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Journalism of Courage
It’s a familiar phenomenon: a new book bursts upon the market like a horde of triumphant Goths on a raiding party and a month later its author is heard ranting about the pathetic standards of literary criticism in the country. The most recent example is a first novel, which was received with cautious rather than effusive praise. In an interview some weeks after the launch, the author referred to Indian reviewers as ‘‘out-of-work journos, copy editors in publishing houses, peripheral academics, precious column writers.’’
As disgruntled creative spirits go, however, he was fairly restrained. Artists whose exhibitions have received negative reviews tend to be more physical. For instance, my sister Geeta Doctor, who reviews both art and literature, was once almost strangled by a muralist because she dared to ask him how many screws he’d used in one of his creations. Another one tried to force her to buy one of his paintings in penance for her mildly negative review. By contrast, authors generally restrict themselves to verbal responses in the form of the occasional death-threat by mail, anonymous phone calls and acid rejoinders in the letters columns of journals that have published unfavourable notices.
What brings on the charge of fury? Why do some authors feel the need to vent their feelings while others manage to contain theirs? Does venting confer an evolutionary advantage upon its practitioners? Or is it plain bad behaviour, specific to the Indian subcontinent, to our thin-skinned sensibilities, our lack of perspective and our unwillingness to accept anything less than abject, grovelling praise in response to the masterworks we produce with every exhalation?
I’ll answer the last question first. No, writerly rage is not by any means limited to Indians. The pages of Western literary journals are spattered with the blood of feuding authors, some of it very blue indeed. Just the other day, for instance, I came across echoes of the Faulkner-Hemingway spat during which Faulkner wrote (of Hemingway), ‘‘He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.’’ To which Hemingway reportedly riposted, ‘‘Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?’’
However, unlike the Faulkners and Hemingways of the world, Indian authors writing in English belong to an unusually young and struggling literary tradition. Our nation is only 58 years old and we’re using, as our medium of expression, the language of our colonial oppressors. Even as we grope around for an idiom that defines us in all our complexity, we find ourselves lit up by the bright lights of the international publishing world. While a small handful of authors sign fabulous book-contracts and are swaddled in warm praise, the rest must be content with a thin patter of applause from friends and relatives at their book launches while answering raw young reporters who ask, ‘‘Is it true that foreign publishers pay more?’’
Getting a book published is an emotionally and financially draining enterprise, with no guaranteed reward at the end of it. Given this reality, it’s no surprise that reviewers must seem, at times, to be unfeeling sadists who squeeze their salaries directly out of the crushed egos of young novelists. Yet the publishing industry is a business, like any other. Critics, literary journals and literary agents are caught up in a game of money-spinning, with authors running like frantic squirrels on exercise-wheels at the heart of the machine. Flattery is the grease that makes all the cogs whirr smoothly. As Kiran Naarkar, award-winning author of Cuckold says, ‘‘Internationally, most reviewers have forgotten the meaning of scale – like advertising people, they can now deal only with superlatives.’’ To call a book merely ‘‘good’’ is, in today’s inflated currency of praise, almost an insult. It has to be ‘‘the best book of its generation’’, a ‘‘tour de force’’ and an ‘‘epic adventure’’ or else it’s rat-feed in the distributor’s godown.
Against this backdrop, negative reviews are almost a sign of vigour. It means that critics are free to express their honest opinions, and that their main concern is for the readers who, presumably, buy books for pleasure and not just to inflate the expenditure account on their income tax returns. While it’s no more realistic to expect authors to welcome criticism of their books than to expect anyone to enjoy going under a dentist’s drill, I think most of us recognize that it’s better to have vigorous dentists than bad teeth.
There are even occasions when critical attacks are desirable. In the days when my comic strip Double Talk used to appear in the Sunday Observer in Bombay, it inspired a constant trickle of angry letters from readers. For the first several months, I can remember feeling like a pin-cushion, with my confidence in tatters every Sunday. But in time, and with editor’s continued support of the strip despite the attacks, I began almost to look forward to them. People who might never normally look at the comics page would read the complaints in the ‘‘Letters to the Editor’’ column, then go back to find the item that had inspired the attack. The rhino-hide I developed then has stood me in good stead now that I have books in print.I’ve learnt to understand that the only cure for the particular hurt that comes from bad reviews, condescending reviews or (worst of all) no reviews is— to keep on writing.
But complaining has its uses too. While writing this article, and mulling over the reasons why so many otherwise sensible and intelligent authors put their reputations on the line by savaging their critics, it occurred to me that it is, after all, one more means of keeping a book in the public eye. The author might sound like a peevish brat deprived of his rightful lollipop after a session in the toilet, but if the ploy succeeds in selling more copies of the book, it justifies itself.
Padmanabhan is a cartoonist, playwright and novelist and was awarded the Onassis Prize in 1997 for her play ‘Harvest’.
