John Updike reviews Salman Rushdie's just published novel in New Yorker
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Monday, August 29, 2005
Our lives are going to be greatly downscaled and are going to be profoundly local and the larger things in our lives are going to fade away.
Author and journalist James Howard Kunstler speaks out in a thought-provoking interview.
James Howard Kunstler
Author and journalist James Howard Kunstler speaks out in a thought-provoking interview.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
FICTION IS DEAD?
So says V.S.Naipaul. Somehow I've missed the news. I learn it from a Jug Surya article in TOI. (TOI is these days through content change - from the trivial to the serious).
Naipaul says that readers no longer want to read made-up stories about made-up people. What they want are true stories about the real people involved - suicide bombers, inflammatory mullahs, or the political patrons of terror.
Coming as it does from one of the great writers I admire, I was stupmed at first, but soon it dawns on me that it's an angst triggered by craps that flood the market, thanks to our publishing industry.
In a retrograde way, suicide bombers and their ilk dominate today's world. It's just natural people are interested in them. I don't see any major digression in the readers' shift of interest. As a writer it's our job to depict these creatures in their true colour and shade.
I don't think the fiction is, or will be, dead anyday. But the fiction writer needs a new focus today - specially about things he
was going to write.
MRINAL BOSE
So says V.S.Naipaul. Somehow I've missed the news. I learn it from a Jug Surya article in TOI. (TOI is these days through content change - from the trivial to the serious).
Naipaul says that readers no longer want to read made-up stories about made-up people. What they want are true stories about the real people involved - suicide bombers, inflammatory mullahs, or the political patrons of terror.
Coming as it does from one of the great writers I admire, I was stupmed at first, but soon it dawns on me that it's an angst triggered by craps that flood the market, thanks to our publishing industry.
In a retrograde way, suicide bombers and their ilk dominate today's world. It's just natural people are interested in them. I don't see any major digression in the readers' shift of interest. As a writer it's our job to depict these creatures in their true colour and shade.
I don't think the fiction is, or will be, dead anyday. But the fiction writer needs a new focus today - specially about things he
was going to write.
MRINAL BOSE
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