Pankaj Mishra Says Faulkner’s Work Is ‘Bruthlessly Written’ and Wonderful


Too many to list here; I will talk about those who are relatively (and unfairly) in the dark because of their distance from the metropolitan publishing and promotion networks. Among novelists and short story writers: Michelle de Kretser, Anuradha Roy, Gail Jones, Ivan Vladislavic and Vinod Kumar Shukla. I have benefited from the work of poet, translator and anthologist Arvind Krishna Mehrotra for decades. Literary critics and essayists James Ley, Delia Falconer, Maria Tumarkin and Amit Chaudhuri never cease to amaze. The great Indonesian playwright Goenawan Mohamed is also a skilful cultural commentator; columnist Mukul Kesavan writes encouragingly on the conjunctures of art, popular culture and politics.

Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?

Yup stop the romans by Georges Simenon. I’m not convinced of the claims made for him – that he writes literature of the highest level – but few writers set the scene and create atmosphere as vividly as he does.

Which writers, in fiction or non-fiction, are particularly good at classroom issues?

The great realist writers of the 19th century – Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Maupassant, Zola and Dostoevsky – made the subject central to modern literature. This preoccupation with inequality and its psychological damage lingered among American writers of the first half of the 20th century. When I recently reread the Snopes and Studs Lonigan trilogies, I was struck by their insight into the emotional weakness and brutality of socially active men. Strangely, class antagonisms have been erased from contemporary fiction even as they become politically explosive in most democratic societies around the world. Exceptions include fiction by Elizabeth Strout and the irreplaceable work of Annie Ernaux. Of course, it would be wrong to assume that social inequality is best explored through the experience of the working classes or the lower-middle classes. The extreme class consciousness of the characters in Proust, or rather Evelyn Waugh and Louis Auchincloss, also tells us a lot about inner lives deformed by rigid hierarchical societies.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned from a book recently?

Amitav Ghosh’s “The Nutmeg’s Curse” is an all-around enlightening book about the historical roots of the climate emergency today. I was particularly impressed by the Native peoples’ criticism of settler-colonialism.

What topics would you like more writers to write about?

I feel like a huge gap has opened up in our imaginations about life in remote provinces and rural areas – places that, incidentally, have also become very important politically. I recently finished reading “The Gray Notebook” by Josep Pla, translated from Catalan by Peter Bush. A hypnotic record of the author’s life in the Catalan provinces and Barcelona in the first half of the 20th century, and I found myself wishing this very long book would go on forever.

What is the best book you have ever received as a gift?

A selection of Chekhov’s hardcover stories published in the former Soviet Union. I’m fed up with them. I really didn’t know what to expect – I was 16 at the time – but after decades of reading fiction, I have not lost my unprovable belief that only Chekhov had somehow managed to describe life as it truly was, without sacrificing the literary arts. creating.

What are you planning to read next?

“The Violent Brotherhood: Indian Political Thought in a Global Age” by Shruti Kapila. I’ve read some of the previously published material in it – enough to know that the book contains fresh and bold research that redraws the intellectual map of the world.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *