Heart to heart

Soumya Bhattacharya informs me that epistolary is the word used to describe the form in which a novel is structured as a series of letters. It’s then that I realized that the word that I used to describe his latest novel If I Could Tell You— epistorial—does not even exist in the English dictionary. In my defense,epistorial seemsed like a valid enough word. It has that rare,self-important ring of a bonafide word that means something profound,but evidently it’s not. Bhattacharya should know,If I Could Tell You is a fine example of what we have established as an epistolary novel— it’s in the form of a series of letters written by a father to his daughter. Furthermore,he is also happens to be one of the most respected journalists of the country today and has to his credit two other successful books All That You Can’t Leave Behind and You must like Cricket?. So yes,I was clearly out-of-depth here. But Bhattacharya,who was in the city to launch the book last week,was kind enough not to dwell on my faux pas. “I thought that the narrative of this novel demanded an epistolary format. It allowed me to do three things. First,it permitted the intimacy of the letter form,which was critical to the narrative. Secondly,it allowed the narrative to be filtered through the consciousness of one person — the narrator. So we have no counterpoint here,we have,as readers,merely what he has to say. And the caveat is that he is an unreliable narrator. We shouldn’t be sure of how much we ought to believe him. Thirdly,the form allowed me to slip in and out of time,to have the present mesh with the past. It is an epistolary novel in one sense,but it is not a straightforward epistolary novel. It is complex in terms of structure and what it wants to do,” he says.

His blog reveals that Bhattacharya follows Indian writing in English closely. As a journalist he has also been at the other side of the table—interviewed many authors,critiqued their works. Does that give him a unique perspective? “I do have a consuming day job as the Editor of a newspaper,but that does not make me part of the publishing industry. I can’t speak about the uniqueness of perspective (examples of journalists who are authors are not hard to find in India or abroad),but my day job offers me a variety and richness of experience that I otherwise would not have had. Also,it is a useful — if rather demanding and exhausting —foil to the night job of writing my own books. Having said that,I’d like to add that I don’t think being a journalist makes it any easier for one to write a book — or,indeed,to have it published,” Bhattacharya says.

His “day job” also gives him the luxury to read,without which his “night job” would have suffered,claims Bhattacharya. Something that is quite evident in the way he readily quotes writers like Richard Yates and Harold Bloom. But does he find himself influenced by these stalwarts? “If one is a writer,there is nothing to do but to be well read. There is no other way. I think all writers have their own pantheons of literary heroes,and so do I. Of course,there will be influences. There will be what the critic Harold Bloom called ‘the anxiety of influence’,of admiring one’s heroes,and overcoming the urge to ape them. The trick is to read,to assimilate and absorb influences and find one’s own voice. Otherwise,we’d all be writing poor pastiches of the writers whom we admire,” he sums up.