Re: Dear author
Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Mon, 13 Apr 1998 02:35:52 +0500
Malcs, hi!
Precisely my thoughts when I read that article you mentioned some days
back. In fact, the same author, Vikram Chandra also participated on another
mailing list I happen to be on, called SASIALIT which is for literature
from South Asia, where each month the focus is on one chosen book and other
discussions of course carry on as usual.
Vikram Chandra was on in January, I think, when his book of short stories,
Love & Longing in Bombay was being discussed. In fact, on the same mailing
list, another author, Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni had also made an
appearance some months back when her book, I think, Arranged Marriage, was
being discussed. She of course got pretty miffed by the scathing response
she got and left in a huff.
While the whole e-mail business to me sounds quite an improvement on, say,
Holden's desire to call up writers he liked at any time he felt like, in as
much as it seems to give the authors, who so choose, to be discriminatory
and choose a time of their convenience and so on, I am not sure I
personally have much to ask, or talk about, to authors of _fiction_ short
of when I just want to be gushing. While it is great to say read a good
interview, somehow the presence of an author on a mailing list seems to the
old-fashioned me not right. Which doesn't mean in the least that I don't
read what, if at all, they have to say or that I am not interested to note
how they react to criticism and so on, but somehow it seems, I don't know
how to put it -- too interactive? I mean, I guess criticism and so on has
its use, I guess, and of course it is great to hear it directly from an
author about what they meant , if at all anything, by, say, symbolism and
metaphors and so on, but the whole thing sometimes seems too contrived and
gimmicky to me in my cynical moods. But then the authors who happen to be
Univ. professors, as VC is, I guess, have a different outlook altogether,
which is okay by me, and of course I am being incoherent at this late hour,
so I should shut up all together but what the hell, I'd make just one
pathetic attempt to convey what I seem desperate to say:
Like, say, if old JDS were to make an appearance on the list (not of course
as the much chastised chamil or whatever), I guess, the chances are that he
just might manage to piss off some of us by his 'arrogance', 'preachiness',
'cuteness' or-some-other-ness, so much so that it might even affect the
charm and the beauty of his books we are so moved by. We don't really love
JDS books for the way he interacts, or is able to explain his stories or
characters, is charming or not, do we? Sure, there is a possibility that we
might all like him so mcuh that some of us might begun to wonder, why he
could even be a big phoney, pretentious bastard, couldn't he?
I mean, come on! What would we want to ask old JDS, huh?
Is Teddy a reincarnation of Seymour?
(or was it the other way around?)
Oh, I dunno. As a concept, I understand and identify with Holden's wish to
be a terrific _friend_ of the authors of books one likes and to have the
liberty of calling them up whenever one felt like it, but I don't think
Holden would only want to discuss the books he liked with the authors who
wrote them. Knowing him, he just might, but I guess he would want to be a
friend, not in a "oh-y'know-I-was-talking-to-good-ol' Jerry-about-what-
he-thought-about-Hinduism-and-all-and-man-he-doesn't-know-a-thing" way, but
probably in that naivete that assumes that anybody who's capable of moving
one with a captivating yarn would also turn out to be some sort of a
soulmate...
Sundeep