Two ways to spend lunch this Sunday--with Yann Martel or Pico Iyer.

More on Harvard and the Unabomber: the Babu read the Unabomber's manifesto years ago, and while it was confused, rambling and derivative, it made sense in a way the media chose to ignore. The Identity Theory interview with Alston Chase explains why....

Abraham Eraly's Introduction to The Mughal Throne impresses Edward Luce, especially when Eraly writes, "In every other major civilisation the past has died so that the future could be born. But India seems to be killing the future so that the past can live on." But, says Luce, Eraly promises serious history and delivers merely a view through the "keyhole of the bedchamber". The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, wants more maps and illustrations.

No one asks them to contribute to the New Yorker. They wouldn't win the Whitbread (and wouldn't want one). The "queens of popular fiction", Jilly Cooper and Joanna Trollope, join forces in the old argument over the merits of popular versus literary writing at Hay. (The Babu's summary: Who cares what the critics say/ We have our readers anyway.")

"Milligan may be dead, but he won't lie down." And a dealer's just made a packet off Spike's notebooks.

In which Arundhati Roy explains that she does what she does because she has to.

Middle-Earth is alive with the sound of music...hobbit choruses, anyone?

Penguin India's latest catalogue features the blood brother (sister?) of Anonymous, Pseudonymous. In new fiction, there's Olivia and Jai, somewhat unpromisingly blurbed as "a novel of love, loss, passion and betrayal set in 19th century India". It's written by Rebecca Ryman, the "pseudonym of an Indian writer living in Calcutta". Hmm. Shrinking violet or publicity stunt? Speculation welcome.

Anonymous, in this day and age? This time it's not a Primary Colours deal--Anonymous is an American spy who says he "tried to present a portrait of Osama bin Laden that will prompt better understanding of the man--and understanding does not connote sympathy--and a debate about how best to identify, confront, and defeat the threat he poses and personifies."

Looking for the lowdown on William Dalrymple? The Complete Review has a comprehensive set of links.

One man has boldly gone where Hemingway has gone before: to Pamplona, to record the running of the bulls. (Heh, the last time we saw the running of the bulls in India was when Ketan Parekh and co. took the stock market on a wild ride around February 2000!)

The Aventis Prize for Science Books is one of the few literary prizes that the Babu actually follows with breathless anticipation. The shortlist for 2003 is out, and it makes interesting reading. Notice how the website emphasises the accessible, non-threatening, bestselling nature of science writing, however: "...the drama of the breakthroughs, the incredible characters. Margaret Drabble leads this year's judging panel: given the quality of her science fiction (fine by literary standards, but believe me, Harlan Ellison and Philip K Dick turn in their graves every time she puts pen to paper), that's akin to a builder of matchbox castles judging an architecture competition. (I like Drabble. It's just her sci-fi I hate.)

Anjay Ajodha, eight years old, is the youngest contestant in the last two decades to be a finalist at the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. The Babu notes that one contestant fell at the fence of "vindaloo", though "tandoori" proved to be easier for another.

If you've always wanted to walk in Borges' shoes, here's your chance. The Modern Word is sponsoring The Borgesian Book Review Contest.

The Babu is old-fashioned enough to blink at the increasing length of the names of book prizes, but he likes the musicality of this one: the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse (Prize for Comic Writing). It does not scan, but it has great merit. The winner gets a sow, a case of champagne and other Wodehousian fripperies.

The LRB essay this time is on Enron. And its Wittgensteinian problems.

Jonathan Yardley is trying to popularise one of the Babu's favourite books. Here's Marquez on how it came to him: "...In the genesis of all my books there's always an image. The first image I had of The Autumn of the Patriarch was a very old man in a very luxurious palace into which cows come and eat the curtains."

"Much of the literature emerging from the once-mother country, even the most acclaimed, is frankly unreadable for anyone who asks for simplicity in their reading choices. Brick Lane is a blessing." Jai Arjun Singh in the Business Standard. (He passes the Babu's spelling test (see post for May 22), which Geeta Doctor failed in India Today. Can't link to IT because of their absurd closed-door policy on the website, but Doctor, normally a fine reviewer, called Chanu "Chamu" all the way through.)

"The worn-out koodoo hide where he stood barefoot to work is in its place in front of his portable typewriter 43 years after Ernest Hemingway departed his beloved Cuban house..." Stood barefoot and typed? Finally, the Babu understands why Hemingway's sentences were so clipped.

"One leader does not fully define a movement, to be sure, but Shiva with her condemnation of 'scientific reductionism' has become so preeminent in the global deep eology/ecofeminist movement against modern science that raising serious questions about her does in many respects raise questions about the entire movement." So saying, Thomas R DeGregori launches a no-holds-barred assault on the credentials of Dr Vandana Shiva.

Three things you need to know: DeGregori has often come out arguing that technological advances in agriculture, such as "Frankenfoods" or even DDT, are unjustly maligned. Two, regardless of the good doctor's credentials, the (apocryphal?) story about Shiva mistaking a field of weeds for a ricefield is actually pretty funny. And three, the Babu has always found this sort of logic--debunk the leader, crucify the ideology alongside--more than a little specious.

Oh, and The Independent also has a wrap-up on the Big Read, another of those events the Babu assiduously attempted to stay silent on, given his aversion to 'Best of' and 'Greatest Hits' lists...until a couple of readers wrote in (you know who you are, people) to point out the omission. Be happy.

Hobsbawm versus Hitchens at Hay: it looked like a good prizefight from a distance, but the report reveals two men on stage trying hard to be polite. Maybe you just had to be there.

Paul Theroux on travel and travel writing: "I never had a name; I was never able to pull rank. I was sometimes effendi or ferinji, but throughout Swahili-speaking Africa I was mzee -- pops, gramps -- which is how I wanted it to be. There are risks, of course, in solo travel, but there are also great rewards. One is privileged enough in being an American traveler, but I don't see how it is possible to get at the truth of a country without seeing its underside, its hinterland, its everyday life."

English is the scourge of a multilingual world, dumbing down a thriving Tower of Babel into blandness... Michael Dirda weighs in.

Of course this is in far too much bad taste for the Babu to suggest, but reading about the number of people who claim to have known, been fathered by, got drunk with or actually been the Black Dahlia Murderer, he did wonder whether it isn't time for a I Am The Genuine BDM contest, on the lines of the annual Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest.

Robert Birnbaum has an alternative take on the interview as art form. (The book he's discussing, Latin American Writers At Work, is my favourite bedtime reading of the moment. Or at least it's what I tell people what my favourite bedtime reading is when I want to impress the hell out of them...)

"McLabour!" The Babu loves it when Hanif Kureishi cuts loose.

The Matrix as Plato's cave inverted? How about Descartes, Baudrillard, Nihilism? (And you spent most of your time applauding the special effects and checking out Keanu Reeves? Shame on you.)

"I am hung-over, tired, and pleased to be alive. The mission, as you may recall, involved sampling the favorite vices of Barney Panofsky, the protagonist of Richler's last novel Barney's Version: Montecristos (the Dominican cigars), medium-fats on rye (a spectacular brisket served at the legendary Schwartz's Deli), single malts (preferably Macallan whisky), the veal-marrow hors d'oeuvre at L'Express restaurant, XO cognac, marbled rib steaks at Moishe's Steakhouse, and caffeine." Gary Shteyngart completes an unusual pilgrimage in honour of Mordecai Richler.

Bhaichand Patel's recent review of the biography of Malika Pukhraj raises a few eyebrows. (A minor point of clarification: even though one of the letter writers refers to Mr Patel as a "trumped up retired babu", the Babu hastens to assure readers that there is absolutely no connection between him and the illustrious Mr Patel.)

The Babu grows a trifle weary of the "first book from Elsewhere" phenomenon. There was ManjushreeThapa not so long ago, heralded as the author of the "first novel written in English coming out of Nepal", a claim shared by Samrat Upadhyaya. Then there was Alai, whose Red Poppies was likewise blurbed as "the first novel written in English to emerge from Tibet". Now there's "the first book about contemporary Afghanistan to be written in English". (Scroll down to The Kite Runner for more detail.) Who said something about falling off the map?

Bombay Dreams (With All-New White Tourists!): the musical did pretty well in London without the services of a white sutradhar, but apparently the Americans need a little hand-holding. Ismail Merchant is sceptical: "It's nonsense that American audiences will only like something American." Blackface became politically incorrect a while back, but (flourish of trumpets) prepare to welcome...whiteface. (The Babu suggests, on reflection, that paleface might be an even better term.) More.

Early reviews of Monica Ali's Brick Lane are out. The Guardian casts a jaundiced eye on The Telegraph review, commenting sardonically that "there was hope for hype". In the Indian Express, Mini Kapoor doesn't allow the hype to influence her either way: "In the end, however, Ali — presented to us neatly packaged and labelled as one of Granta’s 20 best young British novelists of the decade — emerges untarnished." More.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, man for our times, even if it has been 200 years since he was last around. Harold Bloom pays tribute in The Guardian.

Ramanujan's on stage.

Sybil Trelawny might have come up with more if she'd read the tea-leaves. In the absence of actual information on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Book magazine does its best to guess what the next Potter will bring.

The Guardian has a meandering email discussion of "sun-lit" versus "glum-lit" literature. (The Babu has his reservations over whether email is the perfect format for this.)

Compton Mackenzie, author of Whisky Galore among a plethora of books, once drunkenly boasted that he was going to "blow the roof off" the intelligence services. The Daily Telegraph explains why he would want to do this, while The Guardian has a more detailed account.

To the future owner of Jim Corbett's home: please, please don't turn it into a theme resort with stuffed tigerskins and a complete set of the man's works, suitably leatherbound, in every room. That's all the Babu asks.

The Lynch Mob is: a) the bunch of evil Iraqis who held a helpless Jessica Lynch captive until brave Americans staged a dramatic rescue b) the bunch of journalists who've exposed that story as a complete myth. HarperCollins is caught in the crossfire.

"It is a pity that Kenneth Peacock Tynan will be remembered — if at all — as the English producer of the longest running sex-revue, Oh! Calcutta!, and for creating a huge national scandal by saying “fuck” for the first time on BBC." Aveek Sen on the Diaries.

Richard A. Posner, US judge, explains why he considers plagiarism a relatively minor offence.

It seems to be an essential part of the Interview these days for the subject to indicate that they dislike the process, and for the interviewer to either express deep gratitude or deep irritation. The Babu enjoyed the Nadine Gordimer interview in the Guardian despite these constraints, but wondered whether it isn't time for journalism to invent and stick to a new form that smacks less of the dutiful pilgrimage unwillingly performed on both sides.

"The story of Kaczynski is a prism through which we can view recent American social, political, and intellectual history.... More and more people are becoming fearful about the direction in which the modern, secular nation state is going. At the core of that concern about modernism is an ethical crisis. The message that the modern world carries is that we have no absolute standard on which to make moral judgments. The bin Ladens of the world and the Kaczynskis of the world are reacting against that. Much of the terrorism in the world today, I think, represents a revolt against modernism." Alston Chase, author of Harvard and the Unabomber, in The Atlantic.

Gunter Grass lands in P Lal's black books for having allowed his mind to wander during a Writer's Workshop session (Lal is the founder of WW, a thriving independent concern that aims to encourage writers who would not be published by the mainstream): "So he listened to the poems we read out and discussed and, as he puts it, 'nibbled pine nuts (he means peanuts) and did not know which of the lady poets he would like to f**k if the opportunity presented itself'." Lal concludes indignantly, "So this is what goes on in the mind of a potential Nobel Laureate at a literary meet that does not suit him." Alas, the Babu's low intellectual stature reveals itself. He has a tendency to "nibble pine nuts" himself at literary meets, though not being a Nobel Laureate, lady poets have been a trifle beyond his reach.

Did the US media deliberately black out Arundhati Roy's anti-America speech? The Telegraph's media columnist thinks they did. More on Arundhati..more on India's contempt laws from The Hoot.

Jan Dalley's analysis of the Potter phenomenon in the FT raises more questions than it answers, including this one: is Harry Potter the Dark Lord of children's literature? The Babu, personally, plans to queue up on June 21 for his dose of Pottermania all the same.

This is priceless. Helen Brown reviews Monica Ali's Brick Lane--and manages to consistently misspell the main protagonist's name. Check this out before the guys at the Telegraph turn 'Nanzeen' back into Nazneen. Way to go, Hellun?

"Right now, it's my main physical activity." Catherine Millet on the form of physical exertion that made her a feminist icon, an antifeminist icon, briefly famous, briefly notorious and a bestselling author.

Someone wrote a book called Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. No, really.

General Franco's romance novels were bestsellers, Mussolini wrote a bestseller, and Saddam Hussein, coyly posing as Anonymous, churned out a couple himself. India's President Abdul Kalam joins this exclusive club of world leaders: unlike many of his colleagues, though, he didn't have to pressgang the populace into buying his books.

"Among the great virtues of Crochet Castle is that nothing goes on too long. You can read the whole book in three or four hours, even if you pause to underline, as you will." Michael Dirda on Thomas Love Peacock, apparently an early and successful practitioner of airport fiction. The Babu knows what he's going to be carrying on his next flight.

The Babu thinks that Indu Sundaresan's work should be classified strictly as light reading, but must admit he finds her historical novels mildly enjoyable. Her next book is set in India during World War II.

'A Record of Secret Service Recently Achieved' is how Erskine Childer's espionage classic The Riddle of the Sands was puffed (more on the art of puffery). A hundred years after its publication, David Stafford takes another look at the secrets it concealed.

When Sir V S Naipaul says something's a "big book", he means "of earthshaking importance", especially when he's referring to his own work. When Haruki Murakami says he's just written a "big book", he means it's over 250,000 words. Perhaps that's why the Babu enjoys Murakami more.

"While I trekked through the fallen leaves and swirling winds of Euston to hear lectures on the theory of language, featuring Vygotsky and Bakhtin, and attended seminars on anti-racism, I was reading about the poet manqué waking up at five in the morning, going for long walks, and bathing in the river in the imaginary town of Malgudi where Narayan sets his novels." Ardashir Vakil came to England to be an English teacher, armed with R K Narayan's novel of the same name.

Orhan Pamuk has won the IMPAC for My Name is Red, beating a shortlist that included Jonathan Franzen, Ann Patchett and Dennis Bock.

"So if I looked over my shoulder, I could see a blurred European shadow, the overexposed and bleached outline of a mysterious white man. European and English were still synonymous. The Americans did not exist yet." Githa Hariharan in The Telegraph on the European encounter.

Take every seventh letter of every sentence in the Babu's blog, print out the string in a block and search among the letters for hidden patterns. You're guaranteed to find...either nothing, zilch, nada or the revelation that Bacon did really write Shakespeare's plays. The beauty of the Bible Code lies in the eye of the believer, says Michael Shermer.

Outlook has the full text of Arundhati Roy's lecture: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy--Buy One, Get One Free.

"Bunker 13 is inspiring. That Bahal has turned his attentions away from news - and towards war - is a treat." The Guardian gives Aniruddha Bahal's thriller the thumbs-up. Here's an extract.

"Please cross the border and kill them/ We should hear the blasts till Karachi/ and inscribe Vande Mataram on Benazir." The Babu, having read a sample of her work, is now in a position where he deplores the murder of the young poet Madhumita Shukla. They should have killed the poetry stone dead instead.

Kitabkhana came in late on the Believer's new manifesto. Sorry. Here's the original, nine-thousand-word long appeal for better reviews; here's The New York Observer's account of a meeting with the author of the manifesto ("all her laughs were nervous"); and here's the response from The Antic Muse. Speaking personally, the Babu's firmly of the opinion that the Indian critical scene is, if anything, far too kind and tends to lower the bar when confronted with the outpourings of desi writers. (The Babu is indebted to The Bookslut, who's been following the debate with keen interest, for the links.)

More on Waugh.

"I'll be a force to be reckoned with in the publishing industry." The Babu's little heart began beating faster. Who could this be? Ann Godoff? Dave Eggers? Closer to home, perhaps even a challenger to Penguin's David Davidar, dubbed the Don Corleone of the literary world by India Today? Nope, it's the author of Pandering--Heidi "Just call me Madam" Fleiss.

Chris Lehmann has read the work of...fiction...penned by Stephen Glass. He hasn't reviewed it so much as stomped gleefully all over the factual account posing as a novel: "Of course, between all these unseemly bouts of score-settling and character-assassination-à-clef, Glass does a lot of conspicuous plumbing of his own prevaricating conscience. His meditations disclose him to be every bit as predictably soulful and misunderstood as his tormentors and pursuers are predictably petty and heinous. We learn that Glass fancies himself a "gadfly" and a rebel "with all my resentment, my discontent and my secret, subversive questions and plans intact" from his adolescent years. It turns out as well that he lies only because he craves, yes, simple affection: 'What I truly wanted was to be well regarded by the people around me -- actually, to be loved by them.'" Still want to buy The Fabulist?

They're going to put Beatrix Potter's life up on celluloid. The Babu wonders if this means some other Hollywood actress will have to don a false nose. He thought it was somewhat unnecessary for Nicole Kidman to wear that disfiguring schnozzle in order to play Virginia Woolf; the author was not a chocolate box beauty, but she had a strongly attractive face and hey, she didn't need to be Cyranoed.

The culprit in the Great Potter Robbery turns out to be no minion of Voldemort, but a truck driver who thought he might make a few quid. Instead, he's spent 24 hours in a jail cell, without even a Pensieve for company.

The Babu would take his hat off to Eric Schlosser, except that he prefers a bandana. Fast Food Nation is a riveting read, and has condemned the Babu to a hamburgerless life, not such a raw deal in the land of dhabas. Schlosser's back with Reefer Madness, a collection of essays that poses the age-old but devastating question: why is nicotine good but marijuana bad? And why are societal taboos so arbitrary? The Atlantic has the original 1997 essay that kicked off the book.

Thirty years and six other novels after she wrote Fear of Flying, Erica Jong is tired of being treated as a one-book author. "I've written so many other books, so many kinds of books since then...I wish someone would notice," she tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. She's a victim of Faux One Book Wonder Syndrome. It afflicts authors like Joseph Heller (he wrote several others, but everyone remembers Catch-22) and Ken Kesey (there was actually life after One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but few noticed.)

"First things first: I want it clearly understood that this moustache I’m wearing is my father’s moustache." The unadulterated voice of Kurt Vonnegut, who went on to slam US conservatives ("bedbugs" was one of the kinder comparisons). (Found the link on MobyLives.)

"We've run out of conversation, haven't we?" Not what you want to hear when you're interviewing Dom DeLillo, but the author never spoke a truer word. (The Daily Telegraph requires registration.)

The man who played the "spaghetti-eating fanatic" in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky has been attempting to rewrite Homer. (The Babu needs to pause here in homage to the sheer effrontery of Christopher Logue, who has absolutely no knowledge of Ancient Greek.) "And yet..." writes Jim Lewis in Slate, "he is an extraordinary writer, the books are brilliant."

The protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's second book and debut novel, The Namesake, is called Gogol Ganguli. The Babu knows precious little about the book beyond this tiny nugget (the novel is to be released in September) but found himself warming to Lahiri immediately. He numbered at least one Stalin Sen and a Tolstoy Mukherji among his acquaintances. Tolstoy, indeed, suffered greatly. His second name was Tathagatha.

The next Stephen Glass (see May 8 post) has appeared on the horizon. Stand aside for Jayson Blair, who fudged dates, quotations and other miscellania in several dozen articles over a six month period. The news broke this Sunday, and leading the pack when it came to carrying the story was Blair's former employer, The New York Times. More from the NYT...Greg Mitchell has a few questions...The Washington Post carried a detailed account of the NYT meeting.

As the votes rolled in, Pride and Prejudice headed the list of the 50 best books in the history of women's literature, and the Babu heaved a tired sigh. His personal picks--Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Sense and Sensibility, if one must have Austen--came in way down the list. Of course he knew there wasn't a chance in hell anyone would nominate the brilliant, unsettling Ursula K Le Guin. Odd how these things work, though. The Babu can name three books off the top of his head that should fit into the category of "women's literature" as opposed to "literature written by women"--Lolita, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary. But of course they don't qualify. Blame it on the chromosome factor. (And for the painfully patriotic--yeah, yeah, Arundhati Roy made it, at number 20. She's stirring up things again, incidentally, and this time her guns are trained square on the US.)

It's been fifty years since Fahrenheit 451 was written, and it's every bit as relevant today (the Babu has the Baghdad library, the NCERT textbooks, the persecution of tehelka and the passing of the Patriot Act in the US very much on his mind). Should Ray Bradbury be cloned?

Apropos anniversaries, this is also Evelyn Waugh's centenary year. Aveek Sen, by far one of the best literary commentators to be found in the Indian media today (standard disclaimer: the Babu's never met the man. He just likes his style) rereads The Loved One in tribute.

The Babu is back and is going to follow the example of the small tomato. (Bad, old joke: Two tomatoes are trundling along in the Annual Tomato Race. The small tomato's lagging behind. "Come on," says the big tomato. "Ketchup, ketchup.") The news in India has centred around the Barbara Taylor Bradford (see post for May 9) brouhaha. The case could have serious implications for the Indian film and television industry, one of the most prone to carrying "inspired" plots (lovely phrase, that) in the world. Sahara, the producers of the offending TV serial, appears to have been caught on the back foot. As the Supreme Court of India upheld a freeze on the telecast, their counsel was pleading that India's most expensive soap opera should be allowed to go ahead if the channel isn't to suffer serious losses.

Much as the Babu approves of Bradford's attempt to safeguard her intellectual property rights, he was considerably amused by the soundbytes the author and her husband gave to the Times of India: "And now it's a Yorkshirewoman who's fighting." Kya dialogue hai! (A more detailed, if less delightfully melodramatic, interview was conducted by the Independent.)

Jill Lowe and Yadav--the upper crust British lady turned tour guide turned wife of an Indian farmer-taxi driver--seem to be going down well in the Gulf. Their story isn't quite the Prince and the Showgirl, but hey, Yadav: A Roadside Love Story is doing better than all that vanilla porn coming out these days (more on this subject later).

The Babu has made a career out of doing a lot of nothing, but this week the sordid business of earning a living threatens to catch up with him. New posts will be thin on the ground until Thursday, when the Babu intends to resume his habitual slothfulness and will resume blogging in the fashion of the punkahwallas of yore with one toe doing the mousework while he lolls around. His apologies--in the interim, he recommends new fiction by William Boyd, carried in The Guardian.

Seven print runs, 350,000 copies in bookstores--France's latest bestseller is an unlikely one. The Hidden Face of Le Monde has rocked not just the newspaper, but the media and intellectual world. Financial Times has the full story.

"Some people like trainspotting; I am interested in Islam." William Dalrymple really said that? Or did we walk into soundbyte lag, the Babu's preferred term for what happens when an interviewer under deadline pressure condenses three paragraphs into one pithy line. The author of White Mughals plans to do the Indian Mutiny next. (The Babu applauded White Mughals, but thinks that perhaps Dalrymple might try calling the 1857 brouhaha the 'Revolt' or the 'Revolution'. Not The First Great War for Independence. Even the Babu's patriotism refuses to take him that far.)

Speaking of great wars, the Clash of the Food Guides has held Delhi riveted for the last fortnight. The Hindustan Times and the Times of India briefly interrupted an ongoing spat over who had more readership in order to praise their new food guides--released within a week of each other, written by rival food critics Maryam Reshi and Sabina Sahgal Saikia--to the skies. This Friday, the Times of India carried a chest-thumping article. But HT, which got its food guide out before the TOI did, had also sneaked ahead in the it's-our-paper-and-we-can-praise-our-own-people stakes--here's the inside dope from The Hoot. (NB: If you're ever trying to get to The Hoot, remember to type in www.thehoot.org. Very similar website www.hoot.org takes you places you probably don't want to go.)

Which Shakespeare play has the most S's in it? Because that's the one monkeys at the Paignton Zoo were trying to recreate, obviously. Researchers hoping to prove the old hypothesis that monkeys with access to a computer would, given enough time, bash out Shakespeare's plays on it were slightly taken aback when the six primates attacked the computer, jumped up and down on it, and even urinated and defecated on the keyboard. Clearly those guys haven't spent enough time watching writers at work... Meanwhile, simian researchers report that human scientists confronted with a food puzzle log have attempted to use it as a backscratcher and a pillow. "Given enough time," said the project leader, Chee Chee, "we are optimistic that they will eventually figure it out."

The mysterious, reclusive, perennially elusive Thomas Pynchon: Thomas Jones at the LRB explains why the man doesn't exist in public. Perhaps it's because he doesn't want his life reduced to a string of cliches, as has happened most recently with the Grandmother of Big Advances.

"Finnegan's Wake is the best example of literature disappearing up its own fundament"-J G Ballard. "Total lack of originality of thought and narrative"--Carmen Callil on God of Small Things. "I've never understood the point." Alain de Bouton on Lord of the Rings. Fifty "leading lights" sound off on the worst overrated classic/ bestseller they've ever read.

"I detest Disneyfication, I detest Coca-Cola, I detest burgers, I detest sentimental and violent Hollywood movies that tell lies about history. I detest American imperialism, American infantilism, and American triumphalism about victories it didn't even win." The Babu sympathises with Margaret Drabble, whose anti-Americanism is coming up like "acid reflux", but despite his own problems with the US of A's little excursion in Iraq, is wondering why the rest of us can't be spared Drabble's rant. I'm sure she feels better getting it out of her system; but among the things the Babu detests, it's having to examine the er, effects, of reflux.

The Babu's a big I Allan Sealy fan, but has to admit that Brain Fever Bird left him admiring, but not engaged. The novel--Sealy's fourth--is a cut above anything that the IWE (see post for May 6, 2003) school has produced in a while, though. And the critics love it. Today's review is from The Telegraph...here's an extract from The Hindu...the review in The Deccan Herald which threw The Babu a trifle by describing the book as "an erotic novel"...The Asian Review of Books...The Hindustan Times... the Business Standard....Anita Roy's review in Outlook.

What do women of substance do when they discover they're being ripped off? Barbara Taylor Bradford flew down to Calcutta to try and stop the TV serial Karishma-The Miracle of Destiny from being telecast. Bradford claims the serial bears a more than slight resemblance to her first, bestselling novel, A Woman of Substance.

Mr Biswas would've found it easier to own a house in India than Arundhati Roy (War Talk has just been reviewed in the Village Voice). The Madhya Pradesh administration has cancelled the lease of the house built in Pachmarhi by Arundhati Roy and her husband Pradip Kishen. This is not as straightforward as it seems: the first move towards challenging her right to own a house here was made when the Booker Prize winner was in the thick of the fight for the Narmada Dam. Incidentally, Outlook Traveller Getaways: Weekend Breaks from Delhi mentions "several mini high rises in violation of the rules" in the bazaar at Pachmarhi; as far as Kitabkhana could ascertain, none of these egregiously environmentally unfriendly buildings have had their leases cancelled. Draw your own conclusions.

'Robi Thakur, R Tagore/ Ohe, what a bore!' Kakoli sang in Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, scandalising my Bengali brethren no end. Due reverence to Bengal's most sacrosanct icon is paid in Parabaas by William Radice and others.

Mazdak in The Dawn, one of Pakistan's leading newspapers, has reacted with some uneasiness to Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, Bernard Henri-Levy's yet to be translated expose of who was behind the death of the young journalist.

"Political correctness in India, decently done." That's The Complete Review's summary of Githa Hariharan's In Times of Siege. They have links to all the major reviews except for the Biblio review, and that's because Biblio's website is still swathed in cobwebs. (The Babu is a patient man. He can wait.) TCR also has a page of links to reviews of The Ghosts of Vasu Master.

Speaking of political correctness, the CBSE received so much flak when it substituted a Premchand novel for one written by a BJP party member (see post for May 3, 2003) that it has sneaked Premchand's Nirmala back on the syllabus. Mridula Sinha's deathless prose hasn't been removed, however. Why is the Babu thinking of A Confederacy of Dunces--just the title, something about its mellifluous ring sounds right--as he types?

What do you get for fabricating over 27 articles? In the case of Stephen Glass, you get pilloried by the US media, get into law school, and then get Simon & Schuster to publish a roman a clef called The Fabulist. Nice work, if you can get it.

The Babu takes back everything--well, most--of what he said about McSweeneys losing its edge. He didn't much care for the Official ">Lord of the Rings Lampoon--Bored of the Rings--but Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn doing the audio commentary for LOTR? Inspired.

"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" That question, posed to McCarthy by Army special counsel Joseph N Welch, was a turning point for the trials. The LA Times (requires registration) has a report on what the newly released McCarthy transcripts contain. Odd how much those trials resemble a very contemporary trial taking place in India right now. (N.B. The Babu is not and has never been employed by Tehelka. He just doesn't like it when the government starts leaning on independent media, and considers it his right as a citizen to protest as loudly and as often as possible.)


Two more links on Mohit Sen, both from the Business Standard: a review of his memoirs, and a brief obituary notice.

"Have a laugh!" says the Indian Express report blithely. The Babu kind of lost his sense of humour, though, when he learned that Roli Books advertises Shock and Aw, a slim collection of George Bush jokes, in these terms: "A joke book rises from the ashes of the burnt books in Baghdad...”

Ambling along the byways of the web, the Babu encountered a ghost, if a very pleasant one, from the past. This collection of ghazals by the late Agha Shahid Ali, has just been reviewed in Persimmon by Sara Suleri Goodyear (located the link courtesy The Complete Review). Agha's death in late 2001 was mourned across India and the diaspora; the Babu has an indelible memory of Agha demonstrating the difference between the hornpipe and the minuet to the consternation of the somewhat austerely fossilised members of the India International Centre in Delhi. "And that, my dear," he said, twirling, "is how far apart the ghazal is from the sonnet."

Summer is usually the silly season for book launches in India--it's way too hot to go out and sweatily applaud some writer guy--but there's a big one planned for June, when Aniruddha Bahal comes out with his debut novel. Bahal is better known as the man who ran Operation Westend, and he can take credit for breaking the cricket match-fixing story in India as well.

The man's an undercover writer in more ways than one, if you take a peek at the book cover for Bunker 13 that's on the Faber website. (The design puts me in mind of this passage from Julia Blackburn's Old Man Goya: "At the age of fourteen Goya was sent to study drawing under the guidance of a man who was employed by the Inquisition as their Reviewer of Dishonest Paintings, which meant his job was to conceal human nakedness in the work of the Old Masters, using a carefully added swirl of cloth, a shadow or the floating presence of a leaf.") Good little Indians worried that Bahal's about to "go against our ancient Indian culture" (the censor's catchphrase of choice) needn't worry: Faber has shrewdly designed quite a different jacket for the Indian edition.

Copies of the fifth Harry Potter were found in a field today. The Sun, where the books eventually landed, piously announced its intention to return the books to J K Rowling's publisher, Bloomsbury. (The Babu loves the Sun's old-fashioned, Hush-Hush style. And of course he knows that they would never, gasp, read the embargoed Fifth Potter. Not even take a peek. Those are men of honour in them thar hills.) Sara Nelson, in the New York Observer, has interesting things to say on the uses of that publishing manouever known as the embargo.

The Babu had never heard of William Bennet, but can understand why the US media is thrilled to bits to discover that the author of books such as The Book of Virtues and More Virtuous Virtues has a gambling problem the size of Las Vegas. Michael Kinsley in Slate explains why the media is enjoying its collective Schadenfreude. The excellent MobyLives has complete coverage.

The PEN Awards have been announced: playrights John Guare and Craig Lucas are among the winners. The Babu loves the work PEN does, but he hates trawling their website, which is beginning to reflect a degree of bureaucratisation that the organisation itself seems to suffer from.

The Indian Express carried a tribute to Mohit Sen from historian Bipan Chandra--it gives you a better sense of the late Communist veteran than most of the obituaries out this far.

"[The X-Men's] triumph atop the Statue of Liberty implied that humans and mutants might one day happily coexist: Give us your poor, your weird, your fire-hurling, your life-sucking …" David Edelstein in Slate on why comic book readers identify passionately with freaky misfits.

The Babu has never liked the acronym 'IWE' (Indian Writers in English/ Indians Writing in English/ Indians Wittering in English, whatever), and feels the same sense of distaste when he is forced to use such a circumlocution as he did back in the bad old days when they were known as the 'Indo-Anglian' (think Indo-Saracenic, etc) school. Whatever one calls the brigade, however, one is grateful to Keshav Desiraju--or at any rate, to one of his sub-editors--for pointing out in The Hindu that they share a "peculiar feature... the need to convey a message". Desiraju said this in the context of Githa Hariharan's In Times of Siege (see post for April 27), a book where the message outweighs the medium.

Not that either of the world's largest democracies take kindly to being criticised. Timothy Noah reviewed current poster boy Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom (see posts for April 21 and 27) positively, on the whole, except for this minor quibble: "More disappointing is Zakaria's decision to end his book with a condemnation of democratic excesses in the United States and the West. His arguments in these late chapters are pedestrian at best (do we really need to hear again that presidential primaries robbed political parties of their power?) and annoyingly mandarin at worst (he comes close to calling for a revival of the WASP aristocracy). They are also beside the point. Only a few of the problems he describes even exist, and those that do bear little comparison to the problems faced by unfree societies." The Babu thinks he can hear the strains of God Bless America playing somewhere in the background.

The McCarthy transcripts have been released. The Babu can think of two democracies, usually billed as "the world's largest", that might feel a certain sense of recognition as they acquaint themselves with the good Senator's techniques. To access the full transcripts, go here.

Early obituaries for Mohit Sen, the Communist intellectual who died this Sunday (see May 4, 2003) are trickling in. The Financial Express offered an outline of his life; the President of India condoled his death; News Today had an anecdotal if slightly scattered tribute. Expect more detailed and more personal remembrances later in the week--especially from The Statesman and The Telegraph, neither of which appears to have carried even a brief obituary today, if the Babu can trust his perusal of their websites. It's a surprising omission: these are respected publications from Calcutta, where Mohit Sen was a well-known and well-respected figure.

''Our honeymoon was even simpler. 'We drank heavily for a few hours ... and accepted fine gifts from strangers, then we drove erratically back out to the Owl Farm.'' Hunter S Thompson, commenting on his recent marriage to his long-term assistant. Interesting how all the news reports thought it appropriate to mention that, "Contrary to his reputation, guests have said Thompson is gentlemanly and polite in his own home". What, he's been giving gonzo journalism a bad name all these years?

"The latest offerings by these two household-name authors - Tom Clancy, the hard-nosed militarist writer of political thrillers, and Wilbur Smith, known for his epic adventure romances - certainly seem to fall into these opposite camps. But is that a fair assessment? Is Smith, with his decades-spanning Courtney saga, any more fanciful than the bellicose Clancy, who uses modern backdrops over which to embroider his imperial-America creations?" Jeff Glorfeld in the Australian Age provides an answer to his own question.

Like Anuradha Roy, who writes the Book Shorts for The Hindu, the Babu was dismayed to discover, courtesy Komilla Sutton ("India's answer to Linda Goodman"), that his relationship was in deep trouble. The power of Vedic love signs revealed to Roy that her relationship was barely 51 per cent compatible. What's she complaining about? The Babu and his longterm companion are still reeling from their score: a miserable 17 per cent chance of making it work.

Georges Simenon wrote 193 novels--under his own name. The other 200-odd were written under various pseudonyms. But the ones he's remembered for are the Inspector Maigret novels. "At a time when fictional detectives were gentleman amateurs in nostalgic settings, such as Agatha Christie's Hercules Poirot on the Orient Express, Simenon's seedy underworld of murderers and prostitutes, described in deadpan style with a limited 2,000-word vocabulary, was despised by the critics but devoured by the public and was soon translated into 55 languages," writes Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times. Like the Babu, she rejoices at Simenon's newly acquired classic status.

"Anything would do when the urge to write came to her — our old notebooks, dhobi diaries, whatever. She wrote in long hand and never kept any copies of manuscripts. And once she had told a story, she went on to write the next one." From the Hindu, Ira Pande's moving, clear-eyed memories of her mother, the pathbreaking Hindi writer Shivani who passed away last month.

Mohit Sen, 74, described by Anand Sahay in a review for the Hindustan Times as "India's best-known intellectual Communist, rather than a Communist intellectual" was found dead of a heart attack this morning. Sen's memoirs, A Traveller on the Road, were published earlier this year and had excited considerable comment, admiration and some agitation among the Communist brethren. Outlook carried excerpts from the book last month.

For two years from 1995 to 1997, eight women met in a Teheran apartment to discuss books, a gesture that went beyond defiance towards discovering what escape literature could provide from the iron grip of Khomeini's regime. Azar Nafisi now teaches at Johns Hopkins, a far cry from the days when she was Reading Lolita in Teheran. They read Nabokov, Henry James, F Scott Fitzgerald and a score of other works. "In totalitarian societies, these great works of fiction illustrated, the endangered buffer between the public and the private could only be maintained through a healthy imagination," observes Mini Kapoor in a review in the Indian Express. Jonathan Yardley comes to a more contentious conclusion, perhaps, when he asserts in The Washington Post that: "The reading done by these women also should serve as a reminder that Western culture generally, American culture specifically, is far more widely admired and treasured in many Muslim countries than its critics there would have us (and their fellow citizens) believe."

The Babu's off to drown his sorrows in Thomas Pynchon's reassessment of George Orwell as the world marks his centenary.

The shortlist for the Samuel Johnson Prize (for non-fiction) is out--Claire Tomalin's Samuel Pepys and Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson made the cut. The Babu felt a patriotic pang on behalf of Ramachandra Guha (A Corner of a Foreign Field) and William Dalrymple (White Mughals) (okay, his passport's British, but the heart that beats behind his Fabindia kurta can be claimed by the subcontinent), who received longlist nominations but not the final nod.

Father Dearest: in which Neelima Dalmia Adhar proves that she can wield a hatchet just as well as the next neglected child, especially if it's going to come down on the neck of her father, the late R K Dalmia. V V in the Business Standard on the book that's got the Indian gossip circuit all hot and bothered.

East Asian writing systems might account for diminished scientific creativity in these cultures? Presenting that argument in these politically overcorrect times makes linguist Bill Hannas a) guilty of cultural condescension b) a very brave man. (N.B. The New York Times requires registration; articles can be read for free for a limited time on the web.)

Shut up? No way! The Babu's age may be showing, but he wishes these (oxy)moronic phrases would just, well, get out of town.

The Babu assumed that Premchand's stature in the world of Hindi literature was beyond question, but now he's not so sure. According to an editorial in the Hindustan Times, Premchand's classic novel, Nirmala, has been shunted out of the CBSE Class XII syllabus in order to make way for a more contemporary writer--Mridula Sinha, whose extra-literary duties involve serving as the chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board. (Ms Sinha is a fine, upstanding member of the ruling, rightwing BJP. See posts for May 2, April 26 and 27 for links to related stories.)
Ms Sinha's views on Premchand and literature are not very well known, but her views on women, expressed when she headed the BJP's Mahila Morcha, were notorious: "We in the Bharatiya Janata Party are opposed to women's liberation because it is against men. It is led by a handful of intellectual women in the cities who have no understanding of the common people's ideology and aspirations... We tell women to be more adjusting, because they will have nowhere to go if they leave their husbands." Why does the Babu find himself thinking of that Pink Floyd line about "no dark sarcasm in the classrooms"?

One of the most celebrated aspects of Amazon is the now hallowed feature of the customer review. In a case that could be a landmark in terms of defamation law, especially as applied to the Internet, Alexander Vassiliev says that John Lowenthal's customer review libels his book; he is seeking damages from Amazon. Nikki Tait from the FT has a detailed report.
Keen readers will notice that the case illustrates one of the trickiest aspects of meatspace laws as applied to the Internet: the libel case is being heard initially in London, since Lowenthal is based in the UK. Amazon put the content up on their US servers, however, so US laws might be invoked. And as to the geographical footprint on the review, well, anyone in the world with access to the Internet might have read it. The Babu loves the way cyberspace gets the system all tied up in knots.

What are the three biggest lies in the English language? Someone suggested "Cheque's in the mail" and "Of course I'll still respect you in the morning" for the first two slots. The Babu thinks that the third is the writer's mantra: "I never read the reviews" (part of the same refrain as "Bad reviews don't matter"). Steve Almond begs to disagree. In this article from Poets and Writers, he writes: "But I would still rank getting a bad review as the worst, most bruising part of putting a book into the world—with no close second....Years from now, no doubt, I'll look back upon this confession and wince. To admit that reviews matter is considered poor form among writers."

The Babu thought the attack on Romila Thapar by a bunch of Hindutva fanatics (see posts for April 26) was deplorable and is glad that Praful Bidwai agrees in this edit page article from The Hindustan Times. But is he taking the invective too seriously? It's the same tired bunch of insults and ignorant hate-filled spewings that the Babu sees on every second mailing list or that pops up in the Letters columns of Tehelka and Outlook, with not even a whisper of an attempt at genuine debate.

Pico Iyer, recipient of a sex change operation? Nah, he's merely adopting the authorial voice of the female gender for his next book, says Kaushik Mitter in The Asian Age. The Babu feels mildly cheated; Pica Iyer has quite a ring to it. (NB: The Asian Age uses frames, so if you can't locate the story, go to the home page at www.asianage.com and either search for "Pico Iyer" or check in the righthand column for today's news.)
The Indian Express has a brief article on Iyer as well, who told a sizeable audience at his book reading in Delhi about the fire that devastated his home a few years ago. Iyer described the flames shooting up in his living room, and the call he made to his editor the next day to tell him that the books he had planned to write were now on hold, since his research notes and early drafts had been reduced to ashes. "That's wonderful!" was his editor's response. Now that the decks had been so ruthlessly cleared, he told Pico, the author was free to work on what was really important to him. It took a while, Iyer said wryly, before he managed to see the worth of that response.

The Mail and Guardian has an interview with Arundhati Roy. "As a writer, I want to shorten the distance between language and intent, between language and thought," she says. Amen to that, says the Babu. “We must talk of the politics of permanent resistance, not of governance." Still with you, says the Babu. And then: "We don’t think we’ll win, but we’ll have a bloody good time patrolling the borders of our own happiness, our joy.” The Babu must leave now. He feels an urgent need to locate his borders of happiness and joy.

Bridget Jones's Diary is supposed to have ushered in the age of Chick Lit (defined variously as "postfeminist fiction", "modern romance", and "that thing that Helen Fielding did and then had twenty wannabes trying to do but not very well". And the logical counterpart to Chick Lit is...(A hint from the Babu: on careful consideration, this doesn't rhyme with Rooster. Or Richard.)

The Babu remembers the days when every two-bit Indian author was jealously comparing his or her advance to the apparently humungous sums given to the likes of Arundhati Roy and Hari Kunzru for their first novels. If you really, really want a big advance, and we're talking eight million dollars here, what you should do is marry the US President. Simon and Schuster plan "an unusually large print run of one million copies" for Hillary Clinton's memoirs. The rumour that in order to ensure the book's success, the firm's editors placate the gods by sacrificing one proofreader and/or lowly subeditor at sundown every day is absolutely untrue.

It's May Day--go take a quiz on revolutionary writers. (How did the Babu fare? Just call me comrade.)

Sara Dickerson in Slate on the wild world of menu writing: "Menus are the Pavlov's bell of eating out. They are the literature of control." (The Babu wondered idly how Dickerson would have dealt with a menu he treasures from Jaisalmer. It featured Apply Pancakes, Banana Pacakes, Hony Panakes and Livly Pancokes. He was deeply impressed at the writer's insistence on changing spelling to suit each variety of pancake, pancoke and or panake, while grimply hanging on to the 'k' that a lesser talent would have dropped somewhere along the line.)

Food writing also gives the Babu the perfect excuse to link to this column by Julian Barnes on cookbooks: "Avoid books with too wide a compass - anything remotely called Great Dishes of the World - or too narrow a one: Sargasso Seafood or Waffle Wonderment." Enjoy. Barnes in general is good news; Barnes on cookbooks is irresistible.

Spies in the Himalayas is the "first detailed first-hand account of a little-known sideshow" that had the CIA and the Indian Intelligence Bureau joining hands to put a bunch of spies on Everest. Kanika Datta in the Business Standard on the spies who came in from the cold; the Indian Express carried excerpts from the book this weekend.