On 4/1/10, Amit Varma <[email protected]> wrote: > The thing with GOST is that your reaction to it is likely to depend on your > reading aesthetic. I happen to like clear, spare, functional prose, and > dislike the baroque expressionism of the likes of Roy and Rushdie. I see > style as being a slave to substance, and dislike prose that drives attention > to itself instead of driving the narrative, or which shows a fetish for > detail. But I accept that these things are a matter of personal taste --
Long back, but right after the bursting in to the literary infirmament of the GOST who breaks air, sometime circa 1998-9 I think, I paid (in retrospective, really) for the hardback and read it. It was of course not worth a second pass, it was so banal – I was really angry with myself about wasting my time and money – but I thought, my tastes & sense of aesthetics were different and that I cannot blame Ms Roy, ‘in which Arundhati gives it those ones’ (sorry), but later, I got into a conversation with a few fellow travelers, who shared the same kind of rabid opinion about this phantom book, and so, in a few hours of mirth lazed with delicious semantic excursions & pattern recognition, we were able to rip this GOST of a book and create an algorithm that would define the style (!), narrative sequences (!!), & literary devices (hic) of it. And then, we did a spoof of a few chapters of the book in Tamil (IIRC, we called it Ayyo En Maanam (roughly: oh, my honour – a laboured pun on ayamenem)) based on the algo. It was so easy. I could even pass it off as a ‘free’ translation of a few chapters. The reason why I am saying this is that – the offending GOST has little literary merit and spontaneity – it is laboured at some levels, outlandishly ornate at other levels, consciously and nauseatingly pontificating at some other levels. I still wonder how Pankaj Mishra (of that lovable ‘An end to suffering’) thought otherwise and heartily recommended Ms Roy! Since then, actually there has been no end to my suffering. :-( On 3/23/10, Shoba Narayan <[email protected]> wrote: > But if you are a writer who has only one book in you > and if that book so happens to be a global bestseller and a critics' > darling, you have two options of what to do with your fame: you can do a > Salinger and live like a hermit in New Hampshire. I would say that she did not even have a single book in her life (and Salinger did write many damn good books – real works of art, even after the catcher – what about ‘franny and zooey,’ ‘raise high the roof beam, carpenters’ or the lovely short stories? How can one compare JD Salinger and Madame Roy?) – all she has are sensational outputs from her keyboard and support from rabblerousing magazines . No wonder, she has become a darling of the paper back ineffectuals, who are definitely to be considered harmful. (I would conveniently forget my allegiance to this group!) On 4/1/10, Nikhil Mehra <[email protected]> wrote: > My problem stems from her being an "activist". She is not one. She pretends > to be one. She achieves nothing, sees nothing through and frankly, she gains > fame by temporarily attaching herself to causes of all sorts - not the other > way round. I would not agree with Nikhil Mehra. I also thought this nymphet was being a limpet mine, attaching herself to various explosive situations with a view to having a blast. Sorry, I was mistaken. Mea culpa. On 3/24/10, Shoba Narayan <[email protected]> wrote: > The TamBrahm analogy was because I know so many men who hate Roy and they > always describe their dislike of her with this dispassionate, rational, > logical, arguing-equations-in-IIT tone that bugs the shit out of me. As if > it was self-evident that Roy is an inferior writer and a hypocrite > activist... when in fact this dislike goes deeper and more visceral than > that...and I am curious why. Obviously, I too think all those IIT educated jealous TamBrahm males (I think Nikhil is one) with nothing better to do, do NOT accept that fact that Ms Roy has been revealing facet after facet of her incredible persona & range- writing impossibly erudite articles such as - the one bashing the nuclear energy programme (I think she was a great unclear physicist at this time), a mathematician that would put Ramanujan to shame (‘The Algebra of Infinite Justice’), dealing with the Narmada issue (you dam politicos), taking the side of ‘maoists’ (and then, seeing red everywhere else in the government), being an errorist (against the state sponsored errorism), being an interesting conspiracy theoretician (that would put RAW of Illuminatus! to shame) – all done with a flying visit to some hotspot and then another quick visit to the nearest keyboard, am sure… On 4/1/10, Nikhil Mehra <[email protected]> wrote: > GOST's recognition gave her a > pulpit - she uses it neither to educate herself nor us. She uses it to vent, > and senselessly at that. Again, sorry Nikhil. Don’t be a Nikhilist. You obvioulsy agree that she has been given a pulpit. Being an illustrious and inveterate auteur, what else can she do, apart from exhibiting the attitude ‘pulp it’ – given any pliable situation. I suggest all you guys who are members of Prevention of Cruelty To Roy - go to sleep or work or both – forget about the polymathic and autodidactic Ms Roy and her detractors & haters. She is capable of handling them – by writing yet another asinine and sensationalist hyperbole on some burning problem. All those members of the club – Prevention of Cruelty to Us – just wait, till you get to read the next scholarly article by Ms Roy on, say ‘The agony of wingicapped monarch butterflies and the American State.’ Your arteries will be blown away, sorry. . Moral of the post: 1. There should not be any right to freespeech (for the leisure class of urban elite, especially for the armed chair ineffectuals of the likes of Grand Dame Arundhati Roy), with its added freebie of unlimited irresponsibility; it should always be taxed. This measure would reduce the noise pollution at least, among others. And then, only those individuals who want to be responsible for what they say, would have the courage to speak out. 2. It may be that human beings have a right to be heard (may be occasionally, at best) - but I will not mistake this right for something else. Nobody has a 'right to be taken seriously.' (of course this applies to Ms Roy and yours truly) 3. I should go back to where I came from – Lurkersthan. best: ramjee. Udhay, you signed me up. You suffer.
