'He was Open to a One Good Idea'

The Indian Renaissance | After A Thousand Years of Decline

Sanjeev Sanyal’s wonderful read titled, The Indian Renaissance: India’s Rise after a Thousand Years of Decline is about India at the crossroads.

Shashi Tharoor has praised the book as ‘Absolutely superb – thoughtful, well-researched, and full of insight’, and Nandan Nilekani has also showered petals of praises on the book calling it a ‘thought-provoking book,’ appreciating Sanjeev Sanyal’s ‘impressive breadth and depth of knowledge’.

The book literally leads you by the hand and takes you on a  ‘history tour’  down the ages, or to be precise, into the past ten centuries, and howww!  

One amongst the any many things that endears Sanjeev's writings to us all is the fact that, his sentences are direct, matter-of-fact and precise! To cite Bacon, ‘the soul of wit’ is on display all through his 230 pages of narrative!

This blogpost ain’t a review though! Rather, through this post I would so love to share with y’all amazing nuggets that I found so impressive, from the book. Most of the books that he’s cited along the way are by themselves amazing reads! So yup! Quoting them too!

Sanjeev Sanyal for y’all -

The Opening of India in the 1990s

Sanjeev on Song!

It was only with the opening of India in the 1990s that it has seen a renaissance both as an economy and as a civilization. The efforts of the 19th century reformers had prepared India for the flood of ideas.

Hurdles Along the Way

This book is about how India has finally become free, and how it has the opportunity now of transforming itself and the world. There are many hurdles on the way — the poor state of the institutions of governance, the quality of tertiary education and so on. However, there are also strong forces that will support India’s transformation.

An Open Cultural Attitude: Single Most Important Condition for an Indian Renaissance

This book largely deals with India’s economic resurgence. However, throughout the book, we will be mindful that economic resurgence is only part of a wider civilizational reawakening. An open cultural attitude is perhaps the single most important condition for an Indian renaissance — far more important and long lasting than demographic shifts and rising savings rates. Both the rise of Europe following the Renaissance and the revival of Japan after the Meiji Restoration predated their demographic shifts. Rising savings rates and literacy rates were important to the extent that they accelerated the pace at which new ideas and technologies were disseminated and absorbed.

On the Book Indika by Greek Ambassador Megasthenes

In his book “Indika”, Greek ambassador Megasthenes describes a country with a well-irrigated agricultural system and a sophisticated artisan manufacturing sector. It is clear that India’s economy was considered very advanced at that time. This does not mean that Indians were too proud to absorb new ideas from the Greeks. In subsequent centuries, Greeks influence is clearly visible in areas ranging from sculpture to coinage. Even the Hindu temple may be of Greek origin. The ancient Vedic texts suggest that Hindus originally did not worship idols and build temples, and it is quite likely that both Hindus and Buddhists got the idea from the Greeks.

Reasons for Intellectual Fossilization in the 11th Century

There are several independent signs of intellectual fossilization at around the 11^th century. The most direct comes from the writings of Al Beruni, an 11th century scholar who lived in the court of Mahmud Ghazni and wrote a remarkable book on the India of his time. While Al Beruni is not entirely a neutral commentator, some of his comments provide an interesting insight into contemporary Indian attitudes to knowledge and science. Take for instance:

Al Beruni goes on to quote a passage from Varahamihira in which the ancient Indian thinker gives credit to the scientific contributions of the ancient Greeks. Al Beruni lived in the court of Mahmud of Ghazni and was probably commissioned by him to write the book on India. Clearly, Mahmud took the trouble to learn about his victims. This is what allowed him to make raids into northern India between 1000 and 1025 AD without eliciting a successful response from a country that was still a major economic power. Perhaps it is significant that the Indians did not bother to write an equivalent book about Ghazni.

Brain Drain and Successful Indian Expatriate Communities in the West

Till the late eighties, talented and skilled Indians had two worthy choices — join the civil services (particularly the elite Indian Administrative Services) or emigrate. Taking the GRE/GMAT and applying to US universities was not so much about gaining new skills but a way to opt out of the system. The resultant brain-drain laid the foundations of successful Indian expatriate communities in the West.

Predicament of Those Who were Not Caught ‘Up’

Those who remained behind became part of an underemployed pool of cheap white-collar workers. When reforms were finally introduced, the entrepreneurs showed a preference for deploying these easily available skilled workers rather than the relatively unemployable masses.

'But Constant Repetition ensured that it sank so deep into my Consciousness...'

Story Grammar | Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island

Stories have a formula, which we would call its story grammar!

Amitav Ghosh’s latest offering, Gun Island capitalizes much on this power of the story as a cultural text having its own grammar, and how stories integrate various lives across ages into a beautiful weave or a texture!

Just a few snippets from the book for y’all -

I don’t remember when I first heard the story, or who told it to me, but constant repetition ensured that it sank so deep into my consciousness that I wasn’t even aware that it was there. But some stories, like certain life forms, possess a special streak of vitality that allow them to outlive others of their kind – and since the story of the Merchant and Manasa Devi is very old it must, I suppose, possess enough of this quality to ensure that it can survive extended periods of dormancy. In any event, when I was a twenty-something student, newly arrived in America and casting about for a subject for a research paper, the story of the Merchant thawed in the permafrost of my memory and once again claimed my full attention.

Gun Island Uncovered... 

I don’t know what it was but there was something about the story that got into my head: it haunted me and I wanted to know more about it. ‘People of that sort will believe anything, won’t they?’

She glanced at me in surprise. ‘You really don’t like this story do you? It is perhaps too vulgar and common for you?’

This was near enough to the bone to nettle me. ‘I think you’ve misunderstood me,’ I protested. ‘I grew up with this story. In fact it was the subject of my research thesis – I’ve even published an article on one of the epic poems on which this performance is based.’

*****

‘Suppose a guy’s applying for asylum in Sweden – he’ll need a story to back him up, and it can’t be just any old story. It’s gotta be a story like they want to hear over there. Suppose the guy was starving because his land was flooded; or suppose his whole village was sick from the arsenic in their ground water; or suppose he was being beat up by his landlord because he couldn’t pay off his debts – none of that shit matters to the Swedes. Politics, religion and sex is what they’re looking for – you’ve gotta have a story of persecution if you want them to listen to you. So that’s what I help my clients with; I give them those kinds of stories.’

*****

‘Not necessarily,’ said Cinta. ‘There could be many reasons why whoever built the shrine wouldn’t want the story to be written down.’

‘Like what?’

Cinta smiled cryptically. ‘Maybe they believed the story wasn’t over – that it would reach out into the future?’

‘I don’t get that, Cinta,’ I said. ‘I don’t see how a legend could reach out into the future. After all, it’s just a story . . .’

She stopped me with a rap on the knuckles.

‘You must never use that phrase, Dino,’ she said slowly and deliberately. ‘In the seventeenth century no one would ever have said of something that it was “just a story” as we moderns do. At that time people recognized that stories could tap into dimensions that were beyond the ordinary, beyond the human even. They knew that only through stories was it possible to enter the most inward mysteries of our existence where nothing that is really important can be proven to exist – like love, or loyalty, or even the faculty that makes us turn around when we feel the gaze of a stranger or an animal.

Only through stories can invisible or inarticulate or silent beings speak to us; it is they who allow the past to reach out to us.’

‘Aren’t you exaggerating a bit, Cinta?’

‘No, caro, no. You mustn’t underestimate the power of stories. There is something in them that is elemental and inexplicable. Haven’t you heard it said that what makes us human, what separates us from animals, is the faculty of storytelling?’

More on this snapshot live from the book, for y’all –

'Keats was killed by a bad review'

Elizabeth Hardwick | On The Decline of Book Reviewing

Just this morning, we were having a discussion on the Metaphysical poets, on how one bad review by Ben Jonson could kill Donne’s entire literary reputation during his own lifetime! And more so when Ben happens to be the first poet laureate of England, his voice does have a way and a sway over the unsuspecting masses, ain’t it? Soon, Donne and his ilk slowly faded into oblivion when Dryden too, decades later, in like manner, took up cudgels against Donne!

Well, Elizabeth Hardwick (1916 to 2007) was one of the first women writers who stood tall and bold against these so-called critics who passed value judgments on budding poets and writers in such a bigoted manner!

with Robert Lowell

In a hard-hitting critique of such reviewers who 'infested' American journals and periodicals of her time, she lashes out at such bigoted minds, who, according to her, were main reasons for the steep decline in the standards of book reviewing.

In her article titled, “The Decline of Book Reviewing”, published in the October 1959 Issue of Harper’s Magazine, (the entire article can be accessed here at Harper’s), oooh boyyy, how she gives them all such a literal and literary lashing of sorts, with such fine acumen and prowess! Please just sit back over a cuppa and read through these excerpts that real help us all to empathise much with her highly justified sighs and groans!

Read on!

“The Decline of Book Reviewing”

Elizabeth Hardwick

There used to be the notion that Keats was killed by a bad review, that in despair and hopelessness he turned his back to the wall and gave up the struggle against tuberculosis. Later evidence has shown that Keats took his hostile reviews with a considerably more manly calm than we were taught in school, and yet the image of the young, rare talent cut down by venomous reviewers remains firmly fixed in the public mind.

The reviewer and critic are still thought of as persons of dangerous acerbity, fickle demons, cruel to youth and blind to new work, bent upon turning the literate public away from freshness and importance out of jealousy, mean conservatism, or whatever.

Poor Keats were he living today might suffer a literary death, but it would not be from attack; instead he might choke on what Emerson called a “mush of concession.” In America, now, oblivion, literary failure, obscurity, neglect — all the great moments of artistic tragedy and misunderstanding — still occur, but the natural conditions for the occurrence are in a curious state of camouflage, like those decorating ideas in which wood is painted to look like paper and paper to look like wood.

A genius may indeed go to his grave unread, but he will hardly have gone to it unpraised. Sweet, bland commendations fall everywhere upon the scene; a universal, if somewhat lobotomized, accommodation reigns.

A book is born into a puddle of treacle; the brine of hostile criticism is only a memory. Everyone is found to have “filled a need,” and is to be “thanked” for something and to be excused for “minor faults in an otherwise excellent work.” “A thoroughly mature artist” appears many times a week and often daily; many are the bringers of those “messages the Free World will ignore at its peril.”

A Sunday morning with the book reviews is often a dismal experience. It is best to be in a state of distracted tolerance when one takes up, particularly, the Herald Tribune Book Review. This publication is not just somewhat mediocre; it has also a strange, perplexing inadequacy as it dimly comes forth week after week.

For the world of books, for readers and writers, the torpor of the New York Times Book Review is more affecting. There come to mind all those high-school English teachers, those faithful librarians and booksellers, those trusting suburbanites, those bright young men and women in the provinces, all those who believe in the judgment of the Times and who need its direction. The worst result of its decline is that it acts as a sort of hidden dissuader, gently, blandly, respectfully denying whatever vivacious interest there might be in books or in literary matters generally.

The editors of the reviewing publications no longer seem to be engaged in literature. Books pile up, out they go, and in comes the review.

Recently a small magazine called the Fifties published an interview with the editor-in-chief of the New York Times Book Review, Mr. Francis Brown. Mr. Brown appears in this exchange as a man with considerable editorial experience in general and very little “feel” for the particular work to which he has been appointed, that is editor of the powerfully important weekly Book Review. He, sadly, nowhere in the interview shows a vivid interest or even a sophistication about literary matters, the world of books and writers — the very least necessary for his position. His approach is modest, naïve, and curiously spiritless. In college, he tells us in the interview, he majored in history and subsequently became general editor of Current History. Later he went to Time, where he had “nothing to do with books,” and at last he was chosen to “take a crack at the Book Review.”

When asked to compare our Times Book Review with the Times Literary Supplement in London, Brown opined, “They have a narrow audience and we have a wide one. I think in fiction they are doing the worst of any reputable publication.”

'From her beacon-hand glows World-Wide Welcome'

The Emma – Emerson Connect | 1883

There’s power in the bind! More so, when it’s a double bind!

To be specific, well, the angst and agony of the double bind that's best expressed in Derek Walcott’s memorable line, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? [‘A Far Cry from Africa’] best sums up with an equivalent vigour, the predicament of Emma Lazarus too!

In like manner, as discussed on our past posts, Nathalie Sarraute, like Derek Walcott, Salman Rushdie and a host of writers of their ilk, had to battle with a host of dilemmas and displacements that bespeak to this doublebind!

Emma Lazarus is of the same feather, having inherited a Jewish American heritage, and hence battling it all out, albeit with gusto, the hugey challenge of being part of two conflicting worlds.

At the same time, Emma’s works have such an electrifying ethos to its essence too! The reasons are not far to seek!

Born with a silver spoon, Emma was tutored by her own personal tutors who trained her with aplomb in poetry, music, mythology, with added proficiency-training in French, Italian and German!

Added, her benevolent patriarchal patronage that she received from a doting father, helped Emma come out with her first ever collection of poetry, titled, Poems and Translations: Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen, with a rider, ‘For Private Circulation Only’, and which she lovingly dedicates to her father. And this publication happened when Emma had just turned seventeen! (in the year 1866)!

Soon after, she had the pleasant privilege of having a personal rendezvous with the great Emerson, a connect that they both cherished till his death. Emerson was held in such high esteem by Emma, as her mentor, as he quite often took that little time off his busy schedules, just to encourage her to put down her thoughts on paper!

The reason why, when Emma published her 1871 anthology titled, Admetus and Other Poems, she dedicated it spontaneously ‘To My Friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson’. On an aside, well, there were some kutty little hiccups, hitches and glitches along the way, but they soon reconciled after these minor emotional turbulences quietly vaporized into thin air and had died down from deep within!

Well, 1883 proved a momentous year for Emma, when, she was asked for a very huge favour! A favour that stood very high chances of catapulting her to such immortalized name and fame for ages thence on!

Legend has it that, fundraising was on in full swing, for doing the pedestal [the base] that would hold the Statue of Liberty, [to obelixify it further, a menhir of epic proportions gifted by France]! 

Well, 'pen is mightier than the sword,' goes the dictum, ain’t it? To true-prove this dictum, eminent writers and prominent authors from the city started in right earnest to get the patronage of people with like-minded vibes, to share with them on this, their great burden! So, it was, when Emma Lazarus was approached by the legendary stalwarts of the city to write a poem that would be sold in auction, in tandem with the works of Twain and Whitman, she obliged them, rightaway!

The rest is, as we all know, history!

Since then, her 1883 poem, titled, ‘The New Colossus,’ has become part and parcel of the nerve and the verve and the cultural memory of the city! 

Having thus found such a majestic place for itself, engraved in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the poem has been such an inspiration for people from all parts of the world, from all walks of life!

So much so that, over the years, these power-lines from Emma have so gently pervaded the entire American psyche, standing for all things inclusive, that America has been an embodiment of, all along!

Here goes Emma’s empowering lines of high impact for y’all –

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

It’s been more than a hundred years now, and these power-words have had such a sweet sway over all and sundry, from all across the world, power-words that have greeted with warmth and love, the millions of refugees who - were in the past, and who are still, fleeing their traumatic present, - and making good their way to the blessed and hopeful shores of America, with desires and dreams of greener and better pastures!

It’s no sweet coincidence then, that, Dolly Parton’s famed number ‘Wildflowers’ and its emphatic, motivating refrain, ‘Wildflowers don’t care where they grow’, quick pops up your mind when you think of Emma Lazarus, on her birthday today!

To be continued…

“All words, in every language, are metaphors.”

Marshall McLuhan | His Impact

McLuhan’s name and fame could be gloriously summed up to rest on just a few of his highly impactful, note-worthy coinages of sorts.

Well, he is credited with having coined the famed expression, ‘the medium is the message’, the term ‘global village!,’ the term, ‘surfing’, etc. Famously dubbed the ‘media guru’, McLuhan is also said to have predicted the arrival of the World Wide Web even three decades before it could possibly become a reality.

On his influences, McLuhan has acknowledged many a time to the influence of the Prince of Paradox – Chesterton, on his life and his works as well!

On the prophetic feel there is, to his words, McLuhan proved a phenomenal seer, even as early as the 1960s, when he envisioned a new social organization that would be entirely based on ‘electronic interdependence’, which according to him would replace the print culture, and help in the creation of a global village!

Reading through the impactful pages of The Gutenberg Galaxy proves something akin to reading through the prophecies of Nostradamus! You feel the trigger especially when you see many of the things that he’s predicted having taken shape in such quick succession just over a matter of five decades.

'Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real'

The Road has its Own Reasons | CMcC

Eminent literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, alongside Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth!

Bloom has also called this author’s book ‘BM’ as ‘the greatest single book since William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying!

This renowned author has also won the coveted National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award as well!

The Coen brothers adapted one of his works into a film of the same name, and surprisingly, the film went on to win a whopping four Academy Awards and more than 80 film awards from around the world.

One of his novels has also won high international fame and acclaim along with bagging the reputed Pulitzer Prize for Fiction!

Added, this author is also known for making very sparse use of diacritical marks and punctuations in his works! Indeed, he’s one of those unique writers who doesn’t believe in using quotation marks for any of his dialogues, as he is of the firm opinion that there is no reason to ‘blot the page up’ with weird little marks!

He’s got a point there, ain’t he?

So here’s remembering a wonderful legend on his birth anniversary today!

Yes! You guessed it right!

The Sarraute - Sartre Connect!

On the Possibilities for 'Fallibilities' in Memory Recovery 

Nathalie Sarraute, is quite an ensample unto the double bind, what with the myriad kinds of displacements and dilemmas that she had had to undergo all through her life: two countries, two cultures, and two languages, and interestingly, three different identities – yes! she wrote under three distinctly different identities: One using her Russian maiden name, Natacha Tcherniak, the second one using her French married name, Nathalie Sarraute and finally, her third, war-time pseudonym, Nicole Sauvage!

This reminds us quite spontaneously of Derek Walcott’s Nobel acceptance lecture, where he expresses an almost similar sentiment at the pain of a fragmented identity, while at the same time the joy of a hybrid existence when watching a delightful Ramleela performance in a village in Trinidad! He says, “... Two different religions, two different continents, both filling the heart with the pain that is joy.” This double-bind of Derek’s is also evidenced much in his poem, ‘A Far Cry from Africa’!

Let’s say a ‘Wowww’ and an ‘Awww’ to Derek for his unique way with words! More exclusively on his ‘way with words ‘on a later post!

Almost a similar predicament there is, to Nathalie Sarraute, one of the most inspiring and influential French novelists of our times!

Interestingly, the legendary Sartre himself was highly appreciative of Sarraute’s works. In fact it was Sartre who wrote the Foreword to one of her most celebrated works titled, Portrait of a Man Unknown!

There’s something worth an intense ponder in Sarraute’s works, especially on her memoir titled, Childhood, which has been translated into English by Barbara Wright! Added, Barbara had always been in consultation with the author, through every stage of the translation of this Sarraute’an memoir it seems!

What’s quite interesting or rather revelatory about the memoir is that, Sarraute recalls from memory, [when she is over eighty years of age,] memories and incidents that had happened to her in early childhood when she was between 3 and 11 years of age!

‘I am nothing other than what I have written. Here, I am in security,’ she confesses, even while highlighting the fallibilities, the foibles and the errors that always remain a ‘perpetual possibility’ [to quote Eliot], in the autobiographical mode to one's 'rememberings!'

And the conversations in the memoir have such a defamiliarised air to their tone, as there are three versions of Sarrautes at any given time in the conversations: the child Sarraute who is living the experience, and the two adult versions of Sarrautes – one highly reflective and the other intensely judging! Moreover, the conversations between Sarraute and herself, which act as one doing the questioning and the other on rumination-mode, are deliberately depicted with the ellipses [ … ] that adorn most of these convys! Which goes on to imply that there are huge possibilities of aberrations or forgettings in memory recovery! Or rather, through these 'strategic ellipses', Sarraute drives home the truth about the possibilities of fallibilities in memory recovery!

Sarraute portrays this ‘trouble’ with memory, with remembering and with forgetting, even right at the start of the book, where the adult version to Sarraute is ruminating over her decision to write down her childhood memories!

Sample this -

So, are you really gonna do this? … Do wish to evoke memories of your childhood back again?”…

How much these very words seem to unnerve you! … Looks like you don’t even like those words, ain’t you? But confess, Sarraute, that, these are the only words that will fit you well!

So you would like to “Evoke your memories, ain’t you?”… Just don’t be anxious, don’t get nervous, because that’s what it is!

Yes, I really cannot help it at all! It so tempts me much! I don’t know why… but…

Perhaps… may be… possible that sometimes people don’t realize… or perhaps your powers of remembering are on the decline as you age…

But no, I don’t agree to that! I ain’t think so… for that matter, I don’t even feel it…

And still, you want to really bring back your memories of childhood, don’t you…

'He who does not travel, who does not read'

1924 | Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair

One of the most popular Latin American poets of all time, Pablo Neruda is also one of the very few poets who has dabbled in poetry for more than half a century of his lifetime!

And he was rewarded nay awarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, just two years before he breathed his last. The Nobel citation was all praise for his poetry, and justified the award as a reward ‘for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams.’’

Neruda’s most popular and much celebrated work is Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), which is an anthology of his most romantic and most erotic love poems put together. The fact that this book churned out more than 20,00,000 copies in print, in Spanish alone, bespeaks to the immense popularity of Neruda in his land!

Neruda always had a great passion for travelling, and reading!

On his birth anniversary today, me thought of giving y’all one intense poem from Neruda that I’ve loved so much!

It’s such an inspirational poem on the likes of Kipling’s ‘If’ and it’s titled “Die Slowly!”

Well, the poem emphasizes on the need for living a wholesome life, which would mean, living a fuller and an enriching life. To do that, one should take risks, and not be ensconced comfortably in one’s comfort zone, he says! He writes on everything from books to travel to life, with which we all can relate with so so well!

Here’s giving y’all nuggets from this fab poem!

He who becomes the slave of habit,

who follows the same routes every day,

who never changes pace,

who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,

who does not speak and does not experience,

dies slowly.

He who does not travel, who does not read,

who does not listen to music,

who does not find grace in himself,

she who does not find grace in herself,

dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,

who does not allow himself to be helped,

who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, 

about the rain that never stops,

dies slowly.

Let's try and avoid death in small doses,

reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.

Only a burning patience will lead

to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

- Pablo Neruda

image: worldofwonderdotnet

'Well-behaved women seldom make history'

White, Laurel & Bloom | On Their Birthday Today

How could one easily forget the delightful endearing character of Stuart Little, who’s been such amazing entertainment for us all, all along!

It’s more than seven decades now, and Stuart Little is going from strength to strength, with each passing day, ain’t he?

Well, Stuart Little, happens to be E. B. White’s first children’s book, published in the year 1945. Then came up yet another famed novel from White, titled, Charlotte's Web, which went on to be voted as one of the most favourite children's novels of all time!

Garth Williams, the illustrator to Stuart Little, endears us with his quaint and elegant illustrations, that proves the first ever visual representation of Stuart Little to us all!

Let’s hopstop next on yet another writer of high renown, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who’s known for her famous line, "well-behaved women seldom make history."

Her famed book of the same name, titled, Well-Behaved Women examines the myriad ways in which women all over the world have shaped the course of history. Ulrich cites from the lives of many of history’s famed women to authenticate her point. Moreover, her perspective towards history has been described as an endeavour or a tribute to the “the silent work of ordinary people”! How noble!

Therein lies her forte!

Our third celebrity writer up for a little discussion today, would be Professor Harold Bloom, who was in a way, responsible for starting the ‘canon’ wars with such vehemence! ;-)

Incidentally, Bloom also got into intermittent quarrels that arose due to literary differences of opinion, with the New Critics. Ironically, he dedicated his first major work, The Anxiety of Influence, to the renowned New Critic, William K Wimsatt.

His monographs on literary stalwarts have been a staple of almost every serious student of literature all over the world.

What’s more! He’s been one of the few literary critics who has been translated into more than 40 languages from around the world. So much for the impact and the influence of Harold Bloom amongst the literati. More on Harold Bloom HERE on our past blogpost.

So yes! please join me in wishing E. B. White, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Harold Bloom, a very happy birthday today.

In the mighty words of Michael Jackson, and tweaking em a bit,

These three literary stalwarts have

Healed the world

Made it a better place

For you and for me

And the entire human race!

Happy Birthday Bloom, Laurel and White!

'List your pen name. (I just call it BallPoint.)' ;-)

Kerr, Munro and Marcel Proust | A Special, Little Feature

It’s quite intriguing to know that humorists, who are very often categorized under the pejo-label ‘pulp fiction’ have not found that special status or ‘canonical’ status that the so-called serious writers have enjoyed all along, in literary studies.

Be it a Wodehouse, or a Woody Allen, a Carroll, or a Carlin, a Kelly or a Kerr, they’ve always been relegated down the ages, to the margins, off the big guys who do ‘serious’ literary works!

In fact, it’s been these lovable, amazing humorists who have taken it upon themselves all along, to enliven our words and worlds through their power humour and sparkling wit with such grace and elegance!

When Twinkle Khanna is celebrated as a rage all over India and remains till date a top notcher when it comes to high-grossing books, it’s only meet that we give such humorists as a Khanna or a Kerr, their rightful due in the syllabus too!

One such humorist who comes in this illustrious, noble lineage of humorists is Jean Kerr, an Irish-American author who is known for her inimitable humorous bestseller, titled, Please Don't Eat the Daisies!

The Boston Globe’s blurby intro to the book is such a lucrative teaser for the reader to get hooked onto this humorous 148-page read, right away!

It says,

Rarely does a book of humor create such spontaneous and universal acclaim as Jean Kerr's bouncing best seller about the perils and pitfalls of motherhood, wifehood, lady-of-the-househood, career womanhood, and other assorted hazards that face one today. On top of best seller lists everywhere, Please Don't Eat The Daisies is unquestionably one of the funniest books ever written anywhere, anytime, by anyone!

The Introduction to the book by Kerr herself, is added reason to give you the tickle right from start!

Martha Blanchard’s drawings that have interspersed these humour-powered pages, indeed take us back to our kiddo days when these cartoons were quite a rage and a phenomenon!

From her own Introduction, then for us all –

I HAD THE FEELING all along that this book should have an Introduction, because it doesn't have an Index and it ought to have something. But I was getting nowhere until I received this dandy questionnaire from the publicity department at Doubleday.

Of course, there were a certain number of routine questions. List your pen name. (I just call it BallPoint.) What do you do when you're not writing? (Buy geraniums.) Husband's name? (Honey.) List your previous addresses. (Funny, that's what The Tailored Woman was so curious about.)

But then we began to probe deeper. What is your life's ambition? What do you hope to accomplish ere dusk sets in? As far as this book is concerned, who should be notified in case of accident?

A Martha Blanchard cartoon from the book

It was this next to last question that really yanked me to attention. It made me realize—and for the very first time—that in my scant two score minus seven years (all right, I'm the same age as Margaret Truman; let somebody check on her) 1 have already achieved my life ambition. That's something, you know. I feel it sets me apart, rather, like that nice convict who raises canaries in San Quentin.

And then comes a sequence of 15 short, fast-paced humorous narratives that are so hilarious and funny all the way!

Kerr, from thence on has become a rage both in literary fiefdoms and in tinsel towns worldwide! Her work was adapted into a movie and a television series as well!

So much for the humour power of Kerr, whose writing style, is quite often compared with the inimitable humourist, James Thurber!

Canadian short-story writer and Nobel Laureate Alice Ann Munro is yet another established writer, whose Nobel citation eulogises her as, “master of the contemporary short story”!

Like Kerr, Alice Munro’s works have also been much adapted onto screen! And her writing style has resemblances to Chekhov’s (as another short story writer Cynthia Ozick points out!)

And added similarity with Kerr here is that, as with Kerr’s Please Don't Eat the Daisies! Which contains a series of 15 humorous narratives,

Munro’s short story collection titled, Dance of the Happy Shades also has 15 serious narratives, that, even if you ransack and rummage through their words and paragraphs, you would rarely come across the guffaws or the wry humour anywhere!

Sample this –

Yesterday afternoon, yesterday, I was going along the street to the Post Office, thinking how sick I was of snow, sore throats, the whole dragged out tail-end of winter, and I wished I could pack off to Florida, like Clare. It was Wednesday afternoon, my half-day. I work in King’s Department Store, which is nothing but a ready-to-wear and dry goods, in spite of the name. They used to have groceries, but I can just barely  recall that. 

Momma used to take me in and set me on the high stool and old Mr. King would give me a handful of raisins and say, I only give them to the pretty girls. They took the groceries out when he died, old Mr. King, and it isn’t even King’s Department Store any more, it belongs to somebody named Kruberg. They never come near it themselves, just send Mr. Hawes in for manager. I run the upstairs, Children’s Wear, and put in the Toyland at Christmas. I’ve been there fourteen years and Hawes doesn’t pick on me, knowing I wouldn’t take it if he did.

And although comparisons can never stand their merit here, as both writers seem to excel in their own sweet ways with their pens!

And yes! much unlike Kerr though, Alice doesn’t dabble with humour! In fact, her writings are known for their blend of the ironic and the serious, with such emotional depth and feel to them!

Moreover, Alice Munro’s writings have such an intense regional focus to them all! Set in Huron County, Ontario, her stories deal with any many themes that she herself has faced or battled all along, be it the dilemmas of a girl coming of age, or the problems of growing up as a girl in a family in a little town, or on themes as serious as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, or Loveship, all her characters exhibit an amazing mettle and undergo a great sense of revelation over the course of her stories!

Well, Kerr and Munro have been stalwarts in their own sweet ways much akin to Marcel Proust, on whom we’ve discussed on our past post HERE.

What's then the Kerr connect with a Munro or a Marcel Proust, you may ask, right?

All three have this one thing in common amongst them! All three have been great short story writers too!

The second commonality amongst them three, is that, all three celebrate their birthdays today! 

Would you then, dear reader, join us all in celebrating their birthdays today!

Here’s wishing a Very Happy Birthday to Jane Kerr, Munro and Marcel Proust for giving us timeless classics by the number that have swayed our sensibilities bigtime, all of the time!

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