Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
And She Wonders, Where Is Everybody?
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
The new MC Masala column is up. I survey recent South Asian and diaspora lit.
AUTHORS from the Indian subcontinent write lots of books. Some are fantastic. Vikram Seth's meganovel "A Suitable Boy" entranced me with its epic scope, its closely observed characters and its implicit history lessons.And then there are the droning cookie-cutter novels that substitute magical realism for plot and pile on the descriptions of smells and tastes as though that makes for sensuous prose.
Just as smothering raw potatoes with rosemary does not make them homefries, a hundred food analogies will not make your book the next "The Mistress of Spices."
One of the books I review, Asra Nomani's Standing Alone in Mecca, will get a fuller review from me in the June issue of Bookslut. As I started reading the book, I mentioned it to Leonard. I started my sentence, "So, Asra Nomani's 'Standing Alone in Mecca'..." but he thought I was starting a joke. We tried to find a punchline for about half an hour and couldn't figure anything out. Suggestions?
For a lighter literary moment, read an old Salon article by Susan McCarthy on Gary Larson (so old that Premium membership isn't required to read it). I love the bit about switching captions with The Family Circus, and of course the reference to Cow Tools.
