sense to introduce kids to it as early as possible. I am grateful to him for that and his book policing sister for sparking my curiosity about non-conformist literature.

Inkpop

Here is how Inkpop bills itself : inkpop is an online community that connects up-and-coming authors with talent spotters and publishing professionals in the teen market. Each month, HarperCollins editors read inkpop's most popular submissions in hopes of discovering the next big thing in teen lit. The best inkpop writers have the potential to land every author's dream: a publishing contract.

Being that the talent scouts are looking for the next big teen-lit phenom and anyone older than thirteen is welcome, this could be a great place for middle and high-school students to post their work - even if they were class assignments.As a gathering place for the literature minded it would be a great way to meet new people and form meaningful friendships. For some kids this may be a welcome alternative to MySpace and other youth-centric social networking options.

The spin on the garden variety voting system to identify the most popular works, is the idea of a Trendsetter - something that the 13-19 age group can only benefit from. Instead of being a follower and part of a hive mind that "fitting in" is generally about, here is a different way to be influential, consequential and therefore cool. Love the Cherry Pick idea - for a teen to have their maiden submission panned by the community could be a rough experience. To that end, the ability to highlight the comments they want everyone to take note of it is quite empowering.

Just Rice

Not to be unnecessarily difficult here, but reading this essay on rice by Jhumpa Lahiri in The New Yorker do beg the questions why and when. First the why - why is this description of preparing pulao so terribly significant when it does not transcend the prosaic to become something larger than a grain (or bowl) of rice.

Given Sugar, Given Salt by Jane Hirshfield comes to mind as do some Odes to food by Pablo Neruda. Closer home (since Lahiri prefers to stick with all things Bengali), there is Sukanto Bhattacharya who wrote :"khudhar rajoye prithibi goddomoy, purnimar chand jeno jholshano ruti" translated very beautifully by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta as :

In the regime of hunger, the earth belongs to prose,
The full moon burns like a loaf of bread.

Now that is a way of looking at food a little differently. I recognize that Neruda, Hirshfield and Bhattacharya are poets and Lahiri is not but what a poet can do with verse, a competent writer should be able to do with prose. Basically what we have here is an intricate description of the process of preparing a desi rice dish by the author's father - which by the way is very similar to something Damayanti Basu Singh had written several years ago.

The essay by Buddhadev Basu which his daughter reproduces in translation is very much worth reading. Maybe that can serve as inspiration for Lahiri if she is absolutely determined to discuss the probasi banaglir handi-heshel ( non-resident Bengali's pots, pans and kitchen) in the most obsessive detail as has been her wont. There is a lot more work to be done to make such a piece of writing shine and become a thing of literary merit. Throwing a couple of Bengali words in for "texture" and "flavor" is not nearly enough.

Now for the when - when oh when is Lahiri going to say something that does not drip markeen probasi bangali (Bengali residing in America) like a over-soaked rosogolla. The drip is gooey, saccharine and yes very, very cringe worthy. Surely, she could employ her talents to turn out something more interesting than a really bland bowl of rice - and no, the raisins and almonds do not elevate it to anything more than that.

I asked my friend S who is a desi born and raised in NYC, what she thought made this kind of desi household minutiae unsupported by larger purpose so appealing. Her theory is that average American readers do not expect world class literature when they read the work of someone with an "ethnic sounding" name.  The best a desi could do is to satisfy their curioisty about what goes on inside a desi's home and mind. Lahiri and her ilk are enabling the vouyeristic in their western readers and it is the reason they are so marketable.

Writing Syllabus

McSweeny's Internet Age Writing syllabus is a wonderfully wise commentary on the state of the art.

Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t!

The essay as an art-form has been a lost cause for years now. Non-fiction is usually tedious and repetitious. You can read the introduction and epilogue to know everything you need to know about the book. The chapters in between merely rehash a few themes with no incremental value being added from page to page. Research material is frequently culled from on-line sources that is just a Google search away for the readers.



Used to be that a serious author spent years collecting his material and distilled its essence into a book. Average readers simply did not have the erudition or resources to do what such an author did. With information now being so easily available, data is no longer the exclusive realm of a writer and neither does it make a mark on it's own strength - originality of thought and uniqueness of vision do. However, those qualities are not very common among those who write. Maybe that is all because McSweeny's writing syllabus is already in effect - its being learned or imbibed even not formally taught.