Ranbir Singh Sidhu's Blog, page 6

The novel as sleeping pill…

The weight of the literary novel, its dull determinism, the head eating the tail, and a search for paths of escape, which, after all, is the trajectory of modernist fiction. Tim Parks, over at the NYRB, looks at some of this, and finds he comes away disappointed with the books he reads these days. I’d […]

Broadening the landscape

Over at The Story Prize blog, I have a guest post up. Check it out here. In presenting deeply conflicted characters, and sometimes unpleasant characters, I guess, in hindsight, I was looking for ways to broaden the emotional landscape of much of so-called contemporary Indian American fiction—though perhaps more accurately I was reacting to what […]

Put a ring on it

Over at the New York Times today, Tim Kreider — whom I didn’t know but now wanna read more of — lays it on the line about all the bullshit editors out there who think artists drink air, eat water, and pay for their clothes in Facebook likes. As Beyonce says, editors, If you like […]

Got a novel in you? What about just part of one?

You know you do– and in this case, you don’t even have to have a complete novel, just help out writing a group novel. In conjunction with NaNoWriMo, the national novel-writing month of November, the fine folk at Grammarly are organizing a community written novel. And you know what community means: it means you. Check […]

Sex and the newly single woman

My friend Diane Mehta has a wonderful, and deeply felt, essay over the Paris Review Blog this month. Definitely worth your time to take a look. There it was: desire was about self-awareness, about becoming uncaged. It was a not unfortunate discovery, the years after my marriage split, that casual sex could exist in the […]

Mild fucking mannered, people?

This post sponsored by Grammarly’s plagiarism detector which next time you try and whip your dick out during a press interview, will tell you for sure whether you’re being a true original or just another Johnny-come-lately. Don’t know what it is about me, but interviewers invariably tag me fucking “mild-mannered.” Infuriating, a tad? No doubt […]

The coldest shall be the hottest, and the last shall not be the first

Are there any honest-to-god climate change deniers for real, or are there just a handful boastful of contrarians with authority-figure issues and a few paid-in-full so-called scientists massaging big oil’s balls ‘cos they ain’t getting grant money any other way? Just asking. A new study published in Nature goes into the warm details. By 2047, […]

Selling to “effete, educated snobs…”

Andrew Wylie offers his blunt and laconic assessment of the world of being a highbrow literary agent today. Happening at The New Republic. Check it out here. The biggest single problem since 1980 has been that the publishing industry has been led by the nose by the retail sector. The industry analyzes its strategies as […]

Goodreads.com Good Indian Girls book giveaway

Over at Goodreads.com, my publisher, Soft Skull Press, is giving away five copies of Good Indian Girls. Entries open from now until the end of the month. Apparently, all you have to do is send a blood sample encoded genetically with your social security number and a detailed history of your sexual liaisons, with the […]

Kirkus Starred Review Now Online

“These haunting tales simultaneously attract and repel, enchant and shatter, evoking the ambiguous relationships between past and present, others and self… Smart, provocative and poignantly disturbing, this collection, the author’s U.S. debut, signals a writer to watch.” Read the whole review HERE.