I don't have any personal problems with nice and happy but reclusive old men who write for themselves or even with crotchety old men who having become severely disillusioned with the world or simply disenchanted keep to themselves and write and keep writing. Salinger, in fact, had me quite infatuated at one point in time when I was in college and in fact for a whole year. I remember reading even a batty piece written by some young un’ who’d been living in with him for some time. The piece had come out in a Bengali magazine, and a good friend in college who knew I was at that point a little ga-ga over Salinger as did her mum, gave me the piece to read when I visited her place once. I never did much care for his The Catcher in the Rye. I never could figure out why it was such a cult classic. Yes, so he talked about alienation but there wasn’t much of a connection that I felt with the book or with Holden in his hunting cap…there was one bit that glared through right towards the end where I felt a bit – but it wasn’t anything to leap over the moon about. It was his short stories that had me hooked though, and his odd book called Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Franny and Zooey. I know now why I found those two books so addictive when I did what with their mix of crazy but alarmingly intelligent and perceptive characters and with their curious eccentric humour. In Franny and Zooey, Zooey tells his sister – Jesus came and sat with me at the table and we had some cookies and milk and a pow-wow in the middle of the night…or words to that effect. Sometimes I wonder, says Zooey with a dreamy expression in his eyes, what with all these suburban houses that look identical….I could walk into one of them and fit right in...nobody would even notice that I wasn’t their son. But it’s the short stories that I will re-read some day again. The other books – probably not.
Come to think of it, I’m sure I may have turned out to be a crotchety old woman sitting in a locked room writing away and mumbling too to no good ends in some lifetime – maybe even in this one. This lifetime I was captivated to learn that Marquez hooked himself up to his typewriter night and day while his wife kept him supplied with cigarettes and paper and coffee and food…if I remember right this was when he was writing One Hundred Years of Solitude(although I like to think that it was when he was writing Love in the Time of Cholera). He wrote and he kept on writing, and didn’t stop until he finished his book. I am also amazed by paperback writers who write well and keep spinning out books by the dozens – people like John Grisham for instance and Jeffrey Archer. I was never a Stephen King reader – but he too seems to churn out books almost once a month. I remember reading somewhere of Enid Blyton saying that it took her some hours in a day to write one of those Famous Fives. A whole book written in some hours in a day, and books which had me completely engrossed as a child. P.G. Wodehouse is one who has me rolling around. How on earth did he use the same basic thread and write and keep writing? And books, which leave me in helpless fits (apart from this one time when a book of his came across as being alarmingly sombre…and it was Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera that got me laughing so much that I cried). Agatha Christie comes to mind too. I’m quite batty about both Wodehouse and her (that’s the connection). She seemed to be a little touched in the head, and in a very creative way and it didn’t take her too long either to spin out those wonderfully thrilling psychologically rooted murder mysteries which demonstrated her sharp and penetrating insight into human nature – in all its pettiness, insipidity, wickedness, banality, and cleverness. And she did believe in calling a spade a spade. (Reminds me suddenly of Dumbledore who doesn’t mind calling some people ‘innocent nincompoops’. Chortle-chortle.) She worked as a nurse during the war which gave her a lot of background info on the means of murder. In fact it was her books, which first got me interested in explicitly theorizing about human beings. Her autobiography, which I read just some years ago after trying over and over again while growing up, is a book worth reading. One of her books, which had a peek-a-boo sense of humour running through it – even though it was a murder mystery called The Seven Dials Mystery – she dedicated to ‘my friend, P.G. Wodehouse’. Now if that’s not lovely in all of its dimensions – I don’t know what is.
Hmm...who's next? James Herriot is another author who comes trotting over. A country vet and how he filled his books with love, joy, and humour inspite of all the hardship makes me think that he was blessed with some unusual grace, while I as a reader can experience the reflected rays of the same. I read him for the first time when I was in Class VII. This bit I do indeed remember. A friend had lent me the first book in the series, and then over the years I managed to gather and read his other books. The last writer who saunters in for this completely random list is Roald Dahl. I read him much later – never even having heard of him when I was in school apart from reading one story. I think I actually read the story in a Readers Digest that a friend had lent to me - only I didn't remember the author's name at that point. It was about the the leg of mutton. I enjoyed reading his autobiographies – Boy and Going Solo – both of which, came in one volume, which I found at the Calcutta Book Fair. One day in college street I chanced upon The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. It cost some ten rupees, and that book has some of my favourite short stories. It has one which I love and remember. The one about the boy who could speak with and understand turtles….I didn’t read his children’s stories until I saw myself as middle-aged but I experienced a rare delight in reading Matilda as I did on reading a short story that another writer had written called A Little Bit of Sorcery. The same writer sent me a story called If Winter Comes – I’ve always called it Natalie - which is my favourite short story of all times. My second favourite is Asimov’s The Last Question. There are other short stories which are floating around - The Teacher, Teddy, So much unfairness in things, Old Love, P(n) uimacha, Chuti, Moru O Sangha, Phutki, and a haunting and somewhat frightening story written by a teen in The Telegraph from many years ago. I remember the story quite clearly but remember neither the writer’s name nor the title of the story. This lifetime I have also wondered how a writer can write on topics as varied as imaginary friends, fantasy, love, baby elephants, civilization, time, nature, beauty, poetry, and The Buddha's word, and ....Hmm.
There are some people who annoy me and irritate me and there are people whom I find silly and superficial. These are the ones who do get their work published, win awards and lots of money, and then claim that they've never written for anyone other than themselves. Right. Then why did you get anything published, or is that being intrusive? Just sit and write. If one really does write for one's own self and for nobody else in the world – then that’s what one should be doing. They even say that they never read their own writing for pleasure, and that they have never loved anything more than to “sit quietly in a room….imagining things”. 'Imagining, what' - I want to ask. And the icing on the cake has to be that the writer didn’t even know that she happened to be a contender for a major award. I am forced to say, “give me a break.” It doesn’t matter how many awards or how famous such a person becomes. I cannot and will not admire such people. The same writers “cringe at the thought” of reading parts from their book in a book gathering because they like their privacy, and yet with every book they have a larger and larger photo of themselves in striking poses. I don’t for one instant disbelieve the fact that some authors are genuinely shy and reticent and quiet people who both love writing and also like communicating with people and are both modest and yet happy with their work, and make it quite clear that they like their own space. I remember watching and hearing Vikram Seth in an interview from many years ago – and he came across as a very gentle, articulate, honest, witty, clever and likeable gentleman…..but people who claim to be shy and reticent yet have these huge spreads of themselves – I cannot help but raise my eyebrows…
What delights me is Asimov writing, "I'm one of those authors who a) likes his own books and b) has no qualms about saying so."
What enchants me as a reader and makes me ponder is when a writer writes, "I write because I want to communicate, and I want to draw like-minded people close to me, and I love to know, again and again, that there are many like-minded people in the world."
So much for my musings....
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