Through the eyes of memory: The Red Letters by Ved Mehta
(This review originally appeared in Hindustan Times, New Delhi.)
About a fourth of the way into this graceful memoir, and just before he starts to unfold the tale-within-a-tale concerning the eponymous ‘red letters’, author-narrator Ved Mehta admits to a moment of agonizing self-doubt: “In writing a series of books about myself and my family, among other things, with the title Continents of Exile, I have often been torn between loyalty to my family and loyalty to my craft, to which any kind of censorship is anathema. My father, who served as a source for some of the material, knew all too well how such conflicts tormented me.”
Mehta is especially troubled by the material at hand in the current book. While all the eleven volumes of his long autobiographical series have been immensely revealing about his family and himself, the revelations in question have been more of an intellectual and cultural nature, concerning themselves more with the impact of a lifetime spent abroad (in exile, as he calls it) upon a writer’s mind and relationships. The series to date, as anyone who has been following it even occasionally since the first volumes, Daddyji and Mummyji were published decades ago, are gentle, self-probing intellectual studies that are as much observational records of their place and time as literary autobiography.
But in this book, he is about to introduce an unxpected ‘twist’ in the tale. Mehta’s father, a genial public health official with unfulfilled literary ambitions (“I may still surprise you, son, by writing a bestseller one of these days”), comes to New York with his wife for their daughter’s confinement, and behaves peculiarly at a party hosted by the author.
After his return to India, the father makes good his literary threat, and begins to send Mehta chapters of a “novel” he claims to be writing. He later reveals that the “novel” is nothing more than a thinly disguised memoir of a certain period in his life, dating back forty years. As Mehta reads on, and then agrees to collaborate with his father in this joint act of turning remembered history into literary fiction, he learns with growing unease that his father is really confessing to a secret extramarital love affair from that period. To make matters worse, rather than wallowing in guilt or self-remose, his father seems quite unabashed about revealing the more intimate details of the matter. “Sex, as you would call it today.”
In the end, Mehta agrees to proceed with the work because as he puts it in one of the quietly eloquent passages which mark his work, “he, like me, sensed, even as he was confiding in me, that the story had a larger significance, something neither of us could yet verbalize, but which we imagine would far transcend his life–and maybe mine too.”
What follows is a fascinating narrative, like one of the Russian dolls-within-dolls-within-dolls that so fascinated Mehta during his childhood. Unpeeling the onion of the past in carefully revealing layers, he proceeds to give us his father’s transparently autobiographical ‘novel’ fragments, alternating with the real events described in those fragments, then his own reactions to these revelations. This being Ved Mehta, there is nothing sordid or truly shocking about the revelations. With painful grace and elegance, he winds his way through past and present, mind and body, real and perceived, to weave an enticing tale. In the end, the real relationship being explored and studied is not really that of his father and the ‘other woman’; it is Ved and his father themselves. Completing–and often revising–the first novel of Continents of Exile, Daddyji, Mehta produces a deceptively simple, impressively artful book, one that manages to fulfil its aspiration to transcend mere autobiography and achieve the status of literature.
Interestingly, the red letters of the title don’t exist. They are a fictional device suggested by his father to Ved as a means of conveying the details and passion of his remembered liaision. After all, as Daddyji points out, Mehta has frequently altered important details such as names, places, and some events to make the material of life more suitable for purposes of literary recreation.
And in any case, this particular story, by Mehta’s choice, will only be published after all parties concerned have passed away and are far removed from any potential hurt which such revelations or alterations may cause. It’s a significant reminder to all vicarious readers and over-zealous critics that the final work exists as a literary entity unto itself, not merely as a bare documentary record of real people and events. The best autobiography, as this book is, transcends itself to become a tale of the human condition.
Mehta may not have achieved the heights of his self-declared literary aspirations, Proust and Joyce, but he has produced a valuable insight into the Indian diaspora that deserves a place on our shelves besides the best work of Naipaul and Rushdie. In a chapter at the end of The Red Letters, Mehta provides a brief synopsis of the themes covered by the previous ten volumes and readers who may have missed entries in this long roman fleuve, running into some two thousand pages, flowing through the disparate lands of India, England and America, covering events from the late 19th century to the early 21st (though not in strictly chronological order), would do well to start at the beginning and work their way through to this very satisfying and illuminatory work. Rarely does an author get to write ‘The End’ not only to a long series of novels but in effect, to his own life story. With The Red Letters, Mehta performs that miraculous literary act.
Oscar who?
Didn’t see a movie on the weekend. Reason being, my son has his ICSE Board Exams starting this week. Decided not to watch the Academy Awards telecast today as well, not because of my son’s boards, but because I’m bored. Stiff. Of US glam shows. Which is all the Oscar race really turns out to be. Designer duds and diamantine dudettes. Red carpets and blue blood celebs.
There’s also the fact that I’m not really into most of the big nominees this year. Okay, so I haven’t seen Million Dollar Baby yet – not yet in theatres or DVD, and I will not watch a pirated print – but I doubt even that would blow my skirts up much. Truth be told, I’ve come to enjoy watching Brazilian, Chinese and other non-euro/US films much more than typical Hollywood product of late. Even if I feel like watching a good comedy, give me a good French flick anyday. Or if I want a good action dose, then I’ll take a Korean one, or Chinese. Somehow, Hollywood’s bloodlines are running paler than usual, and even their most technically sophisticated products leave me somewhat cold in the end.
For instance, I can’t imagine a film like Central Station ever being made in the USA, and yet it’s probably last year’s best dramatic film, a must-see. Or The Hero, which shows you Jet Li in a light that Hollywood action-flick producers obviously never see him – and it’s a film which is not only thrillingly action-packed but is so beautifully made and masterfully designed and produced that it makes even Crouching Tiger pale in comparison. Or the works of Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano. Or the whole genre of Japanese horror, which Hollywood is now turning to for inspiration – the recent Sarah Michelle Geller-starring English language-version of The Grudge is a rare collaboration of Japanese film-making and American funding and stars. See Dark Water and you get a ghost story that is so much more eeirily moving than any Hollywood slasher product.
These days, if I have to get my Hollywood fix, I prefer to do it watching TV serials. This is partly because my kids and wife are heavily into them, but I don’t complain when they’re watching their latest seasons of Buffy, Angel, Dawson’s Creek or Alias. At least on television, in the hands of a really gifted creator-producer like Joss Whedon or J. J. Abrahms, you see character development that a 90-minute film can’t possibly give you, and with a level of technical sophistication that easily matches Hollywood.
In fact, I don’t see any contradiction between watching a commercial American pop-culture TV series and watching serious art-house films. It’s like eating gourmet food as well as bhel puri, chaat or burgers. I’m a liberal in these matters. I love my Indian culture passionately, and spend my working hours and even leisure hours deeply immersed in writing and reading and researching history, myth, language, legends, etc. But when I need a break, I’m as likely to enjoy a couple of episodes of Jennifer Garner kicking ass in Alias, as I am to listen to old Kishore Kumar songs, or Green Day, or watch Black and applaud India’s first Oscar-worthy film (and as Best Film, not Best Foreign Film, if they had the guts to include non-US films in that category instead of shunting them off to one side) or even R&B-inspired Hindi film remixes.
I think the beauty of contemporary culture is its inclusiveness: something for everybody, and everything for an eclectic like me. I taste every dish in the buffet of modern entertainment and refuse to differentiate or segregate.
Except, maybe, when it comes to bland, bloodless Hollywood fare.
Yes, baba, Ashok Banker is here only
That’s right.
Ashok has changed the name of his brand-new blogomobile. Everything else remains exactly the same – all the faltu reviews, the chalu-maal chat, the hocus-pocus about writing, life, the universe and everydingdong.
What for you’re asking why, men? Simply.
We are like this only.
Found in Translation: Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
Finished Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore today. Man, what a book. Blown away, I was. Now I begin to understand why this cat is considered one of the coolest, hippest literary novelists around, and one of the biggest sellers.
The first thing I did was look for his other novel, also considered one of his best, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and it’s on my shelf, mewling and miaowing in anticipation. (I tried all the Mumbai bookstores without luck, then happened to be at Inorbit Mall, Malad (W), after a trip to my C.A. to finalize accounts for last f.y., and there it was, perched on a bottom shelf, flicking its tail and squinting its eyes at me in that lazy, sun-dazed way that cats have at high noon. I picked it up and carried it to the counter, stroking it lovingly, ignoring the stares of the baffled salespersons.)
In case I haven’t drowned you in the cat metaphors yet (an important part of Murakami’s writing, just as white dogs are an integral obsession in the novels of Jonathon Carroll, another brilliant fabulist who boldly straddles the train-tracks that separate Literary Awardland from Genre Fantasyland) here’s one more catty comment: This is a novel that leaves you feeling like a siamese with a belly full of fish and fresh cream.
Murakami’s prose, even in translation from the original Japanese, is perfect for the kind of story he tells. Simple, spare, yet unafraid to launch into flights of fantasy at a moment’s notice. The story unfolds in parallel tracks. One, the main storyline, is about a 15-year old boy who leaves home, and his negligent self-obsessed father, and embarks on a long journey, presumably to find his longlost mother and elder sister, but also just to get away from his father, his life, himself. As anyone who has read enough fantasy – and this is a fantasy, whatever you choose to classify it as – knows that a new identity must begin with a new name. And the name our protagonist chooses for himself is Kafka. Not without significance, he keeps his father’s surname, Tamura. Becoming Kafka Tamura.
The other parallel track is about an old feeble-minded man named Nakata who ekes out a living on his government sub city (subsidy but the mispronounciation is also not without significance, for Nakata will descend eventually into a sub city) and makes some extra yen on the side as a cat detective. Yes, you read that right. Cat detective. Because, you see, a long time ago, when he was very young, he suffered an incident which left him severely mentally impaired, and with a new mental faculty he hadn’t possessed earlier: the ability to speak cat. He puts his ability to good use, seeking out lost domestic cats for a small fee and some of his favourite foods – “Nakata loves eel,” he tells everyone he meets, several times over, usually until they feed him some eel. He’s pretty good at it, too, and some of the most enchanting scenes in the book deal with him interviewing cats and the remarkable conversations he has with them.
The novel follows these two characters’ points of view in a simple, alternate-chapter structure. Now, I’m not going to tell you the whole story. But you should know this: If you’ve ever read and loved a Stephen King novel, you can’t not go crazy with happiness reading this novel. Seriously. I don’t give a ass’ hoot whether the bigtime literary critics consider mentioning Stephen King and Murakami in the same breath to be some kind of literary blasphemy – they probably do. I can hear Harold Bloom turning over in his grave, and he isn’t even dead! :~)
But without trying to elevate Stephen King to Nobel Prize stature, or to denigrate Murakami in any fashion, the resemblance is startlingly obvious. There’s a recurring character-type in Stephen King’s novels: the simple-minded country bumpkin or mentally challenged boy who speaks of himself in the third person and has some favourite catch-phrase he throws at everyone he meets (“Wolf! Wolf! Right here and now!” in The Talisman; “Moon! That spells Tom Cullen, it does.” in The Stand and so on) and that’s what Nakata resembles so eeirily.
It’s hard to think that Murakami might never have read Stephen King but I guess it’s possible. But then how do you explain the other motifs that resemble King’s work – the runaway boy backpacking it (a la The Stand) and the Bad Guy with long boots, black cloak and hat and sentient black dog and all (a la The Stand, and other books) and a hundred other small but significant similarities? Nah. I’d wager money on it. Murakami loves his Stephen King. He’s just lucky enough to be packaged and marketed as a literary master instead of a Japanese fantasy novelist.
Either way, the point is that this is a novel that’s as easy to read and as enjoyable as a Stephen King novel. And it’s a great novel.I know that Murakami is looked down on by a lot of Japanese readers and critics who consider him a “sell-out” who doesn’t capture the real Japan or portray Japanese life and culture accurately. I respect that point of view. In India, we often have the same kind of bitching about our own authors. Last I checked, there was a movement to add a new section to the IPC (Indian Penal Code, another marvellous legacy we inherited from our British forebores – “Thank you, old chum, whatever would we do without all your antiquated laws?” “Oh, pshaw. Don’t mention it. It’s our way of telling you to go to independent hell in a handbasket, you brown buggers!”), the new section being specifically targetted at Indian authors who find success selling their novels overseas; the new section is to be numbered 421.
Anyway, so I understand that Murakami may not be seen in the same light as, say, Kenzuburo Oe or Soseki Natsume or Yukio Mishima, and I won’t claim to have read enough Japanese literature to draw a final conclusion, but I’ll say this, I know a great novel when I read one, and Kafka on the Shore is one of the best. Read it, and keep your Stephen King close at hand. And tell me if you don’t see the similarities. But most of all, enjoy this novel, for that’s what it’ s meant for, not to be analyzed to death, or debated over by anal-retentive academics in dusty committee halls; simply read, reread, and enjoyed, down to the last delicious lick of the last savoury page. Purrrr.
Ramayana Indian editions out in March
Okay, so this is the first official ‘breaking news’ item on this, my official (and only) blog.
The Penguin India editions of the first three books will be out in March. That includes Prince of Ayodhya, Siege of Mithila and yes, Demons of Chitrakut, for the first time in India.
And the good news gets better: Armies of Hanuman will follow in about four months. No more long waits!
To see what the covers of the Penguin India editions look like, slide over to the Ramayana page on my website. Or visit the Penguin India website.
Link-ing Road
Just wanted to say that I won’t be creating links for keywords in my blog posts. Takes up too much time. Besides, how do I know if the person reading it would prefer to be linked through to Amazon UK, USA, Canada, Japan, etc, or to not be linked to a commercial bookseller’s website at all? So no more links. Golf was never my game anyway.
Oh, and am almost through with Kafka on the Shore. Love the book. Is it just a coincidence that this is the second consecutive novel I’m reading that’s
(a) set in Japan;
(b) about a young man in search of his long-lost parent;
(c) has lots of general weirdness going on
?
“Coincidence has been cancelled, Ashok. Told ya.” – SK (smiling peskily)
Japanese Day
“Coincidence has been cancelled,” says a very famous author who also happens to be a character in his latest novel. (And if you think you can name the author/character/book I’m referring to, click on the Comments link below and tell me.) What he means is that there are no coincidences, only events that are meant to coincide.
I get that a lot too.
Like today. This morning I posted an entry about Number9dream by David Mitchell, which novel happens to be about Japan. Well, the next novel I happened to pick up was The Lady & The Monk by Pico Iyer, also set in…Japan. So far so ho hum; after all, after you read a really good book about x, you often feel like reading another book about x. But later in the day, after my writing was done, and I’d finished at the gym, had a little lunch, I headed to Chi-kaba, which is where I’ve been having my haircuts for the past several years. And when I go to Chi-kaba, I absolutely do not miss the opp to drop in at Danai, one of my two favourite Bandra bookstores, the other being Lotus House Books, of course.
Anyway, so there I am browsing at Danai, when wham, I see it. A large trade paperback copy of Kafka on the Shore. That’s the new Haruku Murakami book, in case you’ve been living in a bomb shelter and subsisting on old issues of Filmfare and Stardust for the past twenty years. Now, I haven’t actually read Murakami yet, but I’ve been meaning to for the longest time. And having read the reviews of Kafka on the Shore, it sounded like it was a great book to begin with – unless one could find a copy of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle instead. So I picked it up without a second thought, smiled beatifically at the large-but-steadily-dwindling pile of copies of my own novel Vertigo in the Indian books section, and climbed out of the basement bookstore named after the Greek goddess of knowledge, blinking happily in the late afternoon sunshine.
Strike one more for the Japanese.
When I came home, I found a largeish robin blue envelope in my mailbox. Guess where it was from? Yup, that’s it. Japan. And no, I don’t regularly get mail from said far eastern island nation. It was my first. It was a set of gorgeous colour illustrations from my Japanese translator, the really nice Yutaka Ohshima. Samples of illustrators from which my Japanese publishers, Yutaka and I have to choose one for the Japanese editions of my Ramayana series. Sumptuous stuff, more about which, soon.
About ten minutes later, my daughter came home from her post-school dance class and guess what she was wearing. A brand new tee shirt and tracks, and said tee shirt just happened to sport whole legend in kanji. Kanji, in case you didn’t know, is Japanese script, the way Hindi script is called Devnagari.
Okay, so it’s not enough to plot a whole novel – or even a short story. But it’s enough Japanese connections in a single day to make even that famous author I mentioned at the start of this post smile smugly, cross his hands across his chest, and say, “Told ya.” And if you still can’t guess who he is, you really need to get out more.
A Taoist in Tokyo
Finished David Mitchell’s number9dream the other day. Got a signed hardcover copy for Rs 250 at the Strand exhibition last month, talk about a bargain. Really enjoyed the book. Over the years I’ve grown so weary of US-centred books and characters; I mean, it’s bad enough that Hollywood seems to drown us in Americana without having to escape to an allegedly fictional world that turns out to be, well, the backlot of a tired national imagination. With a few exceptions like Phillip Roth, I try to avoid most American authors. They rarely have anything to say about the human condition–but a great deal of tiresome noise to make about ‘being American’. Usually in the post-911 world. Yeah, guys, sometime try to see how the other 9/10′s of the world lives.
Anyway, Number9dream is also an American novel. Critics have lashed Mitchell for doing a touristy version of the Japanese novel. Fair enough, or, critics being critics, unfair enough. So Mitchell’s Japan is a playground for an American’s imagination, but Mitchell has lived there all his life, and all his characters and settings and events are Japanese, so it’s still a lot more of a Japanese experience than, say, the pseudo-existentialism of Lost in Translation. The book, like Mitchell’s previous, debut novel Ghostwritten, and his Booker-nominated Cloud Atlas, is hugely over-written, and that puts a lot of potential readers off Mitchell. It also puts him squarely in the league of American writers who love to hear their own voices prattle on endlessly–but inventively, ingeniously, and imaginatively. I’d put him safely in the company of David Foster Wallace and Neal Stephenson and even Bret Easton Ellis, among others.
Number9dream is very much a modern urban picaresque along the lines of Wallace’s The Broom of the System, Ellis’ Glamorama, and Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. It has the same hallmark qualities of a wild imagination let loose in an urban setting, utter disdain for plot and structure (though this usually conceals an over-obsession with structure itself), and a very male, very personal, very emotionally rooted quest of some sort. In this case, the protagonist (a Japanese youth) is questing for his father, whom he has never met or known. It’s a wild ride worth taking and I’d strongly recommend it. Which is not the same as saying it’s Mitchell’s best. Either Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas are leagues ahead. But then, they’re not half as fun.
It also reminded me of another novel I’d read a whale of a while ago. A Taoist on Wall Street by David Payne. It’s out of print, not surprisingly, and I’d read it ages ago. I remember I was working in an ad agency back then, 1988 I think, and one of the partners, Ajit Balakrishnan, had lent it to me. It was a massive tome, owing more to Eighties glam novelists like Jay McInerny and Ellis (again) but was also an astonishingly good read. I don’t think Payne ever wrote anything again, but if you had to write just one novel, that would be the one.
Dave Eggers too. He writes the same playful, autobiographical musings disguised as a silver bullet gone mad kind of stuff.
And there I go, starting out by saying I’m so tired of reading American authors who bear their 911 badges so proudly, and end up talking about a half dozen American novelists anyway. Can’t kill them all, can’t live without them. Might as well read them I guess. :~)
Ray Mama Ray Mama Ray
And saw Ray yesterday too. It was a Sunday, and I love driving to downtown Mumbai on Sundays, only because the traffic is so much less it’s almost (but not quite) like Mumbai back when it was Bombay and there were still more crows flying overhead than cars on the road. Theatre of choice was Inox at CR2, Nariman Point. Nice multiplex, good snacks, etc, but the seats are too darn narrow and uncomfortable. Why? There’s enough legspace, so would it have hurt them to let the seats shift back a few inches?
Anyway, the movie was worth it. I’m a longtime Taylor Hackford fan. He’s one of those perpetually under-rated directors who immerses himself totally in his movies and creates a spellbinding experience, taking you into a world that is compelete unto itself. My two favourites in his limited but very watchable oeuvre are An Officer And A Gentleman, and Blood In, Blood Out. I liked the way he captured Ray Charles warts and all, even down to the sweat on the singer’s face when he sings his heart out in those smoky jazz joints. It’s a terrific biopic, and more than does justice to a great artist.
But Ray really belongs to Jamie Foxx. Man, what a performance. No wonder the media is already backing him for the Best Actor Oscar. There’s no question he deserves it. He really takes that character and makes it his. Power to Mr Foxx.
The Madness of King Scorcese
Saw The Aviator yesterday with my family – wife and two teenage kids – at a multiplex called Fun Republic in Andheri. We like Fun a lot a better than the other very nice multiplex across the road, Fame Adlabs, only because it has a nice food court and you can sit for a while before the movie (or after, if you prefer) and eat something more filling than popcorn and samosas.
Over various sundries, my wife mentioned that she’d read a column by a well-known Page 3 queen in which said maharani talks about how, since she’s started going to multiplexes, she’s totally stopped visiting single-screen cinemas. I don’t usually read columns with pictures of the author over them – I once used to write several such columns, so that probably accounts for some of the ‘avoid’ factor – but p3-queen had a point. Even we, an inveterate movie-going family that likes to see every possible worthwhile movie on the big screen (and then only check out the rest on DVDs, which we also consume in large numbers) have become a total multiplex family.
It almost makes me wonder, what’s going to happen to the old, heritage-building cinemas that I grew up watching movies in, like Regal, Sterling, Eros, Liberty, to name just a few. Will they go the way of other oldie-goldies like Strand (after which Strand Bookstall took its name, because Padmashree T. S. Shanbag began his famous landmark as a little stall – hence the appellation – outside said theatre)? I guess so. Or they’ll do as Metro is doing, i.e., convert themselves into multiplexes to keep pace with the a-changin’ times.
Anyway, to get back to the movie.
The Aviator more or less did what I thought it would. It Hollywoodised Howard Hughes’ life, which was fine, because Hughes lived a very Hollywoodish life anyway. But what it also did, and I liked a lot about it, was that it treated the biopic as a character study a la Scorcese. Which meant that old Marty felt free to descend into entire sequences of hallucinogenic madness, sequences which would be utterly familiar to viewers of at least two of his earlier films, The Last Temptation Of Christ, and Taxi Driver, two similar films which, while dealing with completely different subjects, were nevertheless also biographical studies of single characters who resort to a type of functional insanity while dealing with, well, let’s face it, an essentially non-sane-sical duniya.
It made for difficult viewing. I mean, it was nail-bitingly difficult to watch the protagonist, the world’s first billionaire, descend to the level of urinating in milk bottles and repeating the same dialogue several dozen times over, with more happening in his head than on the screen for about ten minutes at a stretch. The thing I didn’t like at all, this being a biopic and presumedly subject to some laws of truth-telling, was the way the film totally erased all mention of Hughes dependency on painkilling drugs after his near-fatal air crash in Beverly Hills. For that matter, the two biographies of Hughes I’ve read over the years (came home and looked them up) list so many famous stars with whom he was linked publicly that it was a wonder why Scorcese simply dropped all that juicy stuff from his retelling. Or the whole WWII campaign.
But what worked brilliantly was the fact that after this spell of madness, Scorcese, with a brilliantly true portrayal by the wholly under-estimated and hugely talented Leonardo DiCaprio, gives us a terrifically stimulating comeback. Like a Rocky down in the penultimate round, Hughes emerges from the swamp of his mental anguish to attend the Senate hearings. And the way he lashes back at his nemesis, the corrupt Senator (backed by the Pan Am president, Hughes primary business rival) makes you marvel all the more. When Hughes walks out of that senate hearing, reporters pumping his hand and shouting “Hughes! Hughes!” like loyal fans at a Mohun Baga game, you really feel vindicated and triumphant.
Eventually, you realize, it’s knowing that he sank so low into madness just before he came back to win that victory that gives that comeback its punch. Like Jesus’s resurrection in The Last Temptation or the taxi driver hero’s assassination of the President in Taxi Driver, that final commuppance wouldn’t mean half as much without the travails that the hero suffered just before it. Never mind that Hughes went on to live thirty more years, or that his role in the Watergate scandal and so many other major controversies were far more newsworthy than that Senate hearing, or that he lived to actually see his visionary dreams fulfilled – passenger jet aircraft were indeed the future – or that his real ammassing of wealth and teenaged mistresses had only just begun (or that several of those mistresses he never actually got around to having sex with, or even visiting!) and so many other enticing tidbits that are left out. Those, like the facts, are just quibbles, right?
In the end, The Aviator is more about Scorcese than Hughes. Like so many biographies these days, it’s the teller not the tale that makes for compelling narration. We won’t read Vikram Seth’s upcoming non-fiction book because it’s a true story (about his aunt and uncle? who cares!) but because it’s Seth’s new book. We didn’t care that the Russell Crowe starrer A Dangerous Mind tampered dangerously with the truth, altering whole sections of the real life to suit movie-making purposes as long as it made a good film in itself. And we make successes of books like White Moghuls by William Dalrymple not because the main protagonists lived two hundred years ago but because Dalrymple is telling their tale here and now. Or The Master by Colm Toibin which is presented as a novel rather than a biography of Henry James (incidentally, one of my most-loved authors) because fiction laced with a stiff dose of truth is wholly desirable while truth laced with a stiff dose of fiction is wholly unacceptable.
Reality, like Hughes’ hallucinations, is only a means to an end in narration today. It’s what you do with the reality that matters more than the reality itself. Like reading seven newspapers a day, as I do, and seeing the same events reported so differently – often with wholly different factual details – that you come to realize over time that we live in a world where everything is POV. In a world controlled by the media and its storytellers who care so much more about the telling than the tale (why else do you think reporters call their articles and news reports ‘stories’) even disasters like tsunamis are only fodder for the mill, a means to sell more newspapers and grab more eyeballs.
At least in the hands of a true artist, like Martin Scorcese in The Aviator, a life altered almost beyond all recognition comes close to resembling art. And he uses well-paid actors, not real dead bodies on a Sri Lankan beach, to sell his pictures.
Million dollar navels
There’s a thin line between creating and cashing in. One author’s inspiration could be another’s desperation–desperation to earn big bucks and instant fame. And aren’t we all weary of watching an endless parade of new unknowns flash like shooting stars and preen and glow ever so brightly, mouthing inane cliches about art. Art? Mart, you mean! Why not just admit that you only wrote the book to kill your overdraft, or as one author put it so eloquently and honestly, “I did it to get laid more.”
Yet it’s the question every aspiring writer asks himself at some point or other: ‘How the eff did so-and-so get that megabucks advance? He/She can’t write for nuts!’ The implication usually being that Aspiring Writer could write a book ten times better than that one, if someone would pay him even one-tenth as much.
Well…I honestly don’t know how one writes a novel to earn big bucks. I know how one can sell a novel that’s written, by hiring a good agent, negotiating hard, splitting individual rights to gain more from each individual sale, etc, but all those things are after writing the novel. Before you write it, trust me, there’s no way on earth to get rich.
As the apocryphal story goes of a famous writer who wired her publisher: “New novel 100,000 words, send the usual advance.” The publisher wired her back: “That depends on which words and in what order.”
On the other hand, if you do write the novel, and do a great job of it, then yes, there are chances you can get some money. Not assuredly. Because you have approximately 1 in 120,000 chances of selling your novel in the USA alone (that’s how many unsolicited novel manuscripts the major US publishers recieve each year) and not much better than 1 in 10,000 chances in India (ditto for Indian publishers). So it’s still a gamble. But at least you have the chips in your hand, and hopefully, if they’re worth something, you’ll get your break eventually.
Back when I first had my glimmer of inspiration for my Ramayana retelling, not only did I not have anyone interested in reading it, the first responses I got were “Sorry, we don’t publish this kind of book.” (That came from a New Delhi-based editor of a major publishing house; she was responding to my enquiry whether she would be interested in reading my new novel-in-progress. Since I hadn’t mentioned a word about the novel itself, not even the title, it beats me how she could say they didn’t publish “this” kind of book. Later, when the book was completed, published, and was a huge success, she tried frantically to get me to come to several different parties and launches. I replied politely but firmly, “I don’t attend those kind of events.” At least I knew what I was referring to.)
Even the publishing house that eventually bought Indian rights to the book (bless their souls) as well as its several sequels, didn’t even reply to my query letter when the book was in progress. It’s not that the editor in question–since moved on to a bigger phoren posting–didn’t like my work, he was actually a friend and a self-professed admirer of my work. But he simply didn’t see any sales potential in the book, and put it aside. On the other hand, he was more than willing to give me a fairly decent advance for a novel on Bombay’s Page 3 life, which, mercifully, I dragged-and-dropped straight into the Trashcan on my Desktop in the nick of time.
For that matter, back when the book was just a glimmer in mine eyes, even my own agent wasn’t sure whether the book was salable or not–until it actually sold. So far from writing a book to cash in the big bucks, there were major questions asked about my future plans as an author. When I got desperate for food-and-stamps cash, the agent even suggested that if I was willing to write a non-fiction book on a topical Indian-culture theme she could secure me an advance at least four times as much as what she could get me for a novel, and all she’d need for the non-fiction book was just a sample chapter and a two-page outline. (She thought Vaastu was a ‘cool subject’ and Bollywood was eminently salable too.) That was one of the inside track hard truths I learned: that non-fiction is where the big bucks really are these days.
So not only was there was no question of tailoring the book to make more money: the question was whether it would sell at all! I was stubborn and stupid enough to stick to my guns and keep at the Ramayana novel, while visions of becoming ‘the next Deepak Chopra’ flashed past like a train in a sarson-ka-khet at night in a Yash Chopra movie.
So I ask again: What money? Forget millions, I didn’t have a rupee in hand when I began writing the Ramayana series. I was deeply in debt, with a wife and two growing kids to support, spotty health, weight problems, creditors literally banging on the door everyday, relationship problems…It was about as bad as it can get. And as usually happens, it got worse.
But I began writing, and I went on. And I finished the book. And I met a visiting writer who introducted me to her agent, who went on to read the book, managed to get me a pretty decent first-sale. And things rolled from there. Eventually, and I’ll repeat that word, eventually I did make some money. Not as much as some people believe, but a hell of a lot more than most authors make. I was pushing 40, had been doing nothing but writing all my life, had over a dozen published books under my (straining) belt, and if you took the so-called ‘big advance’ I’d got, deducted my debt from it, deducted agents’ commissions, foreign tax deductions at source, then divided the result by the time I’d spent writing the book (and accumulating said debt) it would probably come to less than what a real ‘banker’ makes…
Still, I’m not complaining. Hey, I’m doing pretty okay for myself and I’m writing what I wanted to write. And even after all those deductions and taxes, it still works out to a pretty good figure on my IT Form 16.
But I didn’t get paid to write the book/s. I got paid for giving publishers the right to publish the book, in specified markets in specified editions. Remember, nobody even wanted to read it when it was in-progress. Most people I knew well (let’s not even call them friends) looked at me like I was a maniac for thinking I could make a living writing novels. (I was actually. Still am. And happy to be.) Still, I wrote it. And that’s why I earned some money.
And that’s what it’s all about. Writing it. Sending it out. Hoping and praying. Piling up your debt, or writing journalism, anything to keep the food warm, and waiting.
So tell me again: How do you make a million bucks writing a novel? Please. Tell me. Because I haven’t a clue. Then again, don’t tell me. Because I love what I do. I don’t do it for money. Yes, that’s right, I don’t. Maybe you do, and power to your arm, friend. But I do it because it’s what I do, and I dig it. Sure, I’ll sell it for money, once it’s written. But before it’s written? Nope. Not a clue. Far as I know, nobody else does either, apart from a few dozen brand-name biggies way up there, and their gig is a lot more about luck and miracles than writing.
Writing is writhing
Hi. I’m Ashok.
For those of you not from Indian shores, that’s pronounced to rhyme with “A Coke”–though I never touch the stuff, give me plain desi paani anyday. (And that means ‘Indian water’.)
I’m a writer. Or trying to be one. No, I’m not being falsely modest. Some people think I’ve already made it big-time, both in terms of moolah and recognition.
I beg to differ.Writing is, by its very nature, an endless struggle. It only ends when you write ‘the end’. And the writer himself rarely gets to write ‘the end’ to the one story that truly matters: his own. Forget all you’ve read in novels or movies–like the eminently forgettable new Hindi flick ‘Shabd’ (somebody please get me a kulhardi, quick, so I can do something foolhardy!). In the real world, writing is attempting, trying, seeking…Writing is writhing.
If you can take some pleasure from it–I do–then that’s the best you can hope for, most of the time. Sometimes, it pays. Mostly, it just pains. Either way, I wouldn’t do anything else for all the money in the world.Also contrary to most popular perceptions, I don’t enjoy speaking my mind out loud in public. Which is the whole point of a blog, right?
Well, how about speaking my heart out? I’ll try to do that here, in this my little jhinga-sized space in a very large ocean of blogsam. Check back from time to time, and maybe you’ll find something of interest. Most likely not. You’ll probably do better to check out the more aggessively self-promoting bloggers. The most you can expect here is a little voice from a big country speaking heart’s truth from time to time.No advice. No expert insights. No articles on writing and making a million. Just a fellow struggler’s experiences, shared without comment or analysis or bias.
Playing it as it lays.Stick around…
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis will be out next month (October). Written in a pacier style than my Ramayana Series, this short impactful book details the rise to power of the monstrous Kamsa and his brutal campaign to thwart the birth of the prophesied 8th Child. 