by Vani Viswanathan
[box]A recent, sudden revelation on judging creativity inspired this article. Fine, we all have different tastes on what’s good and what’s bad, but how right are we in putting down someone’s work just because it doesn’t fit into our definitions of brilliance and creativity? After all, pop fiction is read by a massive number of people too – in fact, it is read more than what the ‘elitists’ would consider good literature. And so began an internal debate… one that ended on a diplomatic note that is typical of the author![/box]Every one of us has some bit of intellectual snobbery inherent in us. Culinary tastes. Music. Travel, art, cigarettes, wine. And one that comes up often, is books. And I’m guilty of this one.
I blatantly judge people by their tastes in books. Not that my behaviour to them is going to be altered in any obvious way, but it’s just a weird curiosity. My justification: given that books occupy a large part of my leisure time, thoughts (and money), understanding someone’s reading tastes help me steer my conversation. If they are restricted to Stephanie Meyers, Dan Browns, Chetan Bhagats or Robin Cooks, or don’t read at all, I have to move to another topic (or person ;)) to talk to.
But this article is not simply about my snobbishness. There’s more to it.
As a kid, I was proud that I read Gokulam, with its short stories, rather than comic-based Tinkle. I was proud of my library of abridged classics while other kids – if at all they read – were probably still reading fairy tales. I was immensely proud of my father’s collection of literary classics, waiting to grow old enough to greedily devour the works of the Bronte sisters or Austen, while most were engrossed with Agatha Christie.
Of course, that’s not to say I didn’t go through the usual stages of pre-teenhood and teenage. I had my fair share of Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie and Hardy Boys, and eventually grew up to reading Dan Brown, Chetan Bhagat, Jodi Picoult and Paulo Coelho purely to understand what the hype is all about. I did read them. Those books are ridden with clichéd lines and emotions that make you cringe (‘My chest fills with lead and my legs melt beneath me.’). Read a Dan Brown or a Sidney Sheldon, and you’ll feel like you’re reading a movie script: ‘Yanking his Manurhin MR-93 revolver from his shoulder holster, the captain dashed out of the office.’ Read two books by Jodi Picoult and you’ll know the typical route they take: always centered on law suits, and the narrative shifting constantly between key characters in the story. Feelings of these protagonists are churned out consistently in mind-numbing, formulaic words and phrases. Preachy Paulo Coelho – and I admit he has put out some interesting thoughts in the minds of many a reader – gets stale as he talks about following dreams, destiny and soul-searching. The recent profusion of authors in India who churn out similar done-to-death stories of call centers, arranged marriages, city romances and annoying mothers-in-law, simply worried me.
But as I started to write more seriously on my blog, and recently, on Spark, I realized that it was perhaps a little too condescending of me to snub these pop writers. For, whatever said and done, they had immense creativity in them to come up with an interesting story that someone with enough money thought was worth his penny to publish. As I struggled to bring characters in my short stories to appear logical in their actions and bring them to a finish that was not abrupt, I grew to respect every author more.
Over the years I’ve come to understand that not everyone wants a brilliant narrative with intelligent, arresting language. And not everyone wants to relish narrative and taste the deliciously, carefully chosen words. All that some of them want is to flip through pages for a couple of hours (it only takes this long to read some of them) of sheer, unadulterated entertainment. And who am I kidding when I refuse to acknowledge that at the basic level these books succeed at doing this wonderfully well? These authors can be definitely credited with encouraging many a non-reader to pick up a book to read. It’s a pity if most of these readers don’t graduate beyond these books to what I would consider gems in the written world, but that is a separate discussion altogether – our pop writers wrenched them off the TV, the internet, and Facebook, and got them to read. And they succeeded because of a number of reasons.
The language is typically what you and I as normal, everyday people, think and speak. We can connect to it when someone says ‘God, you scared the bijesus out of me!’ They tug at your heartstrings, and are shamelessly emotional: sample Jodi Picoult’s ‘You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.’ They tell you the most basic things, but sound intelligent: check out Dan Brown’s startling discovery that ‘Sooner or later we’ve all got to let go of our past.’ They emulate life: they put people in difficult situations, make them lose, and just like in real life, the ending may not always be rosy. Like Scooby Doo who gets scared each time he sees something ghostly – despite solving hundreds of mysteries where the ghost is usually a wicked man in a costume – we lap these stories up despite their clichés, the identifiable plots and the fact that two books later you can easily decipher the author’s style.
And so, despite all my loftily-held favourite authors, I do indulge in pop fiction. Ridiculous and strangely deprecating though I thought ‘Two States’ was – for its typical Rajinikanth bashing and idly-sambar jokes – I did laugh loudly more than five times through the entire book. Paulo Coelho did inspire me when he said ‘When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.’ I raced impatiently through Sidney Sheldon’s ‘The Sky is Falling’ or Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’. But perhaps the biggest testimony to my rant here – and actually, the inspiration behind it – was when recently, while reading Lionel Shriver’s eccentric, intense ‘Game Control’, I happened to go to the library, and my mind automatically looked for a book I could read without applying much of my brains in trying to understand. I unconsciously sought out Jodi Picoult, and borrowed ‘The Perfect Match.’ And I’m not too surprised to say that – despite its laughably boring and clichéd phrases, deadpanned, italicized thought processes – I can’t put it down.
The author is now done with ‘The Perfect Match’ and has moved on to brilliant and simple ‘Swami and Friends’ for the nth time. The author also wishes to thank Google for showing the way to pages of favourite quotes from the writers mentioned in the piece above – and boy, don’t these writers have a following!
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