The Irascible Prophet

Time for a quick literary quiz.

He does not like what Graham Green did to himself.

You know, he took the Graham Greene figure to the Congo, took him to Argentina, took him to Haiti, for no rhyme or reason.

His heroes are Tolstoy and Dickens.

He followed Conrad in his journey.

He finds Proust ''tedious,'' ''repetitive,'' ''self-indulgent,'' concerned only with a character's social status.

He does not like ''Ulysses'' too -- ''the Irish book...and other works that have to lean on borrowed stories.''

He also finds Stendhal ''repetitive, tedious, infuriating.''

And his greatest disappointment is Flaubert.

Who is he?

Who else but the cantankerous prophet, V S Naipaul.

Naipaul always raises important issues. He declared the novel form dead long ago, and yet he writes one or two every few years. He says, in a recent NYT interview, that he found the non-fiction form much more satisfying and honest. Excerpts:

''If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account,'' Naipaul said. ''If you're a romantic writer, you write novels about men and women falling in love, etc., give a little narrative here and there. But again, it's of no account.''

What is of account, in Naipaul's view, is the larger global political situation -- in particular, the clash between belief and unbelief in postcolonial societies.

Read this fascinating interview with this great writer with Rachel Danadio here. Includes MP3s. Go for it.

The Booker Longlist

So, there is going to be blood on the carpet.

I'm back to the Booker issue. The Independent carries a cantankerous take on the Booker tamasha.

"Every year in the August dog days, the conclave of five Man Booker Prize judges sends out smoke that's not yet white but a tantalising shade of grey. They deliver an interim report on the state of British, Commonwealth and Irish fiction in the form of a long-list. Every year, critics duly play the game of lauding, trashing or carping at the choices made. More of that later. But who ever bothers to judge the judges?" asks Boyd Tonkin.

"This selection reads more like an invitation to an upmarket vicarage tea-party than to a showdown in a blood-stained warehouse," he says.

I love it man!

Don't miss this Boyd piece.

And there are some more tidbits about the Booker Prize here:

As per The Telegraph, the longlist announces a fight for the PRIZE among the bigwigs like Rushdie and McEwan and Coetzee. So, what are the new comers doing here? "But among them are three first-time novelists, who add human drama to literary suspense," says Nigel Reynolds.
Adding human drama to literary suspense! Sounds like a theatre, no?

And there is more dope.

Harry Thompson, 45, one of television's most successful comedy producers - who has been long-listed out of the blue for his first work of fiction - was recently found to be suffering from inoperable lung cancer.

That is sad.

In contention for the first time is Zadie Smith.

John Sutherland, the chairman of the judges, said after yesterday's 90-minute long-list meeting: "This has been an exceptional year, and in the judges' opinion may rank as one of the strongest ever."

We know how Mr Smith must be feeling. Is that being mean?

Fiction: Rise or Fall?

So, fiction is back in the debate. Two views, it seems, are running concurrently about fiction, one for it and one against it.

On August 7, the U.K.'s The Guardian and the U.S.'s The New York Times ran a piece each on fiction's current status in our mindscape.

In The Guardian Jason Cowley painted a hopeful picture. He said that novels have made an invigorating comeback after the despondency that followed the 9/11 watreshed:

"Yet the evidence from the new novels I have read so far this year is quite the contrary - our writers have not allowed the extremity of 11 September and the wars that have followed to silence or defeat them; their imaginations seem far from meagre. The 'culture' is not overwhelming them. Quite the opposite, in fact, because this is, I think, perhaps the richest year for contemporary British and Commonwealth fiction since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969, with most of our best novelists ...Having read most of these novels, as well as outstanding books from emerging writers, I would argue that the novel, so often declared dead or moribund by VS Naipaul and other cultural pessimists, is as vital now in this time of profound political crisis as it has ever been - and continues, through the popularity of reading groups and the huge influence of television programmes such as the Richard and Judy Book Club as well as the astonishing popularity of global bestsellers such as the Harry Potter books and Dan Brown's conspiracy thrillers, to be the principal artistic form of our times."

On the other hand, Rachel Donadio, sees the emergence of creative non-fiction as the substitute for the space so far claimed by fiction--short stories and novels. She has Naipaul and McEwan to buttress her argument. Naipaul said in a recent interview that "nonfiction is better suited than fiction to capturing the complexities of today's world."

The novelist Ian McEwan expressed similar sentiments when he said that after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, he turned to history books, and books on Islam and imperialism. ''For a while I did find it wearisome to confront invented characters,'' McEwan said on ''The Charlie Rose Show'' in March. ''I wanted to be told about the world. I wanted to be informed. I felt that we had gone through great changes, and now was the time to just go back to school, as it were, and start to learn.''

Rache says: Magazine editors apparently share these writers' sense of things. This spring, The Atlantic Monthly announced it would stop publishing fiction regularly, except for an annual summer issue. Around the same time, the new editor of The Paris Review, Philip Gourevitch, said he wanted the literary magazine to feature more nonfiction. GQ hasn't published fiction since 2003, and is undecided about whether to resume. Esquire, once the glimmering showcase of the postwar liter-ary scene, has also scaled back in recent years.

She further argues: Which is in part why the editors of The Atlantic Monthly decided to scale back on fiction. ''In recent years we have found that a certain kind of reporting -- long-form narrative reporting -- has proved to be of enormous value . . . in making sense of a complicated and fractious world,'' Cullen Murphy, the magazine's departing editor, wrote in an e-mail message. ''Certain kinds of nonfiction writing have claimed some of the territory once claimed by fiction. Not because nonfiction writing has become 'fictional,' in the sense of taking liberties, but because certain traits that used to be standard in fiction, like a strong sense of plot and memorable characters in the service of important and morally charged subject matter, are today as reliably found in narrative nonfiction as they are in literary fiction. Some might even say 'more reliably' found.''

I tend to agree with Rachel. Personally, for every novel, I am reading at least 3 non-fiction titles these days.

For an idea, look at my current reading list:

In fiction, the last novel I read was Hari Kunzru's Transmission. And a graphic novel, Sin City.

After that I have been reading non-fiction: The Lexus and The Olive Tree; Good Muslim, Bad Muslim; Holy Wars; and Living to Tell the Tale (memoirs of Marquez).

Creative non-fiction is so germane, so no-nonsense and so gripping that at times it is difficult not to believe the cliche that truth is stranger (and stronger) than fiction. What do you say?

Parade & Booker

Day before yesterday I went to see Singapore's National Day Parade at Padang. It was an impressive show but after sitting in the sun for close to three hours, I returned home with a fever. I was gounded for a day. Was it the price exacted by my jealous Indian patriotism? I don't know.

Returned to the blogospehere today. Everyone is talking about the Booker Longlist. As expected all the bigwigs are there: Coetzee, Rushdie, Ishiguro, and Ian McEwan. Haven't read any of the selected books but Coetzee's Slow Man sounds most interesting, followed by McEwan's Saturday and Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown.

I wonder why Vikram Seth's novel (to be released at about the same time as Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown) did not make it to the longlist.

Any way, my Malaysia friends are especially happy for Tash Aw. His Harmony Silk Factory has been longlisted; and undoubtedly, it is an achievement in itself.

Two other firt-timers who have been longlisted include Marina Lewycka (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian) and Harry Thompson (This Thing of Darkness). Marina's novel was a contender for this year's Orange also.

In all, I'd say, we have three Asian immigrant writers on the longlist: Rushdie, Ishiguro, and Aw. Three cheers!

The big question is: who is going to win the prize? Does it matter, actually? I find the prizes a little silly but my hunch is it will be McEwan. Otherwise, it can be one of the non-biggies. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Has Rushdie lost it?

Has Rushdie lost it?

Amitava Kumar thinks so. In an article in Tehelka, he declares:

...A remarkable passage, and because everything in Rushdie is ultimately about him, it can be said that the inhumanity of the fatwa and the celebrity that has been his fate has left him with a prize. Is this what he wanted? His characters in the last few books — Max Ophuls, Malik Solanka, Vina Apsara, Ormus Cama— are all stars. All his books now are about the house of power and fame. On the strength of what he has written in the past, Rushdie has the right to feel contempt for “the envious, impotent crowd,” but who is to bring him the sad news that he is only writing self-help manuals for those who want to be counted among the bold and the beautiful?

Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown--the story of a cuckolded taxi driver who murders his wife's paramour--is going to be out soon. Going by this piece, things don't augur well for him. But I wish him all the best! Anyway, I love his non-fiction better.

Slush pile superstars

We all dread the slush pile. No one wants to get there, but sometimes one could get lucky.

An experienced editor bares it all:

On the first day of my new job in the editorial department of a small publishing house, I found a note from my predecessor. "Open all unsolicited manuscripts," it read. "Log them in the slush pile book. Read them and reject them." It was 1984.

Twenty-one years later, the climate appears to be changing.

Read the complete piece here.

Recent Writings

Recently I published two pieces: China a hit in Hollywood, Bollywood a flop (Asia Times Online) and Being Imrana (Chowk.com).

If you read them, do let me have your comments.

Getting famous in one's 70s

The late Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who had shot to fame with his first book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, used to call himself 'the youngest writer' of India when his memoirs had come out. At that point of time, he was in his 60s. Why did he appropriate the 'the youngest writer' title for himself? He had just published his first book! That was his logic.

I just read about William Maxwell, an American writer, who got noticed only after he came out with his sixth book. He was in his 70s then. If you have lost hope, read this story.

Here is the dope on him from IHT:

In 1980 a slim novel appeared that introduced a "new" writer to the American public. It had a deceptively casual title, "So Long, See You Tomorrow," yet it quickly became a book many readers fervently loved and pressed on their friends. The author, William Maxwell, was in his early 70s and this was his sixth novel, not his first. From 1936 to 1976 he had been a fiction editor at The New Yorker, working with (and often befriending) writers like John Updike, Flannery O'Connor, J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov and Eudora Welty. And in 1980, Welty presented him with the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the best novel of the last five years.

Maxwell's new readers could scarcely know that he had been rehearsing elements of the same painful story since 1937, when he brought out his second novel, "They Came Like Swallows." Introducing his collected stories, "All the Days and Nights," in 1994, Maxwell recalled boarding a freighter for Martinique back in 1933, searching for new experiences to write about: "I had no idea that three-quarters of the material I would need for the rest of my writing life was already at my disposal. My father and mother. My brothers. The cast of larger-than-life-size characters - affectionate aunts, friends of the family, neighbors white and black - that I was presented with when I came into the world."

So, there is hope!

Reclusive Writers

I like stories about writers. They fascinate me and make me wonder about the writerly life. I think I have mentioned this so many times in my previous posts. Boring, eh?

In today's publishing world, writers have to help hype up their work in the market to sell. Very few writers have the guts to shun publicity. In fact, for many the prospect of becoming a minor celebrity is one of the magnetic pulls of desiring to become a writer.

J D Salinger and Thomas Pynchon are already famous for their reclusiveness.

Now I hear of two more writers who don't want to play the media circus. Cormac McCarthy and John Twelve Hawks.

Cormac McCarthy was recently coaxed into granting his first interview in 13 years to promote his new novel No Country for Old Men.

Even before his cult status translated into major book sales with All the Pretty Horses in 1992, McCarthy spurned the spotlight and would not even speak about his work in academic circles where he had already won critical acclaim.

In an anecdote reported by The New York Times Magazine when it printed the last interview with McCarthy in 1992, his second wife Annie DeLisle recalls living in poverty.

"Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books. And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week," she was quoted as saying.

No Country for Old Men is a violent modern-day Western about a man who finds a suitcase filled with $2 million of drug money in the desert in a car whose occupants have been shot.

Twelve Hawks is a pseudonym and all that is known about the author of The Traveler - published this month amid Hollywood-style hype that landed it on The New York Times bestseller list - is that he "lives off the grid," meaning he has no mobile phone, credit card or other means of being traced.

His editor speaks to Twelve Hawks by satellite phone, has never met him and has no idea where he lives. Billed as a cross between science-fiction movie Matrix and George Orwell's 1984, the book is set in a world of constant surveillance where rebel warriors called Harlequins defend prophet-like people called Travelers.

Alas in India, we don't have reclusive authors. Indeed, it is the other way round. Writers, even if they want publicity, don't have it coming as Indian newspapers and television care a damn about them. They are more interested in film stars, mafia dons, and politicians.

First-time novelist, Rana Dasgupta, discussed this issue in an article in Tehelka recently. I quote (he is describing the scene after his novel was published):

"Over time, a small number of reviews appeared. Attentive and well-written, they were at the same time introspective and unambitious. For the most part, they remained at the level of the literary, speaking of the various pleasures and displeasures of the reading experience, and devoting their discussion to issues of literary language and form. They seemed to approach literature as private pleasure rather than as a part of the more general, extra-literary conversations of the world. This was somewhat disappointing since I had conceived this book as a pointed intervention into such conversations.

If you examine the cramped, ghetto-like environs that newspaper editors provide for book reviews, however, all this is not surprising. It is difficult, in a review of less than 800 words, to do much more than simply describe a book, and book reviews in Indian newspapers are often much shorter than that. The most extensive space allotted to book reviews in a mainstream newspaper is the Asian Age’s Sunday book section which is a cut-and-paste job from the New York Times and Spectator — with the emphasis on “cut”. In order to fit these articles into their new, straitened quarters, the “editors” run the paragraphs together, cut out the connecting words and phrases (“of course,” “unfortunately”, “however”) and then pluck out whole sentences and paragraphs for good measure.

It is predictable that such an ethos would create a besieged mentality amongst those Indian journalists who genuinely love and wish to celebrate literature. It is not surprising if they choose to speak about books as pure aesthetic experience, as a kind of guilty, sensuous refuge from a journalism that is so brutally pragmatic and market-driven. If they do not often try to speak about a book in the world, it is because this is not the editorial conception of their task: they are not asked to describe a vision, or a set of ideas that connects to other sets of ideas, but simply to describe the experience that can be obtained for Rs 395.

And even when reviewers approach their task with greater ambitions than this, the other pages of the newspaper act with single-minded intent to cut books and their ideas back down to size.In addition to the sparse smattering of reviews of my book came a veritable deluge of phone calls from journalists wishing to write what they called “profiles”. The interest of this second category of journalists was not in “literature” but in “personality”. They wrote for columns with stomach-churning titles like “Celebtalk” and they came to my house to note down a few snatched words that could then be patched together in a collage of more or less incoherent stereotypical catch-phrases crowned with a photograph. One sensed among them a panic of speed, the terrible anxiety of having to feed the newspaper’s insatiable hunger for new and different kinds of celebrity; and they were often hilariously unprepared. I had one exchange with a journalist who possessed only two items of information about me — the fact that I had written a book, and my mobile telephone number — and who had to extract from me, during the course of a twenty-minute phone conversation, various other items essential to her article (whose deadline was approaching in the next two hours) — such as the title of the book, the nature of its contents, and my name. The pieces that finally appeared in the newspapers were so mangled and improvised that they frequently bordered on the bizarre.

What kind of individual will symbolise this nation in its era of markets and world takeover, its era of buying French pharmaceutical firms and judging Cannes and building global it centres and sleeping with Liz Hurley? Certainly not the dreamy, thinking type. Not the kind of person who sits alone in a room for years on end wrestling with an entirely cerebral, poetic project. My conversations with the writers of “profiles” therefore had little to do with the book I had written, which was the ostensible reason they had any interest in me in the first place. They asked questions, instead, about what means I had employed to secure a publishing contract, and what it was like, now, to revel in publicity. The fact that I had spent three years forging a 400-page communication with the world was not relevant; now I had to tell the real story, which was the one of my own ambition, calculation and endeavour. The book was just my “product”, my means to an end. Its existence in the market proved that I had the necessary balls to seize a little bit of the media universe for myself, and now was my chance to explain how I had acquired such balls, and how wonderful it felt to possess them. As far as these columnists were concerned, it seemed, the persona of the “thinking individual” is just a front for something else. Deep down, people are interested only in acquisition, in getting more of everything, and every kind of accomplishment can therefore be boiled down to another article about how another lucky person “made it”. So, while newspapers and radio stations in the UK and US were wanting to have interviews about what a literature of globalisation would look like, or how one can write successfully about ethics in a seemingly post-moral world, Indian columnists wanted me to spill the beans about my staggering personal ambition, the enormous pay-offs I had received, and all the glorious rewards of fame and success. (If my irony is not apparent, I should state clearly that none of this is actually true to my experience.)
Since serious artists and intellectuals make their name, generally, as a result of the cogency of their vision of the issues of politics, philosophy and aesthetics that face a given society — one would expect, on the face of it, that the purpose of seeking interviews with such people for a newspaper would be to inject those ideas in an interesting and provocative way into social debate. But, with a very few exceptions, there is no serious social debate in the mainstream Indian press, and this is not its purpose in speaking to such people. The press already has its Idea — the celebration of the grand pantheon of Indian power and money — and it is not looking for new ones. Artists and intellectuals are called upon not to offer critique or alternative visions but to sidle in compliantly amongst the lowest rungs of this same pantheon and so to boost its size and glory. For anything else, Indian newspapers currently do not even possess the language. This can be seen at its most extreme in Indian press coverage of contemporary art, which never even makes an attempt to talk about the questions raised by this most daring and radical of areas of contemporary creativity; all it can do instead is to quote sale prices and gloat nationalistically, if ignorantly, over the slowly rising value of Indian art on the international markets.
Any trip to Eastern Europe or Latin America will demonstrate that this whole situation is monotonously widespread in the world, especially in places where the recent euphoria of global markets has made the rightness of wealth banally self-evident, and where the ubiquity of poverty lends it all an additional erotic thrill. But the problem is that India is truly growing into a global superpower — while the delusional excesses of page 3 can make you believe that this is merely a country of the superrich, there is actually something behind the circus’ maniacal energy — and the press will have to abandon these infantile obsessions, so unnerving in a giant, if the rise of this country’s influence is to be accompanied by any significant reflection as to what it means. First of all this implies that newspapers should try to think of people as thinking, not merely acquisitive, individuals. Of course writers and artists and academics, like anyone else, wish to earn money for their work; of course they possess all the same frailties of ego and ambition as everyone else — but their work cannot be reduced simply to this. A true intellectual culture — even just a literate culture — depends on the circulation of these people’s ideas as ideas and not as just more success stories. Virtually the only people whose ideas are expounded seriously and in detail at present are politicians and leading businessmen; and this is a woefully inadequate basis for us to think critically and creatively about the very grave issues that face us. Everyone else is an unthinking, crass, acquisitive machine: every last architect, theatre director, jewellery maker or political activist answers the same ten trite questions in much-edited five-word sentences, appears under the same soul-destroying rubric of “celebrity”, and spouts the same joy at India’s rising and the new possibilities for self-aggrandisement that it offers. (While it is wearying that every individual comes across as the kind of greedy, opportunity-optimising economist’s freak that is the newspapers’ dominant conception of the human being, it is truly terrifying to think of such a creature magnified several hundred million times and turned into an oil-guzzling, market-craving, globe-striding nation-monster, utterly uninterested in fine sentiment or ethical detail.) " ...and so on

Coming back to the question of reclusive authors in India, I think we are beginning to have a few of them. The potential candidates are Ashok Banker and Rana Dasgupta.

Of prolixity and precociousness

Pankaj Mishta has done a brilliant review of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's book, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture, and Identity in The Guardian. In his review he has raised many pertinent questions, including this one: "Sen deplores the xenophobia and megalomania of the Hindu nationalists, while approving their "outward-looking economic programme" for globalisation. But are these cultural and economic projects really so far apart? As the Bush-voting American middle class most recently proved, ultranationalism, religious fundamentalism and a belief in free markets are not only fully compatible but can feed off each other."

And ponder this: "One closes this stimulating book wishing that Sen would say more, from his unique vantage point, about the more unprecedented aspects of globalisation today: the all-powerful forms of corporate capitalism, for instance, that threaten much of what he cherishes - democracy, development, human diversity, traditional wisdoms - while trying to turn us all into desperate, if passive, consumers."

Mishra has efficiently highlighted the main threads of Sen's argument, especially in these two pragraphs:

"Sen's more illuminating differences with Naipaul are political. Naipaul sees India as damaged by Muslim invaders and emasculated further by an otherworldly and hierarchical Hinduism - a wounded civilisation that has only recently been revived by contact with western political philosophy and industrialism. Sen points instead to an old tradition of reason and scepticism, which, beginning with the Vedas, was upheld often by India's Muslim rulers, and which he thinks forms the basis of Indian democracy and secularism. According to him, "seeing Indian traditions as overwhelmingly religious, or deeply anti-scientific, or exclusively hierarchical, or fundamentally unsceptical involves significant oversimplifications of India's past and present".

By highlighting Indian achievements in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine and political economy, Sen also wishes to challenge the commonplace prejudice that the west has "exclusive access to the values that lie at the foundation of rationality and reasoning, science and evidence, liberty and tolerance, and of course rights and justice". He writes about the third-century BC emperor Ashoka, who renounced empire-building and attempted a new form of governance based on Buddhist principles of compassion and tolerance. He also presents the example of the 16th-century Moghul emperor Akbar, who by arguing for a religiously neutral state, set up the "foundations of a non-denominational, secular state which was yet to be born in India or for that matter anywhere else". As Sen is fond of pointing out, Akbar was stressing religious tolerance and upholding reason over blind faith at a time when, in Europe, Giordano Bruno was being arrested for heresy prior to being burned at the stake."

The Murdochian media machinery is also under scrutiny here:

"Sen does not say much about how the argumentative tradition is faring in India in the age of globalisation. The one "quintessential argumentative Indian" he names, the postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak, is little known in India. And even if he had named others, it would still have to be asked, if only for the sake of argument, whether they can be heard above the din of a media increasingly influenced by the Murdoch model, and preoccupied with stock markets, information technology tycoons, beauty queens, Bollywood starlets, fashion models and other celebrities. "Silence is a powerful enemy of social justice," Sen writes. But so are the celebratory shrieks of minorities empowered by globalisation."

Read the full text of the review here.

Two interesting films

I saw two interesting films over the weekend. One was Merchant-Ivory Production's Remains of the Day. The other was Before Sunset.

Remains of the Day, based on Kazuo Ishiguro's eponymous novel, is the story of an English butler, Stevens (Anthony Hopkins), who takes a road trip in the West country of England and reminices about his days in the Darlington Hall and his interaction with his former master, Lord Darlington (James Fox), and a former housekeeper, Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson). Much of the narrative is comprised of Stevens's memories of his work as a butler during and just after World War II. Stevens harboured romantic feelings for Miss Kenton but he never expressed them.

"It is a story primarily about regret: throughout his life, Stevens puts his absolute trust and devotion in a man who makes drastic mistakes. In the totality of his professional commitment, Stevens fails to pursue the one woman with whom he could have had a fulfilling and loving relationship. His prim mask of formality cuts him off from intimacy, companionship, and understanding."

I liked this film better than Howard's End. Hopkins has given a deeply moving performance. The movie affects you at a deeper level.

Richard Linklater-directed Before Sunset is a sequel to Before Sunrise. In Before Sunrise, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celina (Julie Delpy) meet in Venice, have a nice time, have a scintillating conversation, and even make love in a park late in the night before going their separate paths, without exchanging any phone numbers or any address. They promise to meet on a certain day in Venice. But that meeting never takes place.

Ten years have passed by. And then comes Before Sunset.

Jesse is now married, has a kid, and he has written a novel on his Venice experience. The novel is a best-seller in the US and Jesse comes to Paris on a book tour. The film opens here: Jesse is giving his last book reading in a small book shop. A few hours later, he has a return flight to catch. And as he finishes his talk, there comes Celina. They meet and talk and talk...reminsisning their last meeting, about life, about the world, about their concerns and romance...the whole film is a long converstaion, but what a great conversation it is! I fell in love with this movie.

Know what? Ethan Hawke is also a novelist in real life, and he and Julie actually co-wrote the script and the dialogues. Here's a good review of this film.

Writer Inc.

American writer Ms. Evanovich, 62, has turned herself from a failing romance writer who once burned a box of rejection letters on her curb into a mini-industry whose success is beginning to emulate the sprawling domains of authorial heavyweights like James Patterson.

An interesting story about a writer who belives in customer satisfaction.

Slouched on a sofa in a faded T-shirt and jeans, a tousle of dyed-auburn hair trending gray at the roots, Janet Evanovich looks less like the chief of a budding media empire than a mother trying hard to be her daughter's best friend.

And there, next to her, is the daughter, Alexandra, whose dyed platinum-blond hair befits her stint as a freelance graphics designer for a heavy-metal band's fan site and her love for her red Ducati motorcycle, looking nothing like a corporate marketing guru.

Yet the two women are all of those things - best friends, metalheads and meticulous businesswomen. Together with Janet's son and husband, both named Peter, who handle everything from investments to the packing of signed books for shipment to stores, they make up the family enterprise known as Evanovich Inc.

And they have transformed Ms. Evanovich, 62, from a failing romance writer who once burned a box of rejection letters on her curb into a mini-industry whose success is beginning to emulate the sprawling domains of authorial heavyweights like James Patterson.

Last year, she sold an estimated one million books in hardcover and three million more paperbacks, earning more than $3 million in royalties from the paperbacks and several million more in advances and royalties on the hardcovers. The empire now includes two continuing mystery series: one featuring the sharp-elbowed bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, published by St. Martin's Press, whose latest installment, "Eleven on Top" went on sale June 21, and a second, published by HarperCollins, which began last fall with "Metro Girl."

While her success speaks to her tenacity and devotion to family, it owes as much to marketing prowess. When fans, impatient for her next novel, began asking her to recommend other writers like her, Ms. Evanovich hired one instead. Thus began a separate line of paperback romance-thrillers with Charlotte Hughes as co-author and St. Martin's as publisher. Four books in that series became best sellers.

"I'm a writer, but this is a business," she said. "You have to look at it in the way you would look at any business. You have to have honesty to the product. You have to meet consumer expectations. You give them value for their money and give them a product that they need. I don't see anything wrong with all these things. And I don't think it's a bad thing to meet consumers' expectations."

Two kinds of writers

There is this interestingly unusual interview with author Jonathan Safran Foer in The Morning News. Here are some words of wisdom from this famous young writer:

"It’s like there are two kinds of writers, those that want for there to be more writers and those who want there to fewer writers. I feel like you could almost divide the world up like that. All those cases we just talked about Miller, Sontag, and Thompson—they all wanted more writers. They felt like the world would be better if there were more people writing books."

(Which category do you belong to? The first or the second?)

"When you write a book, you are able to concentrate on very, very specific things. Individuals doing very specific acts. Orhan Pamuk once said that every book, at the end of the day, is about showing how similar people are to one another. And how different they are from one another. And you do that by showing how somebody pours coffee and drinks it. It’s not by speaking about diplomacy. It’s not by troop movements."

(This is such a nice observation...)

"In New York if a first author gets a $100,000 advance, that’s news. But a $100,000 advance for a book that took four years to write, you are talking about wages that a receptionist makes."

(We agree but even that's not bad! Poor single-income writers, without a rich father or a rich uncle leaving behind any windfall for them, have to put up with many things. So sad!)

"If it takes a hundred thousand bad books to make a good one, do we cry for the trees? What is so upsetting? Have children died because a novel was a failure? It’s just not that big a deal."

(True. No big deal. We are free to damage our eyes with e-books).

Sean Penn in Teheran

I was quite amused by the news in today's NYT about the actor Sean Penn being in Teheran and working as a journalist. Let me quote from the news item:

"Sean Penn, the Hollywood actor who has taken out ads in newspapers in support of his political beliefs, has moved over to the other side of the media business. He is in Iran working as a journalist for The San Francisco Chronicle ahead of Iran's presidential election this Friday.
Mr. Penn, who arrived in Tehran on Thursday and is expected to stay until today or tomorrow, is preparing an article on the election and Iran's controversial nuclear programs. On his first day in Tehran, he met with Mehdi Hashemi, the son of the powerful politician Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who is running for the job again. He attended Friday Prayer in Tehran where the hard-line head of the watchdog Guardian Council urged worshipers to vote in the election next Friday." There is more actually.

Interesting to see how far a celeb goes in search of the truth! Pretty unique in these politically-charged times, isn't it?

Watch out Amis, McEwan and all the other big shots!

Watch out Amis, McEwan and all the other big shots! Mr. Dhaliwal is here.

Curious to know who this challenger is? In fact, I too became curious when I read about this London-based guy called Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal. I first read about him in Outlook. The magazine carried the news that Random House is setting shop in India, and it will start it off with a bang: Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown, Mark Tully's provisionally titled The Certainty of Uncertainty and a debut novel by UK-based writer Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal.

Beaten by my curiosity, I looked for Dhaliwal in google and pronto I learnt that his first novel, Tourism, will be published by Vintage next spring. Dhaliwal has also penned a fiery piece in The Times. Here's a sample:

"The truly talented members of Britain’s ethnic minorities don’t want meaningless baubles for work that doesn’t deserve attention; they want to make it in the big league, competing with everyone else. By allocating prizes according to race there’s a danger that not only will true talent be marginalised but also that mediocrity will be rewarded. The woolly sentimentalism of London’s literati made them laud a writer as unremarkable as Zadie Smith to the skies; the same thinking must be why the BBC repeatedly commissions The Kumars at No 42. I cringe whenever I watch that junk, hoping the public doesn’t think that all Asians are as naff and unfunny as they are."

He has even issued a challenge to the literary bigwigs of UK. Savour this:

"I’ve written a novel myself; when it is published next year, I want it to cut the real mustard, not the sentimental treacle of the establishment. I don’t want the marginal recognition that might come with winning the Decibel; I want to go toe-to-toe with Whitey. I want to compete with Amis, McEwan and all the other big shots. And I don’t want a helping hand from anyone."

Packs a punch, right?

For more please go here.

Giving Your Novel Away in the Sreets...

In Delhi, I used to see poor kids hawking magazines and newspapers like Free Ads at the crowded traffic signals. Delhi traffic is mad and jams are not uncommon.

When my first novel had come out, I contemplated why not use this medium to increase the publisher's bottomline? But then I had brushed it off as a cheap and crazy idea.

Little did I know that a crazy novelist will do something similar in the far off United Kingdom. The guy is Robert Chalmer and here's what he is doing to promote his novel:

"At lunchtime, the Otley branch of HSBC is a hive of activity. On the pavement outside, a writer stands with a bag bulging with copies of his latest novel. He's attempting to engage with a Londoner who is fidgeting uncomfortably under close questioning.

"Hello. Would you like a book?"

"No, you're alright, mate."

"It's free."

"No, really, I don't want it."

"I wrote it. Go on, you might like it."

"I don't really read books, so it'd a bit of a waste of time."

"You could sell it on eBay and buy beer instead."

"Nah, you're alright, thanks."

"You sure? Do you know anyone else who reads books?"

"No."

"Oh. What, no one?"

Read the full story here.

Making of a Book

There is an interesting story, How to make a book, that gives you an insider look into the book publishing industry. In the story, Oliver Burkeman follows the 18-month-long journey of one novel, from the author's flash of inspiration in a pub, to the moment it hit the shelves at Books Etc. It is a must read for all wannabe novelists.

Sam Binnie is the winner of this year's Harpers & Queen/Orange Prize for Fiction short story competition. I guess her story, The Dress, is experimental and could easily come under the category of creative non-fiction. If you haven't read it, you can read it here.

Why is Chopra angry with Mehta?

In the big bad world of Bollywood, two titans have clashed or so it seems, from a recent interview published in Tehelka. Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Bombay's well-known film director-producer, is angry with Suketu Mehta, author of the now-famous Maximum City.

In the interview, Chopra has said: "Mehta is crazy. His marriage is over, he’s on the street."

Chopra is angry about what he thinks Suketu wrote about him in Maximum City, even though he hasn't read the book.

"He writes, I’m told, (I haven’t read the book) that he came to my house and there were my three wives. What is this nonsense? Renu (Saluja) was my ex wife, Shabnam is in Canada. I have had one wife for nine years. I haven’t spoken about this to the press, but talking about it to you makes me think I should sue him. It suits him to project this image of an Indian director, because it fits into the dangerous mind of Americans, who like to feel superior to everyone else. The book should be banned."

"I’ve slapped a couple of critics, which is why I never get good reviews. But I hven’t slapped anyone for a long time. I have young children so I try very hard. But I get angry with people like Mehta. If he came here now, I would slap him."

You can see how angry is Mr. Chopra with Mr. Mehta.

Mr. Mehta is yet to get back with any clarifications in the media (he is based in the U.S.).

It should be remembered that Mehta had collaborated on the screenplay of Chopra's Mission Kashmir a few years back. Chopra is proud of this film.

Reading, Writing and Happiness

Some of the happiest people I know hardly ever read books. They did read books when they were in school or in college. But in their working lives, they hardly do. It was amusing to see Michel Houellebecq echoing similar views in his piece on HP Lovecraft in The Guardian recently. Here is what he says:

"Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world."

And did you think writing was tough business? Michel thinks so.

"Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new, realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don't care to know any more. Humanity, such as it is, inspires only an attenuated curiosity in us. All those prodigiously refined notations, situations, anecdotes ... All they do, once a book has been set aside, is reinforce the slight revulsion that is already adequately nourished by any one of our "real life" days."

Pyaasa in All Time 100 Movies

Guru Dutt's Pyaasa is one of my most favourite Hindi movies, along with his Kaaghaz ke Phool and Saheb Bibi Aur Ghulam. Now The Time has included Pyaasa in its list of All Time 100 Movies. I am so gald. Finally, the movie is being acknowledged and feted in the West. The story of an unpublished poet and failed lover whose work achieves fames and acclaim after his being presumed dead is one of the most moving tales told on the celluloid. Nihilistically, Dutt declares in the movie: Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai... (So what if I become materially successful in this world...)

Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy also makes it to the list. That is not surprising. Surprising is the inclusion of Mani Rathnam's gem of a movie, Nayakan. I think Kamal Hasan has given his best performance in this Godfather-like movie.

Once New in Indian Writing

What is new in Indian writing?

Amitava Kumar poses this question in an article in The Hindu. He asks: "How is newness to come into the world? In India, didn't all those who found fault with the innovations of, say, Salman Rushdie, or Arundhati Roy, or Raj Kamal Jha — didn't those readers and critics show similar impatience with what was new by finding it gimmicky or overwrought or incoherent? How were the detractors able to separate what is merely show-offish and self-indulgent from that which is unanticipated and truly brilliant?"

Kumar finally builds a case for intermingling of ideas and the cross-fertilisation of views in new fiction, Indian or of any nationality. He concludes by saying: "What was true then is also true now. In the case of current Indian writers working in English, what is new is also the result of the conversations ongoing with writers all over the world, older writers like Philip Roth, J.M. Coetzee, and Alice Munro, but also younger ones like David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, and, why not, even Jonathan Safran Foer."

One cannot agree more. Literature does not happen in a vaccum. It does not happen in isolation either. One idea generates another, adding grist to the mill of literature.

By the way, Kumar's new website is up and running now. You can check it out at www.amitavakumar.com.

Can anyone make cinema?

When the cheap digital camcorders came into the market, everyone claimed that now anyone could make a movie. The medium became cheap, accessible, opening the creative possibilities for anyone with an imaginative eye. Even Samira Makhmalbaff, the acclaimed young Iranian filmmaker, came out with a piece saying that digital filmmaking has democratized the process of making cinema. Shekhar Kapoor came out with an annual digital film festival in Delhi, only to flounder two years later.

So, was it true-the digital democracy in terms of creating works of cinematic value?

I often wondered. I was searching for an answer for a long time. Even after the coming of digital filmmaking gadgets, digital cinema had not flourished as promised. More so, the outputs, from wherever they were, were not very encouraging.

At last, I found the answer from the Master himself. Gordard has commented on this process in a recent interview in these words:

"What's bad is that students think that because they've got a little camera, they can film something. The manufacturers, even the critics, say: 'It's great! Everyone can make cinema!' No, not everyone can make cinema. Everyone can think they're making cinema, or say, 'I make cinema.' But if you give someone a pencil it doesn't mean they're going to draw like Raphael or Rembrandt."

Isn't it true? Not everyone with a key board can write a stirring story or a valuable novel.

Godard has come out with a new film, Notre Musique. It is on Sarajevo. Read his interview here.

Michael Chabon, the Wonder Boy

Continuing with my passion for learning and exploring about the writing process, I came across this piece by Michael Chabon in The New York Review of Books. In this piece, Chabon describes how he wrote his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. It is really worth reading.

Here is a brief profile of Chabon also. Read the last para carefully. It is pure truth, powerfully told:

Michael Chabon was just 23 when he wrote his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. He turned it in as his master's thesis in a creative writing program. He turned it in on a Friday. On Monday he heard that his professor had sent it to an agent. The book was published the following year, in 1988. It was a big success. He was compared to Fitzgerald and John Cheever. He was asked to model clothing for The Gap. People Magazine wanted to include him in its list of "50 Most Beautiful People." He turned down both offers.

He started working on his second novel. He had seen a picture of the original plans for the city of Washington, D.C., and he got an idea for a novel about an architect. Chabon later said, "It was a novel about utopian dreamers, ecological activists, an Israeli spy, a gargantuan Florida real estate deal, the education of an architect, the perfect baseball park, Paris, French cooking, and the crazy and ongoing dream of rebuilding the Great Temple in Jerusalem. It was about loss: lost paradises, lost cities, the loss of the Temple, the loss of a brother to AIDS, and the concomitant dream of Restoration or Rebuilding."

He called the novel Fountain City. He spent five years working on it and wrote 1,500 pages of manuscript. He felt he just couldn't put the pieces together and then one night got an idea for a whole different story and decided to follow it. He wrote 15 pages in four hours. He kept working on it in secret for the next few weeks. He didn't tell anybody. He said, "I didn't stop to think about what I was doing or what the critics would think of it and, sweetest of all, I didn't give a single thought to what I was trying to say. I just wrote."

He finished the book in seven months. The novel was Wonder Boys. It came out in 1995, about a creative writing professor named Grady Tripp who can't seem to finish his latest novel. It was made into a movie five years later.

After Wonder Boys, Chabon stumbled on a box of comic books he'd kept since childhood. He hadn't looked at them in 15 years. He said, "When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there." It gave him the idea to write a novel about the golden days of the comic book trade called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It came out in 2000, and won a Pulitzer Price. It was the story of a Jewish kid who flees the Nazis just before World War II, has to leave his family behind, and come to America. Along with his cousin, he creates a comic book super hero called "The Escapist."

Michael Chabon said, "Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves, if he doesn't court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family or party apparatchiks... the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth."

So much happened while I was away...

So much happened while I was away...

Sunil Dutt and Ismail Merchant passed away. I loved both these gentlemen. I loved Dutt for his being the gentleman that he was, for his secular beliefs and for his pacifism and humanitarianism. He was one of our most handsome politicians.

Merchant was a towering figure for me and for many of us: he brought to us the kind of cinema that was so uniquely Ivory-Merchant, that sepia-tinted look into the human condition during the Raj. Apart from his Raj stories, I loved his Surviving Picasso and In Custody.

Talking of films, I came across this interesting bit of confession (on writing) by Hollywood screenwriter, Charlie Kauffman. I had loved his Adaptation. He talks about the process of writing here:

"Vegas: What's the hardest thing about writing - concentration, perserverance, etc - why, and how do you overcome it?

Charlie Kaufman: I mean, there are a lot of things that are hard for me about writing. I guess sticking it out is hard. And I try to stick it out by keeping the process interesting for me. And so I try to look at writing as kind of an exploration, rather than starting out with a conclusion and filling in the blanks. Like, "I'm gonna write about passion. Or confusion. Or identity." And things get surprising, and I let things change as I'm working. If things go in a new direction, I force myself to go with it.Another thing that's hard is trying to stay with something that's true. There's a tendency with me that I'm influenced so much by movies and TV I've seen, it's a struggle to keep things in the real world, rather than unconsciously falling into something I've seen in a movie or relationship. It's sort of a monumental task."

Read this entire chat script here.

Book Tagging for Asya

I am doing this for Asya. She introduced this idea on her blog, and here it goes:

How many books do you own?

Must be nearing a thousand now! Not a great number though as I recently read that Umberto Eco has about 40,000 books in his library. I don't know if I will ever be able to amass those number of books, let alone read them. Most of my books are in Delhi. Includes books in English and Urdu. I love English fiction and Urdu poetry. Unfortunately, I could never connect with English poetry. I guess this is due to lack of exposure.

What is the last book you bought?

I already have a long list of books waiting for my attention. Recently, I bought a couple of books in Kolkata. Some of them are Mahabharata (R K Narayan), The Lexus and Olive Tree (Thomas Friedman), India Wins Freedom (Maulana Azad), The Holy Wars, Transmission (Hari Kuzru), Salem's Lot (Stephen King), and On Literature (Umberto Eco).

Which is the last one you've read?

I am reading The Lexus and Olive Tree. It is an interesting book on globalisation.

Which five books have meant the most to you?

The answer will vary from time to time I guess, as I am yet to read so many great and well-received works. Anyway, here is my tentative list:

Mera Daghistan by Rasool Humzatov (Russian translated into Hindi)
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (English)
Short Stories by Chekhov
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (English)
Collected Stories by Raymond Carver

And whom would you like to book-tag?

You started the whole thing and have already asked Susan to do it. Shakeel has stopped blogging. Who do I ask now? Anyway I am troubling these two gentlemen for book-tagging:

iFaqeer
Manzoor Khan

Home and Away

I am going away for about two weeks. Travelling again. Will miss you all but hope I will come back with interesting news!

It's Cannes time again!

So, the newspapers are agog with news from the Cannes. I opened The Hindustan Times and there were pictures of Aishwarya, along with a French actress', her seductive smile bewitching the photographers. Thankfully her (black) dress looked fine unlike the last time and seemed to complement the dress of the French actress (she was in white). B&W!

The New York Times also has Aish on the first slide of its multimedia review of Cannes. I could see Nandita Das on the second slide, in a resplendent sari, standing along with other members of the jury.

NYT has an interesting section on Cannes. I loved Emir Kusturica's profile. Kusturica (pronounced KOOS-toor-eet-sa) is leading the Cannes jury this time. I knew so little about this man.

"Born in 1954, Kusturica grew up an only child in a secular Muslim family in Sarajevo, the capital of the Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At 18 he was packed off to Prague to study at the Czech state film school, FAMU, in part thanks to the older Kusturicas' anxiety over the young Emir's enthusiastic interest in minor acts of youthful criminality. It didn't take him long to be noticed. By the time he was 40, he had already won most of the major prizes the film world has to offer. "

The guy hates Hollywood. He says:

''What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison,'' Kusturica says. ''Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world. Why don't I see a Frank Capra today? Because people aren't like this anymore? People haven't changed that much in 60 years.''

I cannot disagree with him. What do you think?

Tash Aw in Time Magazine

Reviewer Donald Morrison has given a good review of Tash Aw's novel, The Harmony Silk Factory in the Time.

"Malaysia is a land rich in farmers, civil servants and electronics assembly workers, but poor in novelists. That's an odd deficit, given the country's high levels of literacy, prosperity and anxiety, as well as an abundance of history, politics, ethnic tension and other delicate topics that can be used as material. All of which makes Tash Aw's debut novel worthy of close inspection.
The first major work of fiction written in English by a Malaysian about his country in recent memory, Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory has won enthusiastic reviews since its publication in March in the U.S. and the U.K. Foreign rights have been sold in nearly a dozen countries, and the book will appear in Asia in June. Malaysians looking for insights into their country's modern condition may be disappointed. Other readers may find themselves enjoyably lost in a land of magic and mayhem."

After the first two paragraphs, Donald pretty much gives away the story. But he ends it well:

"The Harmony Silk Factory doesn't strain to be The Great Malaysian Novel. That's a deliberate decision by Aw, 33, who considers himself "100% Malaysian," though born in Taipei (to Malaysian-Chinese parents), raised in Kuala Lumpur, educated at Cambridge and now resident in London. "I didn't set out to incorporate any particularly Malaysian themes," Aw said from New York City, where he was on a promotional tour. "My intention was to demolish the Malaysian historical novel of the 1930s and '40s, as influenced by Somerset Maugham. You know, the idea that there are only two versions of Malaysia in literature—a place where white men sit around drinking pink gin, and a place full of colorful people doing quaint things. I wanted to write a book that didn't depend on settings."

Read the review here.

Very good for Tash. I saw a copy of the book in Kinokuniya recently here. Alas, my reading list is so long! This book will have to wait for me.

Publishing Lessons

I do not happily bring bad news about writing and writers. No that doesn't give me a kick. I do not promote e-publishing nor do I approve of vanity publishing. And yet, off-the-beaten-track anecdotes about publishing successes, about someone realising his/her dream of becoming a writer interest me. Often, it touches my heart as I can imagine how it feels to get what one wants.

I was touched to read Stewart Dalby's account: how, at 60, he did it for himself!

Young ladies, Dalby brings good news for you: "Publishers will only put money into a book if you are young, preferably female, write about magicians, and have five or six other books in front of you".

Are you going to write about magicians now?

Grass Talks

I was beginning to believe that intellectuals no more talked about socialism, capitalism, and globalization. Until I read this piece by Gunter Grass in a recent issue of The Guardian. Grass has raised important issues, in the context of Germany, but his points are relevant for all of us:

"...parliament is no longer sovereign in its decisions. It depends on powerful pressure groups — the banks and multinationals — which are not subject to any democratic control. Parliament has thereby become an object of ridicule. It is degenerating into a subsidiary of the stock exchange. Democracy has become a pawn to the dictates of globally volatile capital. So can we really be surprised when more and more citizens turn away from such blatant scams, indignant, an­tagonised and ultimately resigned and regard elections as a simple farce and decline to vote? What is needed is a democratic desire to protect Parliament against the pressures of the lobbyists by making it inviolable. But are our parliamentarians still sufficiently free for a decision that would bring radical democratic constraint?"

A very potent argument!

Here he talks about the job market and how the over the hill people are finding it difficult to stay in employment.

"The consequences of this development disguised as globalisation are clearly coming to light and can be read from the statistics. With the consistently high number of jobless, which in Germany has now reached five million, and the equally constant refusal of industry to create new jobs, despite demonstrably higher earnings, especially in the export area, the hope of full employment has evaporated. Older employees, who still had years of work left in them, are pushed into early retirement. Young people are denied the skills for entering the world of work. Even worse, with simultaneous complaints that an ageing population is a threat and the demand, repeated parrot-fashion, to do more for young people and education, the Federal Republic — still a rich country — is permitting, to a shameful extent, the growth of what is called "child poverty"."

So much food for thought. And for a change, this piece is not written by Arundhati Roy who seems to have monopolized this segment of discussion. Relish it here.

Macmillan's controversial deal for new authors

Macmillan has come out with a fancy deal for new authors and it has already attracted controversy.

As per the scheme, new writers can now directly send their manuscripts to Macmillan. This means completely bypassing the age-old route of going to a publisher through an agent. This is good news for writers who can't even get picked up by snooty agents!

However, there is a downside too. There are no big, fat advances in case Macmillan chooses to publish the work. In fact, there is no advance at all. The author will get royalties based on actual sales.

The critics of this scheme are calling it a scam. It will deprive new authors of their economic opprtunities, they say. The supporters of the scheme argue that it will help spot new talent who are filtered out by agents.

I like what Jamie Byng of Canongate Books says: "Anyone who is ambitious for their book won't go down this route. But then you don't have to do it. The deal is fine, it's OK. If you'd spent years and years working on your novel and no agent will look at it you'd be bloody grateful for this. Good luck to them."

What do you think?

Writers, Investment Banking, and Big Advances

First, there was Mohsin Hamid, a Pakistani in the US and an investment banker by profession, who hit the jackpot with his Moth Smoke.

Then, there was this news about Kaavya Viswanathan (discussed in a previous post) who is on her way at Harvard to become an investment banker. She has just received $500,000 advance for her Opal Mehta novels.

Now I hear about Lavanya Sankaran who is also an investment banker. Her novel The Red Carpet is releasing today. Nine publishers auctioned hotly for her book, finally ending in a ‘‘substantial six-figure advance’’ won by Susan Kamil of Dial Press, an imprint of Random House. The UK rights were bought by Headline Review, which is also distributing it in India.

What do you say to this? Money attracts/begets money?

Meanwhile, I read the cautionary tale of Keith, a thriller writer, on THE TROUBLE WITH BIG ADVANCES. Quite an instructive read.

Tailpiece: The Outlook reports that Vikram Seth's much awaited WW II saga will come out end of the year. Avid readers will have to wait! "The jacket is ready, the announcement has been made, but the book is not yet ready," Seth confessed recently in Delhi.

A life trapped! Can you see the lizard inside the lamp? Photo taken at the Singapore Botanical Garden.

Blogger Burnout

The past few weeks have seen the end of several interesting blogs. These blogs have been my personal favourites, and it is sad to see them die. In many cases, the main reason for their closure/inactivity is the unpleasant slugfest between the blogger and the readers. Sometimes it is the pressure to update the blog that has turned the blogger against blogging. In one case, the blogger is plain bored to carry it on any longer. Isn't that a case of blogger burnout?

Things like this are happening worldwide now. The Wired has come out with an interesting piece on this phenomenon. Read it here.

Another Manil Suri?

Looks like another Manil Suri in terms of the deal but she is much younger.

Here is the news:

"A teenaged Indian-American girl, who is yet to make her literary debut, has secured a staggering Rs 2.2 crore two-book deal with a prestigious American publishing house. US-born Kaavya Viswanathan, studying in Harvard to be an investment banker, has been given a whopping $ 500,000 in advance by Little Brown and Company, one of the oldest American publishers, now part of the Time Warner Group. "I still cannot believe this. I never expected this would happen," Viswanathan, the only child of Viswanathan Rajaraman, a neurosurgeon, and Mary Sundaram, a gynaecologist, told The New York Sun. Most first-time writers of fiction receive advances of less than $ 10,000, according to Donya Dickerson, the editor of Writer's Digest Books. "I had only vaguely thought of becoming a writer. But a book contract? From a major publisher? This is so incredibly unbelievable. It's so hard to believe that I'm going to be able to walk into a bookstore and see something that I wrote on display there," Viswanathan told Sun. Viswanathan, both of whose books will be fiction, said she expects to deliver the first volume, tentatively titled 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got In', by next month end. The novel is expected to be published next spring. "The main character (of her first novel) is a girl of Indian descent who's totally academically driven, and when she senses from a Harvard admissions officer that her personal life wasn't perhaps well-rounded, Ms Mehta goes out and does what she thinks 'regular' American kids do - get drunk, kiss boys, dance on the table," Viswanathan told Sun."

E-publishing Success

Desperate writers go for desperate means. And some succeed too.

After the vanity press, there is now e-publishing and print-on-demand (POD) publishing. Aren't they interchangable?

The latest star of POD publishing is Amy Fisher whose book "If I knew then..." has been published by iUniverse. Her book was on the NYT Best Selling List for a week. Now the NYT has done a story on this book's success in the light of POD publishing's spreading tentacles.

Here is how the story begins:

"When Amy Fisher finished writing her memoir about shooting her lover's wife, she told her agent not to send the manuscript to New York publishers. Instead, Fisher, who made headlines in 1992 as the 17-year-old ''Long Island Lolita,'' turned to iUniverse in Lincoln, Neb. The company charges authors several hundred dollars to convert a manuscript into a book and make it available for sale online."

The story is worth reading. Read it here (you need log in id and password which comes free).

The Making of William Faulkner

J M Coetzee, one of my favourite authors, has done a great review essay on the life of American writer William Faulkner in the new online issue of NRB. It is a brilliant essay that gives a glimpse into the life of Faulker and looks at factors that shaped him as a writer. Sample this:

Now I realise for the first time," wrote William Faulkner to a woman friend, looking back from the vantage point of his mid-fifties, "what an amazing gift I had: uneducated in every formal sense, without even very literate, let alone literary, companions, yet to have made the things I made. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why God or gods or whoever it was, selected me to be the vessel."

It is a must read. Highly recommended.

Another interesting piece that has appeared in LRB is Blood for Oil? The essay is by Retort , a group of writers and activists, that examines whether oil was the reason for the invasion of Iraq. Didn't we know it already?

Anyway, go read it!

Aishwarya's hype machine

Talking of Aishwarya Rai (in my previous post), Tehelka has done a good job of blowing the lid off her hype machine. I have been wondering for a long time about the planted stories in the Indian media extolling Aishwarya's successes as a crossover actress. If one were to believe in those stories, one would imagine that in no time Aish would take Hollywood by storm and would firmly put the imprimatur of India on the international marquee.

Unfortunately, all this hype and hoopla lies exposed now.

In the past one year, she hardly had any successful film: all her recent releases, such as Raincoat, Shabd, and Pride and Prejuduce have been commercial flops. Then the stories about her being signed for the next Bond movie, about her being an Academy Award presenter, and about her having been cast with Maryl Streep in Chaos have been found to be anything but true. Even in her forthcoming movie, Mistress of Spices, she has been paired against an unknown television actor.

In the first place I never had believed in these stories. I am glad that someone has done that for the unsuspecting masses: separating the truth from unfounded rumours. People like Aishwarya should understand that in the day and age of ubiquitous internet access people can verify news. It is sad that some stars take public's interest for granted and feed them with unnecessary news to bolster their image.

Aishwarya should work hard on her films and her popularity will automatically soar. Why can't she learn from Rani Mukherjee (terrific in Black and Yuva)? Or at least she can take a few cues from Mallika Sherawat (a sex bomb but hardly an actress of repute) who's done a film with Jackie Chan and is ready to hit the red carpet in Cannes this year. She may not be a terrific actress but at least she is not lying through her teeth.

But, maybe, Aish is not perturbed by all this hype-busting. After all, she may think that even bad publicity is good publicity!

Indo-Pak Friendship: "Give Aishwarya, take Kashmir"

There is a huge splash in the Indian media these days regarding the peace process between India and Pakistan. Pak President Musharraf recently visited India, apparently to watch a cricket match. However, the real intent was to give a push to the sluggish peace process. The results have been heartening. New public contact measures are being taken and trade routes are going to open.

I am glad that the relations between the two neighbours are improving. In fact, on my way to Muscat via Karachi, I was befriended by two Pakistani guys who expressed similar feelings. They were from Karachi and were returning home after making a business visit to Singapore, and seemed to have a great time. I briefly met them in the smoking room in Bangkok's transit lounge. Later, they boarded the same flight that I was on. They were so keen to know about India that it seemed impossible for me to answer all their questions. They were like firing bullets one after another. They had a quench for India and things Indian that was difficult to satisfy.

In the beginning of the journey, they were unable to believe that I was not from Pakistan. The reason was my Urdu. They thought the kind of Urdu I was speaking was no more taught or practised in India. They were sitting just in front of my seat and were arguing like this:

"Bhai Karachi ja rahe hain" (Brother is going to Karachi)
"Nahin, Bhai Muscat ja rahe hain" (No, brother is going to Muscat)
"Par Karachi to ruk kar jayenge, kyon Bhai?" (But will be stopping over at Karachi, won't you bro?), one of the guys asked me.

I told them that I was from India and I was going to Muscat. They were really surprised to know my Indian status. Then they started asking me questions. Sample these:

Are Indian people as beautiful as they show in Indian TV serials?

Are Muslims safe in India? Are there riots there everyday?

Can Muslims say their azaans on loud speakers? I heard that they cannot. It is not allowed.

Muslims are killed in Kashmir everyday. Is it true?

What do Indian Muslims think about Kashmir?

What do you think? Shouldn't the people of Kashmir be given a chance to decide the fate of their own land?

What do you think--who would the people of Kashmir turn to if they are given a choice to either join India or Pakistan?

Are there poor people in India? Is there anybody in India who goes to bed without bread? Like in our Pakistan, there aren't any such poor people. Even our beggars in Karachi have color TVs.

And so on...

I was really sad about this last question. I could not tell them that all was well with India. Of course, there are lacs of destitute people in our country who have neither homes nor adequate food.

When I got a chance, I also asked them about Pakistan's craze about Bollywood. They confirmed by saying that they didn't watch anything but Bollywood movies. Pakistani movies are pathetic, they said.

No wonder Amitabh Bachchan was suggesting to hold the next IIFA Awards in Pakistan.

While we were discussing movies, one of them suggested: "We can solve the Kashmir dispute easily. Give us Aishwarya Rai and take Kashmir."

I could not stop chukling at this. I countered: "Aishwarya is difficult to part with. What about Laloo (Prasad Yadav)?"

They guffawed.

For the uninitiated, Laloo is a colorful Indian politician. He is hugely popular in Pakistan.

They wanted to visit India and asked me to suggest them three most important places to visit. They had already counted Agra in. I gave them some names. They seemed determined to visit India but were sceptical about the chance to get an Indian visa.

We parted out ways at the Karachi airport, with a firm handshake, and an invite to visit Karachi. That was lovely of them, those two warm-hearted young men of Pakistan.

I hope with the peace process marching in right direction, my Pakistani friends will be able to experience the magic of India soon.

The commercial side of books

Books don't need to be literary to be succeessful. We all know this. We see this every day. Da Vinci Code is such a super seller for such a long time now.

I often wonder, then, what is important? How do you know if a book is a success? What matters most? The readers' response? Sales? Reviews? The other issue is that of getting famous beyond the borders of your country. Is it important? Should it be actively sought? Or is it an automatic byeproduct of globalization? Premchand is India's greatest short story writer but who has heard of him outside India? And why did Naipaul travel to UK to become a writer?

On the other hand, there is the reader--the innocent reader. Writers write books for them. Publishers publish books for them. What do they think? What matters to them?

I guess all this marketing hype around books is so confusing for a normal reader. Is s/he succumbing to it? Why is everyone reading Harry Potter? These are some of the questions that have engaged my mind quite often.

I came across this interesting point of view while reading one of the blogs. An interview was mentioned there. It was novelist Mathew Branton's interview. Enjoyed reading his comments in The Independent.

He says: "It's because of this dumbing down, and our collusion in it, our acceptance of it, thinking that watching soaps every day is somehow authentic, thinking that buying chick-lit and lad-lit and Harry bloody Potter is okay because it's a meaningless holiday read, whatever. These things aren't okay. We're not Cool Britannia. We're a global laughing stock, with our Spice Girls and our Cockney gangster movies, and our artists who shit the bed and get paid for it, and our boarding-school wizards. And nothing else!"

View of the sea from Qantab in Muscat 

Muscat Musings

Friday I returned from Muscat, the capital of the Middle Eastern Sultanate of Oman. I went there last Sunday to present a paper on E-learning in an international IT Conference.

The sluggish Thai Airways took me to Muscat via Bangkok and Karachi. Almost took me 22 hours to reach Muscat. From Karachi to Muscat and on my way back, it seemed as if I were travelling on a Pakistani/Indian bus.

The conference was well-managed and all speakers were provided with efficient service. Everything was well taken care of. There were IT experts from all around the world.

Muscat is a small but beautiful city of white buildings and Islamic architecture, located in the valley of rocky hills, by the side of a natural harbour. The roads are perfect. The pace of life is easy and people are generally relaxed.

The city does not have highrises. There are hypermarkets all over the city. Carrefour and Lu Lu Plaze are the most famous.

I loved the grand mosque of Muscat. It is breathtakingly beautiful--it is the apple.com of postmodern Islamic architecture. The other places I loved are Qantab and the Qurm beach. You have to see it to believe it.

The conference was held in Al-Bustan Palace Hotel, a beautiful piece of work. It is one of the best hotels in the Middle East.

Two interesting nuggets about Oman: Did you know that Sindbad the Sailor was from Oman? Did you know that Oman ruled over Zanzibar?

Black

Everybody has been talking about Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Black. I am sceptical about hyped films but this particular film did not disappoint me. It is a good film, in the sense that it deviates from the formulae-ridden Bollywood masala films, and the film's look, feel and sensibility are also disctinctly non-Indian. It could have easily passed as a European film excpet for the Indian faces and the language. The setting is an Indian hill station where everything is so beautiful and picture perfect.

Some of my friends objected to the movie's picture perfect cinematography. I agree that good cinematography is not necessarily good cinema. However, Sanjay's choice of aesthetically appealing mis en scene might have been deliberate: it helps to highlight and balance the ugliness and the groestesqueness present in the lives of the protagonists. I guess this juxtaposition was necessary to make the film palatable. The theme is not syrupy, and hence the presentation demanded a soft touch.

The child artist, Sara Macnully, has done a good job. Sometimes, I thought, she has overacted. Rani Mukherjee has acted well. Amitabh Bachchan's performance is riveting in the first half. His Santa Clause-cum-Mirza Ghalib look in the second half looks ridiculous. Nevertheless, he has given one of his best performances in this film.

In all, Black is not the best film made in the last 50 years, as some have argued. The drawback of the film is its theatricality. In some of the scenes, it feels as though the action was happening on a stage. The film's language (cinematic language) is far from the Indian ethos--such as the ones we have seen in the films of Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, and Mehboob Khan.

Is it a brave film? Yes, it is. The acting talents of Amitabh and Rani have not been used like this before.

The film should definitely make other Bollywood directors sit and do a rethink. Some of them are already doing this.

Tejpal's Tehelka

Mr. Tarun Tejpal, the famous editor of Tehelka weekly, recently hogged the limelight for an altogether different reason.

The journalist, who shook the Indian political and military establishment a few years ago with an expose, coolly penned his novel, The Alchemy of Desire, while fighting the establishment's crackdown.

According to media reports, the novel sold out on the day it was released. No wonder as Tarun writes very well and his reputation is unsullied. Critics are already appreciating "the voice" he has used in the narrative.

Tarun's mentor, Sir V S Naipaul, has liked the first part of the book. That is, I guess, good enough a recommendation for Tarun.

I think every English-educated Indian, whether he did or did not study at Oxbridge, is writing a novel or two these days, apart from doing his day job as a diplomat or a journalist.

Arundhati Ray's success has had huge impact on the Indians of all ages. Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi was 17 when he witnessed the phenomenal success of Roy. He was inspired. The result is his debut novel, The Last Song of Dusk. Only God knows, out of 1 billion Indians, how many more she has infected with the virus of seeking publishing success.

To make things clear, let me admit, I was not inspired by Roy. I had decided to become a writer in the pre-Roy India, if may say so. At that time, the only Indian writers I knew were Narayan, Rao, Sehgal, Naipaul, Rushdie and others.

At the rate the Indians are writing novels, the day is not far when it will be de rigueur for every educated Indian to have penned a novel--sort of a rite of passage of being an educated Indian.

Remember the line, "Scratch an Indian and you will find a novelist." (It is like the line from Dr. Zhivago: "Scratch a Russian and you will find a farmer.")

Do you know who said it?

None other than our honourable Tarun Tejpal.

Did I hear you say, look, who's talking?

Celebrating literature at the ‘fragrant harbour’

Read the snippets (all of them) from the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2005 here:

http://www.crimsonfeet.org/article348.html

Enjoy!

‘My work is not magic realism’

Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi’s first novel, The Last Song of Dusk, won the 2004 Betty Trask Award. Ever since his emergence on the literary scene, Siddharth has been the toast of the media. The Sunday Times Magazine described him as “the next best thing to have happened to Indian writing in English since Arundhati Roy.” A publicity report in the Fringe Club described his books selling like hot cakes in India and the paparazzi waiting outside his house to take his snaps. Tired of all this Siddharth has taken to the Himalayas, working on his next opus. Meanwhile, his mother frets about the marriage of her (in)famous son: “who would like to marry a man who writes on sex?”

I was curious to meet Siddharth. When I reached the Cipriani’s, China Club, on the Bank Street, next to the imposing HSBC Bank building, he was already there. He was wearing a yellow turban and was chatting with Hsu-Ming Teo. Teo was born in Malaysia in 1970 and had emigrated with her parents to Sydney in 1977. She was a research scholar in a university. Her second novel expected to come out soon.

The programme started with Teo reading from her first novel, Love and Vertigo. It was a mother-daughter novel.

Then Siddharth read from his novel. It was a passage where the heroine admires Mahatama Gandhi’s loin cloth, calling it sexy. And so on. The interesting thing about Siddharth is his voice. He reads and talks as if he were in a trance.

After the readings a discussion followed. Everybody, including host Peter Gordon, was asking questions. Peter had read the book last year and was so impressed that he had immediately invited Siddharth for the festival.

Siddharth described himself as a small part of a large family (of writers like Roy and Vikram Seth) whose members were doing exciting things. He didn’t know if he wanted to become a writer. “I am in the process of figuring out what to do in life,” he said with a smile.

He wrote the novel when he was twenty-two. The writing took him about one year. It was his way of dealing with a broken relationship. Then he forgot about the book. In the US, his friend read the manuscript and advised him to publish the book. He found an agent (after interviewing about ten agents) and the rest is history. Now his work is being compared with Marquez and Rushdie.

When Peter called Siddharth’s work magic realism, he protested. “Please don’t call my work magic realism. I don’t like the word magic realism—it takes away from the realism of my story. In India, we have this belief that everything—a house, a tree—has a spirit and we must respect that spirit. So in my novel if a house is talking, it is not magic realism. You may call it heightened realism.”

“What do you think about your novel now?” I asked him.

“I haven’t read my novel,” he said. People guffawed.

He admitted he had a lot to read, a lot to catch up. He doesn’t dig short stories and so he has never attempted one. At present, he said, he was attracted to the idea of the deviousness and viciousness of Bombay. That may well become the theme of his next book. “To be a writer, you have to be alert to your emotions,” he said. “You don’t write a book. The book gets written.”

Hsu-Ming Teo said that she never thought of becoming a writer. After submitting her Ph.D. thesis, she was unoccupied and that was when she started writing her novel. Surprisingly, she works without an agent.

“What do you think about your novel now?” I asked her too.

“It could have been better,” she said.

She said she enjoyed the finishing part of writing more than anything else. Yes, the act of writing is hard work and most authors love to reach that part of the story where they can write ‘the end’. Later, I also had the opportunity of listening to a chapter from her second novel. It was about making love in a toilet. It was really good, much better than her first read.

The Fringe Club in Hong Kong Central is Hong Kong's contemporary arts space. 

The Craft of Writing Satire

Hari Kunzru, the Wire-geek turned writer, was to speak on the craft of writing satire at the Fringe Club, Hong Kong’s contemporary arts space. Kunzru is an interesting writer. He was born and educated in UK. His father had migrated to UK from Agra in India. Kunzru opposes any attempts to pigeonhole him as a coloured writer or an Asian writer. He knows that being labeled as a writer of particular race/origin makes it easier to market him by publishers. However, he doesn’t want to be a party to this marketing gimmick. His fame has only been increasing. In 2003, Kunzru was named by Granta Magazine as one of twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists.’ His novels The Impressionist and Transmission have been well-received.

In the Fringe Club theatre, Peter Gordon (the chairman of the festival), introduced Kunzru to the audience. Kunzru started with the definition of satire: satire is writing or comic writing that illuminates a social subject. He said that one must know the subject intimately to write satire (“If you don’t know Hollywood, don’t write about it.”).

With intimacy, he said, comes complicity. Using the intimate knowledge of the subject, the writer is supposed to bring out the guilt. He read passages from Evelyn Waugh’s and Joseph Heller’s works. He discussed the works of satirists such as Jonathan Swift, Nobokov (his Humbert Humbert in Lolita), George Orwell (1984), and Michel Houllebecque (Platform). “Obscenity is central to satire. You need one kind of obscenity to expose another kind of obscenity,” he said. He quoted from a placard that he had seen in an anti-war protest rally: “Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.” A shining example of satirical writing!

So what was Kunzru’s final suggestion: “Take what you know and make it grotesque.”

Side bar: Kunzru looked dashing in a black suit. He wore glasses but his trademark scarf (seen in his previous photos) was missing. Next day I saw Kunzru along with his girl friend alighting from the Peak Tram at the Tram station.

Celebrating literature in Hong Kong

“When you fly to Hong Kong, try to get a window seat,” I remembered these words of advice from the Fodor’s Travel Guidebook while looking down the window. The airplane was losing altitude for the landing that was to happen in the next few minutes. “As you approach the coast of china you’ll see a few small, rocky islands, tiny fishing boats, and sailboats in the channels leading into Hong Kong Harbour—one of the Most spectacular harbours in the world.” I was enjoying the transmogrification of these words into reality as the plane approached the Chek Lap Kok airport.

I was going to Hong Kong to attend the HK International Literary Festival. The festival was in its fifth year and was soon becoming one of Asia’s most important literary festivals. For me the highlight of the festival was the predominance of writers from India or those who were writing on India. Though the Australian writers were also a force to reckon with, led by the Booker Prize winner, Thomas Kneally, I was more interested in the Indian voices. The festival was to sort of culminate with a speech by Alan Hollinghurst, last year’s booker prize winner.

Chek Lap Kok is really sophisticated and mammoth. “The passenger terminal is a mile long and could encompass those at Heathrow and JFK combined,” claimed the Guidebook rightly. I was impressed even though I was coming from Singapore’s Changi International airport.

Without much ado, I checked out of the immigration. I had been advised to buy an octopus pass that would allow me unlimited travel in the underground train. I bought the card and I took the airport express train to the Hong Kong island. The train was quite comfortable and sleek. It gave me scenic views of the seaside and the high rises. In half an hour I was in Hong Kong central where my hotel was. Once I was in my hotel, I readied myself for a plunge into the literary events.

March 7, 2005

Narayan's legacy

There are those who love R K Narayan's Malgudi. And there are those who hate it.

For a long time I was in the latter category.

When I was in Delhi, living in a shack with a friend, an engineer by profession, I was astounded by my friend's love for Narayan's novels. That guy had bought a number of Narayan's novels, and in the dingy room, used to read them with great relish. One reason was surely the price. Narayan's novels came for less than US$1 a copy while other novels would easily cost you more than US$4. Now the prices have gone further up. The other reason, I guess, was the novels' accessible language. And Narayan's novels were never fat (as compared to, say, Midnight's Children, or Trotternama, or better still, A Suitable Boy). They were slim volumes about life in small town India, written with gentle humour. I guess my friend appreciated all these qualities in Narayan's novels.

As a kid, I had seen Narayan's Malgudi days as a television series on Doordarshan. I had liked it. The humour was lost to me but I had liked the South Indian culture wherein the stories were set. Later, I saw the Dev Anand movie, The Guide. I found it only so so. The only interesting thing for me in the movie was the character of the archeologist--It was rare kind of character in a Hindi movie--who was finally cuckolded in the story.

In those days, I was reading the novels of Krishan Chander, the Urdu writer. I used to fantasize about his stories being made into movies. For example, I was especially taken up by his novel, A Violin by the Sea. It's protagonist was a history professor in a US University. If I remember correctly, the story was based on the themes of love and reincarnation. The novel was begging to be made into a Hindi film. Alas, no one ever paid any attention to it.

One day I decided to read Narayan. I picked up his (supposedly) best work, The English Teacher. It was well-written, and I was enjoying the read until it began treading into the metaphysical world. Maybe Narayan was trying his own (Indian) style of magic realism which bored me. I guess nobody has looked at this aspect of Narayan's work and it is time someone did.

I have reserved Narayan on my reading list. Maybe with age, I will be able to enjoy his brand of homour. Something like this happened to Jaithirth Rao. Read his essay here.

Miller and Monroe

Liked this joke from Vinod Mehta's diary. Enjoy:

The great American playwright Arthur Miller, who passed away last week, used to regale his friends with a story about the time he was courting Marilyn Monroe in the early ’50s. He took Marilyn to his mother’s New York apartment for dinner. The walls were thin and Monroe was obsessed by the fear that people would hear her peeing, so when she went to the bathroom she turned on all the taps to disguise the sound.

A day or so later Miller’s mother wrote to say that she thought his new girlfriend was very beautiful and very nice, "but Arthur, she pisses like a horse".