Comments on Known Turf: Self-indulgent rambling that leads to no conclusiv...

Annie, I always like to read your posts (and work)...

2009-10-08T12:09:24.373+05:30

Annie, I always like to read your posts (and work) but this one really spoke to me. I'v felt like you so many times, and continue to ... sometimes I just feel like a misfit! Nice to know that I have company there!

Annie, This somehow brings me back to something t...

2009-09-29T10:36:55.667+05:30

Annie,

This somehow brings me back to something that we were talking of the other day after the read-meet, moving out of your comfort zone, when you pick up a book or watch a film.

One does rediscover new things at different times. Unless the work is really, really bad like 'Chandni Chowk to China'. No way I am extending myself for that.

Lovely read.

Another way to look at this whole thing, if you're...

2009-09-29T09:27:15.129+05:30

Another way to look at this whole thing, if you're a writer or artist yourself, is that your preferences, and their evolution, are a way of mapping out your own predilections. What I mean is that it's important as a writer to have a clear sense of what you don't like. It's equally important to realize that this doesn't devalue the work you don't like, but in fact tells you something about the kinds of books you want to write (or need to write).

I often see reviews by writers where it's quite clear that the work in question might strike a strong chord with people who are not inclined the way the writer of the review is inclined. The difficulty of the reviewer's job is the requirement that your imagination has to enter into the work and mimic the mental landscape of as large a set of people as you can manage who may find something worthwhile in the work you are reading. It's not actually difficult to tell when you are able and when you are unable to do this. On one occasion when I simply couldn't find a way to this, I just returned the book to the editor saying I wasn't the person to write this review. On another occasion I did write the review and I did say negative things but I made an effort to present various aspects of the book that I felt that other people might like (although I was hard pressed to imagine why they might).

What I'm talking about here is not a bottomless relativism. Clearly some things are bad. Instead I'm saying that marking preferences is like data mining for the writer, data mining to help discover one's own writerly self. It's a very very important process. And must be done very very carefully.

Amitabha

I too have wondered a lot about the question you r...

2009-09-29T07:07:29.430+05:30

I too have wondered a lot about the question you raise. All trains of logical reasoning led me to the concede that if something appeals to me and doesn't appeal to another it would mean that 'Quality is relative'. However, that is entirely unacceptable as well!!