Books and Authors - A Causerie

Professional publishers are never known to be in short supply for plausible reasons or acceptable excuses for turning down comparatively new or serious writers. Biography doesn’t sell, history doesn’t move, Literary Criticism doesn’t live, literature and philosophy don’t bake bread; nor any discursive branch of the humanities, as a whole. And so on and so forth goes the familiar song tuned to the ring of the silver coin.

Ours is an age of speed, of the new generation computer, of microchips, not of printed books, we are told. Longer fiction should then have been left alone in the outer darkness. But the novels of those with famous names are grasped at any cost. And yet there are arguments in favour of swallowing the camel of a long novel and straining at the gnat of the short story. In English we cherish the memory of Somerset Maugham, Catherine Mansfield, H. E. Bates, O. Henry John updike and many others.

In Telugu we are lucky to have distinguished short story writers like Kutumbarao, Gopichand, Padmaraju, Butchi Babu and many others. Among those alive and active is Mudhurantakam Rajaram and a whole lot of the younger generation. In a class by himself is ‘Sri Virinchi’, who is not only a gifted short story writer but a critical student of the short story as an art form. By now he must have published over 2000 short stories, printed in journals or broadcast over the air. A selection of them has been brought out in four volumes (Sri Virinchi Kathanikalu), brought out by Prapti Books (P.O.Box:5016, Besant Nagar, Madras,  600 090).

There are 32 stories in these volumes. Variety of theme and treatment, earnestness of approach and general lightness and touch seem to be the main characteristics of these stories. The emphasis is evidently on human relations, at the personal level. This, in itself, may not be a matter for surprise in any from of literature dealing with the human condition. In the process of developing these relations, there is an attempt, never direct, at probing the motivation for action and thereby giving us an insight into human psychology.

Luckily for the reader, all the stories are refreshingly free from political preoccupations and exercises in presenting and promoting class conflict. Most, if not all, of the main characters are drawn from the educated and enlightened middle and upper middle class. This cannot be held against the author, for the simple reason that he writes with the focus on a segment of society that he knows best and at first hand. One does come across a rickshawallah whose warm heart beats within a rough exterior. But one is spared the modish melodrama of hunger, toil, tears, violence and bloodshed.

            ‘Artham’ is quite a short piece depicting the growing pains of a simple character connected with the printing business, in learning the ropes of bagging a tender the hard way. ‘Leela Avaleela’ touches upon the theme of extramarital relations, in which the other woman tries (or seems to) to keep the man pleased, while the wife is happy for herself when the husband arrives. A similar problem is presented in a different perspective in “Valuvalu Vilavalu,” (clothes and values), where a company boss has a liason with his deputy in the office. But here, the other woman comes off in a better light because of her good breeding and largeness of heart.

The problem of marriage naturally comes uppermost in a society like ours, where ‘arranged’ marriages (i.e. those arranged by parents and elders) are considered not only more ‘respectable’, but are expected to last longer than the other sort, i.e. ‘love Marriages’ (which are ‘arranged’ by the parties themselves). In ‘Vasanta Sameeram’ , Murti, the middle - aged company executive, surrounded by well-­meaning matchmakers, is persuaded to see the daughter of a widow in an attempt to help the latter out. The daughter is only half his age, while the mother is about his age. He springs a surprise on everyone concerned by offering to marry the mother instead and thereafter help her in looking after the daughter.

The reader is in for another kind of surprise in ‘Dakshina - Pradakshina’, where two cross - cousins, expected to marry each other, according to family tradition, try to go apart, because of the boy’s unwillingness, following his love affair with a college lecturer. At the last minute (the muhurtam time), the latter gives the slip, and the cousin steps into the breach to save the situation. ‘Puttina Roju’ (Birthday) is a cleverly turned story, in which two aging widows get more than their share of rejoicing because of the initiative of a school-girl, who doesn’t know them at all.

The author has a smooth, easy and flowing style, free alike from coarseness and pedantry, which makes the stories eminently readable.

In modem Indian writing, irrespective of the language, we had borrowed and adapted many of the new art forms including the short story, from English literature. We need not fight shy of acknowledging our debt to it, as English writers, in turn, might have done the same from their European models - French, German, Italian etc.

The personal essay, for instance, was developed by noted practitioners of the craft from Addison and Steele and Goldsmith, through Lamb and Hazlitt, Thackeray, Lucas, Chesterton and Belloc, Gardiner (Alpha) and Lynd (YY) up to more recent ones. In Indian writing in English, we can’t ignore essayists like K.S. Venkataramani, ‘Vighneswara’ and Iswara Dutt, among others.

‘Treading on Air’ is a collection of 25 essays of this kind by Dr. M.K. Naik, originally broadcast, some of them re-broadcast, over the air. (publishers: Writers Workshop, Calcutta). The subject range from ‘A woman s ‘No’, ‘The Postman’s knock’ and ‘On Finding Fault’ to ‘The Truth about Truth’, ‘In Search of Myself to ‘The Romance of Words’. The author, a seasoned teacher of English, was obviously much in demand for talks on AIR and elsewhere.

There is little doubt that the author is well read in quite a few areas and particularly learned in English literary classics from Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton and Pope, to Tennyson, Arnold, Lawrence, Coleridge, Joyce, Eliot et al. In trying to do justice to the topic, he is obviously not able to resist the temptation of pushing in all the quotable quotes from his impressive fund of scholarship, collected over the years, mainly from English sources.

After wading through such a plethora of quotations, the not-so-learned reader might feel like hungering for a more spartan diet of simpler statements and homelier ideas. One might turn to ‘Alpha’ and ‘YY’ for some relief. The erudite author might have cared to look into Vighneswara’s essay on the art of quotation, titled, ‘Who is Quintilian? (in ‘Sotto Voce’).

He might also have helped the Indian reader by selecting a few quotes from Sanskrit natakas and kavyas. In the essay, ‘The Tribe of Autolycus’, for instance, a mention of Prometheus was allright, but a reference to Sarvilaka in Sudraka’s ‘Mritchakatika’ would have been apt. There could be any number of quotations from other Indian classics that could ring a bell in the mind of an Indian reader.

In any case, ‘Treading on air’ could be a lot more easy and enjoyable on a lighter foot, and with lighter luggage.

‘Perceptions of Modern Indian Literature’ by Prof. G.S. Amur is a collection of critical essays, written mostly during the Nineties (also published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta). It is arranged into three sections: Aspects of Modernity; Writing in English; and Mainstream writing (i.e. writing in the indigenous Indian languages).

The first Section is an attempt at evolving a theoretical framework for Modernity applicable to India with the help of interpretations and re­interpretations by Umberto Eco, Octavio Paz and Sudhir Chandra, Ziauddin Sardar and others. Eco conceives of textual interpretation as a ‘strategy to create the model reader who is an ideal counterpart of the model author. The author makes a plea for perceiving India with our own eyes.

The section of ‘Writing in English’ is comprehensive enough, covering recent poetry anthologies; prose fiction; and Other Prose. We have to reckon with sacred cows in verse as well as in prose. One in the first category, blatantly sarcastic, when he says: ‘They’ll cremate me in Sanskrit and sandalwood’. The only provocation for this might be his blissful ignorance or inadequate acquaintance with that language. As for the other in prose, there is nothing to do but sing his praises loud enough to reach Pamassus.

The section on Prose contains an interesting comparative study of the works of four Muslim novelists, viz Humayun Kabir, Ahmed Ali, K.A. Abbas and Attia Hosain. The first two have some similarity of attitudes in the depiction of Muslim life. In ‘Other Prose’, it is not clear why Amur goes into ecstasies over Khushwant Singh’s style, which he describes as “luminous, lively and readable”. ‘Readable’ yes; ‘lively’ may be: but luminous not at all. He is too reckless about facts to be reliable, let alone ‘luminous’.

In ‘Mainstream Writing’, it is hardly surprising that Kannada gets the lion’s share of space and attention. But there is no spiritual compulsion to lay it on with a trowel for the over-celebrated heroes of the past and the present - Puttappa, Masti, Gokak, Karanth and Karnad.