From Outlook India.
Khushwant Singh says, "It's dishonest ... you're not judging a book by its merits but to please your friends. I do it because I can't say no."
Pankaj Misra says, 'We don't have a critical culture in English ... we rely on celebrity endorsements to assess a piece of writing.'
Whatever it is, it appears that Indian writers have developed name-dropping to a high art form. We are, of course, talking about the two or three line blurb on the back cover that helps to sell a new book.
Sheela Reddy reports how celebrity writers are wooed by publishers and new writers "to provide jacket blurbs for books they have neither the time nor enthusiasm to read."
William Dalrymple is described as a 'most promiscuous blurber' for "providing craftily worded lines of praise for books ranging from Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods and most recently Malvika Singh's Freeing the Spirit - The Iconic Women of Modern India ..." the report says he "gets 4-5 manuscripts a month from either first-time authors or their publishers."
The report also says how Kushwant Singh was approached by an MP who prides himself as a Punjabi writer 'with an English translation of his short stories.' "I like the fellow, so I gave in," he says, and how he "... kept ticking off more and more stories for me to read until I had to tell him: 'For god's sake, don't make me read the whole lot'."
Full story: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061204&fname=AWriters+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1
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