It is hard to believe that anything connected with books can be vulgar. But from all accounts literary "festivals" are apparently getting to be just that - you know, what the Americans call razzmatazz.
The just concluded one in Jaipur, says a friend who attended it, is leading the way by a long mile. I asked her why. She said the festival seemed to be more about the writers and less about their books.
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She has a point. Ask yourself: do you want to listen to a writer or do you want to read him (or her, for that matter)?
After all, until these "festivals" came along, who gave a fig what an author had to say as opposed to what he had to write? Indeed does a writer become a better writer because he talks a lot about things, especially things of which he is ignorant or about which he is bigoted?
But literary festivals are not the only vulgar spots on the literary tie. All those absurd awards are there, too, putting knobs on the vulgarity. You know, Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer and so on until you get close to infinity. You can see almost the full list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards. Even Wiki gave up trying to list them all.
But what do these stupid awards actually prove? That A is better than B? If so, why? What was wrong with B, C, D and so on till Z? Who says so anyway?
Will Tilly Bagshawe, who entertains so enormously, ever get one? Perish the thought. Not a chance.
Also, since the awards are based on juries, some form of voting must be used by them. However, as we all know, all voting systems are inherently flawed.
This has been proved over and over again. But such is the hype that everyone has chosen to disregard the fact that individual preferences can never be ordered sensibly.
So while it is one thing to say "I like this book", it is quite another to say "I like this book so much that I will approve the award of very large sums of money to the author".
Which reminds me of what the late R K Narayan wrote back in 1973 in the Illustrated Weekly, namely, the worst exhibition of poor taste is by those who stand on judgement on others' creativity.
By the way, if you examine the lists, many of the awardees become deserving only after they have been rewarded with an award.
Support libraries, please
One option, as shown by Rohan Murty, is to support a particular genre of books. The Murty Classical Library of India is a superb example of doing the right thing. Only problem: he has endowed it at Harvard. But this is a limited option.
But it leads to the inevitably Indian question: why Harvard, da? Why not some Indian location, like Hubli or Howrah or Hoshangabad?
And that, in turn, leads to the real answer to what sponsors should do with their money. Instead of paying for large prizes to often undeserving authors, in my weighty opinion they should support libraries.
Indian libraries are, in the final analysis, really something to be deeply ashamed of. For example, the basement of the wonder Ratan Tata Library at the Delhi School of Economics was flooded knee-deep for several years.
It was only the single-minded persistence of the then director, Badal Mukherji, that the water was pumped out. Old books and manuscripts were lying in the slush like dead frogs.
The Delhi University Library, built to look like the library in Cambridge, used to be a great repository. Today, it is a shadow of its former self.
If you go to the Connemara Public Library in Chennai, you will hang your head in shame at the poor storage. Some very rare books and documents are contained therein. Many are rotting away.
I have not been to the National Library in Kolkata for a long time. But in the mid-1990s it, too, was in a state of sad disrepair. I hope it is better now. It is a huge repository of all things good.
There are scores of such examples littered across India; sad, neglected, depressing examples of what asses we are because we copy the wrong things from the West.
It doesn't cost much to run good libraries and the bang per buck of investment in a reading-room-cum-library is enormous. All money bags should bear this in mind the next time they pay for "festivals" and awards.