Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers (19 page)

Simon, better known as a theater critic, found
Harlot's Ghost
an “arbitrary, lopsided, lumpy novel that outstays its welcome.” Mailer's “hang-ups are too naked, puerile, perverse,” wrote Simon, adding that “what he lacks is [a good] editor.” Worse has been written by reviewers — and some of Simon's 2,500-word critique was even complimentary — but Mailer blew a gasket. He stormed into the offices of the
New York Times,
demanding — and obtaining — a meeting with the managing editor of the paper and the editor of the book review section. Simon, he alleged, was biased against
him: Mailer had apparently described Simon years ago as being “as predictable in his critical reactions as a headwaiter.” Simon, in return, had reviewed a play starring Mailer's daughter Kate, and called her a “rotten” actress “who mugs and simpers.” Mailer demanded that the
Times
grant him the right of reply.

Somewhat to the astonishment of the American literary establishment, the
Times
said yes. Though Simon protested not only that he stood by the review but that its only defect was that “it was too kind,” the
Times
gave Mailer the space for a 1,500-word response. This repeated the author's accusations against the reviewer, and added the delectable snippet that he had challenged Simon, after the critic's attack on his daughter, to meet him outside if he was a man of honor. But the burden of Mailer's charge was that Simon had misrepresented himself as someone who “had a rather neutral relationship” with the author, and therefore could be counted upon to do a fair review. In fact, Mailer said, Simon's reviews of two of Mailer's earlier books had been so venomous that he should have been disqualified from reviewing this one.

Simon replied, somewhat pompously, that “it is characteristic of Norman Mailer's cult of personality (instead of cultivation of craft) that the attempted refutation of my review addresses itself to just about everything except the review itself.” The then-editor chimed in that Simon “wrote a fair and balanced review that met the standards of this newspaper.” But, she added, “normally the
Book Review
would not assign a book to a critic who had frequently disparaged its author's work, or one who had a personal relationship,
positive or negative, with the author.” (Those standards, incidentally, are widely upheld in America but completely ignored in England, where books are usually reviewed by friends or enemies of the author, and reviews are often the occasion for either mutual back-scratching or the settling of scores. My own reviewer is British-based.)

There are writers who believe that any publicity is good publicity — as one publisher put it, “people will remember that they've read about your book long after they forget what they'd read about it.” So Mailer's attack on Simon, even if it drew attention to the negative review of his book, fueled more interest in it. Some uncharitable observers saw the entire episode as an attempt by the larger-than-life author to revive his novel's flagging fortunes in the nether regions of the best-seller lists. If so, it didn't work;
Harlot's Ghost
sank rapidly off the charts.

Predictably enough, the Mailer-Simon exchange itself became the subject of further polemics. Letters flooded in to the
Times,
and the strongest arguments went against Mailer. “If you're going to pander to Norman Mailer's wounded ego,” one reader asked the
Times,
“why not save time and trouble in the future and simply let Mr. Mailer review his own books? He clearly enjoys writing about himself in the third person, and assigning him the review would make a lengthy rebuttal unnecessary (though Mr. Mailer would, of course, still be free to threaten himself with physical injury if he came to doubt his own fairness). Not only would this be a service to Mr. Mailer, it would be a service to readers, who could then sample Mr. Mailer's writing style before committing themselves to 1,300-plus pages.” As for himself,
the reader went on, he had planned to buy
Harlot's Ghost,
but “after slogging through the overdone prose of Mr. Mailer's counterattack” had decided his $30 would be better spent on beer.

All of which is not very encouraging to any author who may be contemplating assaulting a nasty reviewer, even if only in print. The moral of the story, it seems to me as one who has both written and received reviews, is that it is better to leave well enough alone. A review, good or bad, is a transient thing; a book, if it was worth writing, will endure long after the review is forgotten. Let the dogs bark; the caravan must move on.

I
N 2003, LITERATE INDIANS CELEBRATED
the 125th anniversary of the magnificent newspaper for which I write regularly, the
Hindu.
But amid the celebrations another, sadder anniversary of a print publication passed almost unnoticed. September 2003 marked the second anniversary of the demise of a remarkable venture in Indian publishing, the
Indian Review of Books,
just one issue short of what would have been its tenth birthday. I remember looking forward with anticipation to what the
IRB
would have made of my novel
Riot,
which was slated to have been reviewed in the magazine's September 2001 issue. But the August issue arrived with an editorial headlined “End of a Dream”: “It is with a deep sense of sadness,” the magazine wrote, “that we announce the closure of
IRB.
” India's best literary journal had finally been defeated by the hard mathematics of the market.

Founded by K. S. Padmanabhan of the highly respected Madras publishing house East-West Books and backed financially largely by his own resources, the
IRB
had
carved a niche for itself among discerning readers — but not, alas, among advertisers. The magazine was distinguished by some of the best writing about books one could find in India. Its contributors, including some of the finest minds in the country, eschewed both the jargon-laden self-importance of academic journals and the superficial plot summaries of the popular press, offering instead the thoughtful insights and provocative judgments that true book lovers value everywhere. One did not have to like everything that appeared between its covers to appreciate the worth of the endeavor, in a country that has only recently begun to engage in a grand national conversation about literature. I welcomed the arrival in the mail of each issue with genuine excitement: I knew it would provide both instruction and delight.

“Are we aborning, like Chesterton's donkey, at some moment when the moon is blood?” the editors had asked themselves in their inaugural issue. They knew they were undertaking a risk. But they saw that book publishing had finally come of age in India, and they felt that a good review journal would serve to bring “book and reader together.” India was at last ready for a
swadeshi
equivalent to the
New York Review of Books
or
London Review of Books.
Most of India's major English-language publishing houses were not much older than the
IRB;
some, indeed, had come into existence since its founding. One would have expected the two sister professions to make common cause. Publishers need well-informed readers, and one might have imagined they would want to support a high-quality literary magazine in order to enhance their own sales. But their advertising was minimal;
one could turn page after page of
IRB
without finding the prose interrupted by an ad.

Advertising is the oxygen of any newspaper. The first reality of the “free press” is that you must not take the adjective literally, since it is anything but free: there are always bills to be paid that vastly exceed what the subscription price can bring in. The
IRB
’s subscription lists barely crossed the five-figure mark, and with modest advertising revenue, the economics of magazine publishing meant that the
IRB
was losing some fifty thousand rupees — just over a thousand dollars — an issue. (Note to idealistic students: economics always trumps literature.) After ten years of struggle, Mr. Padmanabhan and his well-wishers came to the reluctant conclusion that the
IRB
was never going to be able to pay for itself. Even the most generous blood donor cannot sustain an indefinite hemorrhage, and Mr. Padmanabhan, the mainstay of the Madras Book Club and a man with books in his blood, ultimately had to stanch the flow.

Today, two years later, there is still no adequate substitute for the
IRB.
The
Book Review,
published in Delhi, miraculously seems to keep afloat, but it makes fewer concessions to nonacademic readers than the
IRB,
and too many of its reviews seem to be written by professors for the delectation of other professors.
Biblio
is often more readable, but its publication schedule over the years has been erratic, and its choice of subject matter idiosyncratic. Neither has ever covered the range of books that the
IRB
managed to treat in each issue — novels, serious nonfiction, travel and cookery books, children's stories. The loss to India's readers is still enduring.

And yet — as the old song asked, does it have to be this way? Surely there must be, in our newly globalizing economy, some business house that can afford half a lakh of rupees a month — not just to support a good cause, but to reach an educated clientele? It costs one of our multinational corporations more than that amount to produce a few seconds of one of their television commercials. The editorial staff and infrastructure of the
IRB
are still in place at East-West, along with a network of willing contributors and even the old subscription lists. All they need is a benefactor. I am sure I would not be the only literate Indian consumer to say that if Coke or Pepsi came to the rescue of
IRB,
I would gladly switch my thirst-driven allegiance to them. A brand that sustains a magazine of ideas has a greater claim on my loyalty than one that is endorsed by a cricketer or an actor.

So here's the challenge to any corporate chieftain who happens to be reading this. Take on the resurrection of the country's best book review magazine. Put your name on the cover if you must; give yourself a few ad pages in return for the funds; but let the editors continue to celebrate and promote the joy of reading. An
IRB
may never make it to a 125th anniversary, but they deserve better than to have fallen before their tenth.

W
HILE WAITING FOR GOOD NEWS
that might reverse the demise of that splendid literary publication, the
Indian Review of Books,
I am pleased to report positive developments on another literary front. In late 2003 I heard from two different correspondents about exciting new ventures that suggest that there is still life and vitality on the Indian publishing scene.

The first piece of news comes from my home state, Kerala, where a group of young poets and writers in Kozhikode (Calicut) — not heretofore considered a bastion of English-language publishing in India — have launched a new imprint, Yeti Books. Their logo is the famous footprint of the Abominable Snowman, not a figure commonly associated with tropical Calicut, but symbolic both of the leap of imagination they have undertaken and the “barefoot” nature of their enterprise. I have four Yeti volumes before me as I write this column, and they make an excellent impression. They are attractively designed, carefully proofread, and
handsomely printed and bound; there is none of the shoddiness one associates with the many amateur literary operations that have emerged from small-town India.

The quality of Yeti's writers is equally impressive. Poetry appears to be their forté, which is not surprising considering that the imprint's principal founder, Thachom Poyil Rajeevan, is himself a poet of some standing in both Malay-alam and English. Dom Moraes heads the Yeti list, and Anita Nair, whose fiction has already made its mark, emerges with a debut collection of poems that, Rajeevan proudly informs me, is already in its second edition.

I asked Rajeevan by e-mail for information about the background of his associates and himself, the challenges they have faced in getting their project off the ground, how they were managing financially, and so on. Whether out of Rajeevan's modesty or the vagaries of electronic communication, I do not have answers to these questions. I can only assume that Yeti is a labor of love and that its financial survival requires the support and dedication of distributors, libraries — and above all, readers. The niche that Yeti is seeking to carve out for itself — of high-quality poetry and literary fiction, some of it in translation — is not necessarily remunerative. But the fact that there are young men and women in India prepared to dedicate their creative energies to this sort of publishing augurs well. The foreword to Rajeevan's own books of poems,
He Who Was Gone Thus,
reveals that he is a public relations officer of the University of Calicut who writes in his spare time. That the University of Calicut harbors such talent in its midst is itself a priceless
public relations asset of which I hope the university's administrators are proud.

The second new venture is the development of a series of school textbooks at Oxford University Press, on the theme “Peace and Value Education for National Integration.”
National integration
is a term we were used to hearing much more in earlier times, but in the aftermath of the Gujarat atrocities it has acquired new meaning and urgency. The OUP series editor, Mini Krishnan, has already stewarded the publication of a well-regarded series of translations from various Indian languages into English, but this new project has a special resonance for those who believe that Indian publishing can contribute to the development of an integrative national consciousness.