These are, the lady will tell us, platitudes. It's a pity she made it necessary to repeat them.
25
The Cultural Geography of Criticism
IT TOOK AN EDITORIAL IN A PUBLICATION I READ, respected, and wrote for — the late lamented Indian Review of Books — to prompt me to break a long-standing, if self-imposed, rule.
I had made it a point not to discuss reviews of my own books in any of my own writing. This is not because I am excessively modest, or unduly burdened by a sense of authorial propriety; it is simply that I believe that a book, once published, has to make its own way in the world. Authors do not like bad reviews any more than parents like to hear criticisms of their children, and the temptation to lash out at the most unfair of them is great. But as a reader I am aware that reactions to fiction are inevitably subjective. A reviewer's dislike of a particular book says at least as much about the reviewer as it does about the book.
I have therefore been content to let reviews of my books stand unchallenged, even when — as sadly happens too often in India — the reviewer bases his or her judgments on a partial reading, or a willful misreading, of the book. This policy has, I must admit, been made easier by the fact that I have been lucky enough to have had far more positive, indeed enthusiastic, reviews around the world for my books than unfavorable ones.
But an IRB editorial obliged me to break my silence. Entitled “Some Thoughts on Reviewing,” it discussed two reviews of my 1992 novel Show Business — an assault on the book as “irritatingly superficial” by Shobha Dé in the IRB, and a front-page accolade by William Boyd in the New York Times Book Review, which I am told was the first such tribute accorded by the Times to an Indian writer. After quoting a paragraph from each review, the anonymous editorialist commented that “such widely disparate views about the same book, and in fact about its essential thrust, cannot but fail to raise several questions in the average reader's mind.” Praising the credentials and the integrity of both reviewers, the editorialist wonders whether the difference is that one is an Indian and the other American (Boyd is in fact British, but let us let that pass). Can “a critic from one culture,” the IRB asks, “wholly appreciate the nuances in the writings from another culture?”
That is a fair question — I concede that no foreigner can get as much out of my Great Indian Novel as an Anglo-phone Indian can — and yet a misleading one. If the attitude implicit in that query were carried to its logical extreme, Gabriel García Márquez could not be given the Nobel Prize by a bunch of Swedes, Salman Rushdie could not be banned by an Iranian Ayatollah, and the Sahitya Akademi might as well wind up, since no Indian would be able to appreciate its translations of novels from other Indian languages. The entire point about literature is that, while it may emerge from a specific culture, it must speak to readers of other linguistic and cultural traditions, for what endures in good writing is not culture-specific. We read literature from other cultures all the time; and we do so because literature, whether or not from a society we know, serves to illuminate and deepen our appreciation of the human condition.
But as a writer — an Indian writer — I object equally to the notion that a reviewer's individual judgment can be vindicated by his or her passport. The idea that Ms. Dé’s attack on Show Business can be justified by the fact that, in the IRB editorialist's words, she “is an Indian, with a more than adequate knowledge of the Indian background, who finds the book wanting in substance and depth” is to me a dangerous one. (Let us leave aside the temptingly obvious riposte that though Ms. Dé has been accused of many sins, an excess of “substance and depth” has never been one of them.) India has never been a country where nationality has been a determinant of opinion. In literature as in politics, there are as many opinions as there are Indians. There are Indians who don't like Show Business, and there are Indians who do: I have had excellent reviews from several of them, as well as letters and conversations with innumerable readers whose Indianness didn't appear to obstruct their appreciation of the novel.
Equally pernicious is the suggestion that William Boyd's praise — and by implication that of the many other reviewers in the West who admired the book, including the Washington Post ’s eminent Jonathan Yardley, who picked it as one of the four best books of the year — is somehow diluted by the fact they are foreigners. Boyd (An Ice-Cream War, Brazzaville Beach, and three Booker Prize nominations behind him) features on every critic's list of the top three Englishmen writing fiction today; he doesn't know me, has no ax to grind, and indeed has a formidable reputation to protect, one that could only be damaged by careless praise for an unworthy novel. Much as some of us might like it, Western writers have better things to do than to spend their time casting ignorant kudos on Indian books.
So — to return to the entirely legitimate concerns of the IRB editorial — how are we to evaluate such widely disparate reviews? The answer is of more than passing interest, since the need for a serious reviewing tradition in India is one that concerns every Indian writer. It seems to me that the answer lies in the reviews themselves. On what does the reviewer base his or her judgment? Is the reviewer's “knowl-edge” an asset or a handicap — in other words, does the reviewer bring too many preconceptions and prejudices to the book? Are the criticisms couched in intemperate, wholly subjective terms, or do they cite evidence from the book that could convince an uncommitted reader?
Ms. Dé’s review speaks eloquently for itself, even in the passage quoted in the editorial. “Yes, Hindi films are full of cardboard characters, but do we need to read about them…?” she asks (emphasis added). No one needs to read about anything, but does the reviewer ask what the novelist has tried to do with these characters? Adjectives like “tedious” and “prudish” may reflect Ms. Dé’s standards rather than the culture's; some Indian reviewers went the other way, criticizing the book as airy and salacious, and the London Sunday Times reviewer, the novelist Jonathan Coe, declared that it was “an enormously funny and enjoyable novel which has never for a moment been frivolous.” What critics like Boyd, Yardley, and others found worth praising were the “architecture” of the novel, its narrative structure, its attempt to weave larger themes (reality and illusion, dharma and accountability, the place of films in our society and of our society in our films) into an entertaining story. None of these factors even found a mention in the negative Indian reviews of Show Business. Had the Indian critics acknowledged the author's endeavor and then found that the book fell short in the attempt, their criticisms could have been taken seriously; but when the reviewer's reading of the book is so superficial that it fails even to notice what the author has tried to do, it undermines the worth of the review.
Writers need bad reviews almost as much as they welcome good ones. It keeps us honest to be told when we've gone wrong. But reviewers must learn to tackle books on their own terms, not the reviewers’. Rise to a book and find it wanting, by all means; but do the author the courtesy of reading it first and thinking about it before reacting. That is the only way we will attain the high critical standards that remain the best guarantee of a lively — and ever-improving — literary tradition.
26
How Not to Deal with a Bad Review
IHAVE RECENTLY BEEN INVOLVED in a minor literary controversy in the pages of the New York Times, whose editors felt compelled to acknowledge to their readers that the author of what is politely called a “mixed” review of my recent book Nehru: The Invention of India had himself received a mixed review from me some years earlier for one of his books. Turnabout, to upend a cliché, was not considered fair play.
The episode was trivial, but it reminded me of a far more entertaining incident in the same pages a decade earlier, involving Norman Mailer. Short, strong, and beer-bellied, with a pugnacious thrust of jaw and wiry gray hair, the eminent novelist (The Naked and the Dead), biographer (Marilyn), reporter (The Armies of the Night), and polemicist (The Prisoner of Sex) is a considerable presence on the American literary scene. Boozy, bra
wling, and bold, reviled by feminists for his attitude to women, excoriated by the Right for his opposition to the Vietnam War, Mailer is one author who is as much read about as read. The former enfant terrible of American letters has, in a turbulent career, married and divorced a succession of women, drunk himself silly in public, marched in raucous protest demonstrations, run (unsuccessfully) for mayor of New York, and bibulously engaged in public fisticuffs.
Criticizing the work of such a combative figure is hardly a low-risk occupation. Other authors might react to an unjust review with the attitude of the old Persian proverb, “When the caravan passes, the dogs bark” (for why should a caravan be distracted by every barking dog?). But not Norman Mailer. In the early 1990s reviewers trashed Mailer's long-awaited magnum opus, Harlot's Ghost, a 1,334-page novel about the CIA and the American psyche that ended, ominously enough, with the words To be continued. The London Sunday Times ’s Peter Kemp, a notoriously trenchant demolition expert, called the novel “the appalling manifestation of a defunct talent.” But the review that really got Mailer's goat, perhaps because it appeared in the one publication that matters most to American writers, was that of John Simon in the New York Times Book Review.
Simon, better known as a theater critic, found Harlot's Ghost an “arbitrary, lopsided, lumpy novel that outstays its welcome.” Mailer's “hang-ups are too naked, puerile, perverse,” wrote Simon, adding that “what he lacks is [a good] editor.” Worse has been written by reviewers — and some of Simon's 2,500-word critique was even complimentary — but Mailer blew a gasket. He stormed into the offices of the New York Times, demanding — and obtaining — a meeting with the managing editor of the paper and the editor of the book review section. Simon, he alleged, was biased against him: Mailer had apparently described Simon years ago as being “as predictable in his critical reactions as a headwaiter.” Simon, in return, had reviewed a play starring Mailer's daughter Kate, and called her a “rotten” actress “who mugs and simpers.” Mailer demanded that the Times grant him the right of reply.
Somewhat to the astonishment of the American literary establishment, the Times said yes. Though Simon protested not only that he stood by the review but that its only defect was that “it was too kind,” the Times gave Mailer the space for a 1,500-word response. This repeated the author's accusations against the reviewer, and added the delectable snippet that he had challenged Simon, after the critic's attack on his daughter, to meet him outside if he was a man of honor. But the burden of Mailer's charge was that Simon had misrepresented himself as someone who “had a rather neutral relationship” with the author, and therefore could be counted upon to do a fair review. In fact, Mailer said, Simon's reviews of two of Mailer's earlier books had been so venomous that he should have been disqualified from reviewing this one.
Simon replied, somewhat pompously, that “it is characteristic of Norman Mailer's cult of personality (instead of cultivation of craft) that the attempted refutation of my review addresses itself to just about everything except the review itself.” The then-editor chimed in that Simon “wrote a fair and balanced review that met the standards of this newspaper.” But, she added, “normally the Book Review would not assign a book to a critic who had frequently disparaged its author's work, or one who had a personal relationship, positive or negative, with the author.” (Those standards, incidentally, are widely upheld in America but completely ignored in England, where books are usually reviewed by friends or enemies of the author, and reviews are often the occasion for either mutual back-scratching or the settling of scores. My own reviewer is British-based.)
There are writers who believe that any publicity is good publicity — as one publisher put it, “people will remember that they've read about your book long after they forget what they'd read about it.” So Mailer's attack on Simon, even if it drew attention to the negative review of his book, fueled more interest in it. Some uncharitable observers saw the entire episode as an attempt by the larger-than-life author to revive his novel's flagging fortunes in the nether regions of the best-seller lists. If so, it didn't work; Harlot's Ghost sank rapidly off the charts.
Predictably enough, the Mailer-Simon exchange itself became the subject of further polemics. Letters flooded in to the Times, and the strongest arguments went against Mailer. “If you're going to pander to Norman Mailer's wounded ego,” one reader asked the Times, “why not save time and trouble in the future and simply let Mr. Mailer review his own books? He clearly enjoys writing about himself in the third person, and assigning him the review would make a lengthy rebuttal unnecessary (though Mr. Mailer would, of course, still be free to threaten himself with physical injury if he came to doubt his own fairness). Not only would this be a service to Mr. Mailer, it would be a service to readers, who could then sample Mr. Mailer's writing style before committing themselves to 1,300-plus pages.” As for himself, the reader went on, he had planned to buy Harlot's Ghost, but “after slogging through the overdone prose of Mr. Mailer's counterattack” had decided his $30 would be better spent on beer.
All of which is not very encouraging to any author who may be contemplating assaulting a nasty reviewer, even if only in print. The moral of the story, it seems to me as one who has both written and received reviews, is that it is better to leave well enough alone. A review, good or bad, is a transient thing; a book, if it was worth writing, will endure long after the review is forgotten. Let the dogs bark; the caravan must move on.
27
Elegy for a Literary Monument
IN 2003, LITERATE INDIANS CELEBRATED the 125th anniversary of the magnificent newspaper for which I write regularly, the Hindu. But amid the celebrations another, sadder anniversary of a print publication passed almost unnoticed. September 2003 marked the second anniversary of the demise of a remarkable venture in Indian publishing, the Indian Review of Books, just one issue short of what would have been its tenth birthday. I remember looking forward with anticipation to what the IRB would have made of my novel Riot, which was slated to have been reviewed in the magazine's September 2001 issue. But the August issue arrived with an editorial headlined “End of a Dream”: “It is with a deep sense of sadness,” the magazine wrote, “that we announce the closure of IRB.” India's best literary journal had finally been defeated by the hard mathematics of the market.
Founded by K. S. Padmanabhan of the highly respected Madras publishing house East-West Books and backed financially largely by his own resources, the IRB had carved a niche for itself among discerning readers — but not, alas, among advertisers. The magazine was distinguished by some of the best writing about books one could find in India. Its contributors, including some of the finest minds in the country, eschewed both the jargon-laden self-importance of academic journals and the superficial plot summaries of the popular press, offering instead the thoughtful insights and provocative judgments that true book lovers value everywhere. One did not have to like everything that appeared between its covers to appreciate the worth of the endeavor, in a country that has only recently begun to engage in a grand national conversation about literature. I welcomed the arrival in the mail of each issue with genuine excitement: I knew it would provide both instruction and delight.
“Are we aborning, like Chesterton's donkey, at some moment when the moon is blood?” the editors had asked themselves in their inaugural issue. They knew they were undertaking a risk. But they saw that book publishing had finally come of age in India, and they felt that a good review journal would serve to bring “book and reader together.” India was at last ready for a swadeshi equivalent to the New York Review of Books or London Review of Books. Most of India's major English-language publishing houses were not much older than the IRB; some, indeed, had come into existence since its founding. One would have expected the two sister professions to make common cause. Publishers need well-informed readers, and one might have imagined they would want to support a high-quality literary magazine in order to enhance their own sales. But their advertising was minimal
; one could turn page after page of IRB without finding the prose interrupted by an ad.
Advertising is the oxygen of any newspaper. The first reality of the “free press” is that you must not take the adjective literally, since it is anything but free: there are always bills to be paid that vastly exceed what the subscription price can bring in. The IRB’s subscription lists barely crossed the five-figure mark, and with modest advertising revenue, the economics of magazine publishing meant that the IRB was losing some fifty thousand rupees — just over a thousand dollars — an issue. (Note to idealistic students: economics always trumps literature.) After ten years of struggle, Mr. Padmanabhan and his well-wishers came to the reluctant conclusion that the IRB was never going to be able to pay for itself. Even the most generous blood donor cannot sustain an indefinite hemorrhage, and Mr. Padmanabhan, the mainstay of the Madras Book Club and a man with books in his blood, ultimately had to stanch the flow.
Today, two years later, there is still no adequate substitute for the IRB. The Book Review, published in Delhi, miraculously seems to keep afloat, but it makes fewer concessions to nonacademic readers than the IRB, and too many of its reviews seem to be written by professors for the delectation of other professors. Biblio is often more readable, but its publication schedule over the years has been erratic, and its choice of subject matter idiosyncratic. Neither has ever covered the range of books that the IRB managed to treat in each issue — novels, serious nonfiction, travel and cookery books, children's stories. The loss to India's readers is still enduring.
And yet — as the old song asked, does it have to be this way? Surely there must be, in our newly globalizing economy, some business house that can afford half a lakh of rupees a month — not just to support a good cause, but to reach an educated clientele? It costs one of our multinational corporations more than that amount to produce a few seconds of one of their television commercials. The editorial staff and infrastructure of the IRB are still in place at East-West, along with a network of willing contributors and even the old subscription lists. All they need is a benefactor. I am sure I would not be the only literate Indian consumer to say that if Coke or Pepsi came to the rescue of IRB, I would gladly switch my thirst-driven allegiance to them. A brand that sustains a magazine of ideas has a greater claim on my loyalty than one that is endorsed by a cricketer or an actor.
Bookless in Baghdad Page 14
