Authors, Critics and Reviewers

Long ago, as a doctoral student I discovered an interesting relationship between the trio of authors, critics and reviewers. While critiquing the works of Evelyn Waugh, an early twentieth century novelist, I came face to face with a stark hiatus between Waugh's reviewers and his works. Not that the critics were very much in sync with the Saraswati of his sub-text, but that at least their critiques were based on legitimate arguments and concerns. The reviewers, in contrast, were like a breed of pot-shot takers, more keen to display their intellectual prowess than in an empathetic understanding of his works. Obviously, they were way off the mark in interpreting and evaluating his works.

In the fast paced flow of my chequered life, I had all but forgotten this until I came face to face with this reality once again. I had come out with my first novel, Orphans of the Storm, only a few months ago, when I happened to read a review of my novel by a 'school-masterly' reviewer. The reviewer had problem with my English in the novel, pointing out in a self-pontificating tone the presence of grammatical inaccuracies at certain places in the novel. The reviewer was referring to those portions of the novel where I had deliberately broken syntactic discipline to press home the dire urgency of action. Not that I am the first novelist to do so. Literary masters like Salman Rushdie have copiously resorted to this technique, when the action of the novel defies logical order. But, who can question a 'judge-mental' reviewer?

This reminded me of the urgency of jumping into the fray of reviewing literary works myself. The least I could do was to rescue other literary works by other authors from the inanities, not innocuous, of such 'pot-shot' reviewers.

Let us then take a look at the first of the 'parties' to this unspoken contract, the author. Most of us fail to make one important distinction here, the one between the author as a person and the author as a narrator. The author as a person is a conglomeration of many thoughts, feelings, preferences and prejudices, and memories, bitter and sweet. While the narrator-author cannot escape the personal circumstances of the author as a person, (s)he is not circumscribed by the limitations these experiences impose. For the narrator-author brooks no restraints on his/her imaginative freedom. (S)he is creative enough to weave webs of experiences that defy the limits of not just his/her personal circumstances, but also the popular conceptions of 'reality'.

The Age of Reason sought to downplay the elemental character of this freedom when they tethered the novel to 'verisimilitude' and banished the surreal epics and legends of the East to the outbacks of the mythical. The evolution of fiction in later centuries, especially the late twentieth, and the emergence of surreal cinema in Hollywood, have debunked such a 'scientistic'/not scientific imposition. The artist's license to create can never be negotiated nor compromised.

Though the author-narrator has to borrow materials from the web of his/her experiences, yet that does not in any way dilute his/her creative urge to fashion new characters and situations, in line with the general drift of his/her story. So, it is wrong to look for real-life characters in a work of fiction. Even in the case of the avowedly historical novel, the novelist fashions new characters out of the historical figures (s)he is writing about. To suggest that a real life character has walked into the fictive world of a novel is to be uncharitably harsh on the creativity of a writer.

This brings me to the question of locating a literary work in the coordinates of time and space. In so far as a literary work is born in time, it cannot but borrow from the culture of that time and space. But, in so far as it is a creative work of imagination, it transcends the limitations of its immediate cultural context. We need to appreciate the literary work for its inner logic as well as for the way that logic structures the events and characters in it. The process of literary creation is akin to the process of creation of Existence, both are born out of the Bliss principle and hence the Rasa theory of Bharat Muni.

The reviewer has his/her compulsions. (S)he has to abide by deadlines self-imposed or those imposed by the employer. Then there are the space constraints. This makes the book review a hurried and casual rip-off. And if the reviewer lacks empathy and critical skills, (s)he can go vitally astray in commenting upon the literary merit of a creative work.  

The critic, on the other hand, is trained for the job. With his/her exposure to literary history and passion for the literary arts, (s)he is very tentative and sensitive, especially in the case of new writers, who have only begun 'delivering' a new world and a new vision, or call it, a new image. (S)he understands that it is hazardous to be judgmental until a novelist has touched the other bank of his/literary career/output. (S)he also understands that literary criticism is subjective unlike the sciences. There are no objective yardsticks. The novelist is quintessentially a rebel. (S)he keeps on resorting to disruptive techniques to jolt his/her audiences/readers out of their complacence to sit up and take note of his/her view. So, the ideal critic is as creative a person as the novelist himself/herself. 

Then there is the question of meaning. The novel stands out as a separate entity other than the novelist. By virtue of its independent existence, it admits innumerable meanings and interpretations. At times, it has been seen that you grow with a literary text. As time passes and your real life experiences enrich you further, you discover new meanings in a literary text. So, to subject a literary text to your own superimposed version of what it should be like is to throttle its existence at the outset. Many reviewers sadly enough are not sensitive to these facts. At the same time, it is they who shape public opinion about a literary work than critics do. For critics are buried deep in voluminous high brow critical books or literary journals, while the reviewer romps free in the street applying his/her casual brush strokes on every text (s)he comes by. 

This explains the need for critics to come out of the cloister into the street and to share their perceptions with the general public to ignite an 'informed discussion' on literary works that are delivered into the light of this world.