For those of us, who follow the works of Indian writers writing in English, this year has been phenomenally providential. There have been three major releases so far Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie and the recent Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. Each writer is a literary heavyweight in her own right but none has received so much media attention as Amitav Ghosh.
Gone are the days when Amitav Ghosh used to be published by the venerable Ravi Dayal. Most of his books then used to be released quietly, without much ado, at the most allowed an academic response in one of the few serious newspapers (as the content would hardly arrest the attention of non-serious readers of fiction).
Not so any more. With a well-known publisher talking over the literary rights, Amitav Ghosh has now been ordained with the mantle of Indian fiction’s most printable face. Since the past few weeks so much of print and air-space have been accorded to Sea of Poppies that people who follow Ghosh’s literary trail quite closely know all that’s there to know about the book and can hold forth in a party conversation without even turning a single leaf.
This leads me to wonder, how beneficial media excess is after all, if it leads us away from the real thing. All said and done, the writer needs to reach out to his readers through his works. Media can facilitate that process to a certain extent but should restrain itself from going into an overkill. Honestly speaking, I do not want to read any more interviews of Amitav, nor do I want to read any dust-jacket-based hastily-cobbled-up review of the book. Simply put, I want the BOOK now to talk to me. Others please step aside, will they?
5 comments:
I had a similar thought watching the recent interview done by Aamir Khan of his nephew who is starring in the new movie. Major pretentious blah blah. And I was thinking, god what rot!
Recently, one was watching an interview given by a Spanish author, who was talking about how she had to say no to a large publisher because they had asked her to sign a contract and travel all over the world promoting her book. Preferring to remain off the limelight, she chose a rather low budget publisher. However, her book was a trail blazer in her language and got enough publicity through word of mouth. Wonder how many of us will dare to do that.
I like Amitav Ghosh for his more natural storyline and characters. Hope he doesn't sacrifice any of that for the lit-beat :-)
yeah that's the whole point... Amitav Ghosh's words speak louder than cross-continent promos... would like to believe he's taking it all lying down, brushing it off as professional hazard ... ;P
I agree re: Ur comments on media excesses & so on.
In their defense(NOT that I'm part of it), U must admit, in today's world with 'instant' entertainment & 24-hrs news channels, those 'poor' folks NEED something to fill the time between commercials.
I have read "The Sea Of Poppies".
The ONLY thing I could say about the book is,...
MAN, what AMAIN' research. The author writing about the events in a particular place at a particular time in history even write in languages sopken in those times (THAT makes it confusing, for me)
I would like to defend the marketing gizmos for one reason and one reason alone...if this makes more people pick up the book instead of watching telly I am all for the gimmicks! It is not untrue to say that less and less people are reading these days especially youngsters and if selling a book like selling a beverage helps why not? And mostly only the best authors get this kind of treatment no matter what you call them pin-up boys or gals does not matter. I am happy people are reading J.K. Rowling, Khaled Hosseini, Paulo Coehlo, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy...the more cerebral types need not get into the hupla at all as they are totally in the know of what a writer doles out. Imagine a colleague asking me just this morning if Rushdie is any good? I said are you talking about his being touted for the best of the booker award? She said no actually she has been following his la affairs with some Bengali starlet...so if the media hype touches her brain with little bit of Rushdie I think it will only do her a world of good. Q.E.D.
illusions i agree with you when you say that promos help in getting the "book" picked up... but my problem is when media wants to support someone it does so ad nauseam with its own vested interests and not with the ulterior motive of promoting a good literary piece. Amitav Ghosh in this case deserves all the attention he's got but during the time his book was published there were other writers as well who deserved a "footnote" mention at least if not a mega coverage like Amitav Ghosh... somewhere some good voices are being left out in this promo race...
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