मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

I Want Durga Bhagwat to be in Literary Feuds!

Today May 7 2013 is 11th Death Anniversary of Durga Bhagwat  (दुर्गा भागवत)

DWIGHT GARNER:

"The sad truth about the book world is that it doesn’t need more yes-saying novelists and certainly no more yes-saying critics. We are drowning in them. What we need more of, now that newspaper book sections are shrinking and vanishing like glaciers, are excellent and authoritative and punishing critics — perceptive enough to single out the voices that matter for legitimate praise, abusive enough to remind us that not everyone gets, or deserves, a gold star."


(The New York Times, August 15 2012)

RACHEL DONADIO:

‘To some, the paucity of feuds is connected to the larger state of literary culture. “It’s not because we no longer have feuds,” said Fran Lebowitz, the writer. “It’s because we no longer have literature.” ’

(“Art of the Feud”, The New York Times, November 19 2006)

On her 10th death anniversary,  I said: I have nothing new to write about her. I still haven't.

But I miss her.

Among other things, I miss her participation in Marathi literary feuds! What a passionate critic-cum-fighter she was- "excellent, authoritative and punishing".

I still remember the way she took on the late P L Deshpande ( पु ल देशपांडे) and Mr. Govind Talwalkar (गोविंद  तळवलकर)- both then Sumo wrestlers on Maharashtra's middle class cultural mat-  on the editorial pages of "Maharashtra Times" (महाराष्ट्र टाइम्स) in 1970's.

First my father read those articles aloud and laughed. Then I read them myself. I wish they never stopped feuding! [There is one puzzle still unsolved from those days. Ms. Bhagwat had accused Mr. Talwalkar on making a pun on the name of Amte (आमटे) in personal chats. I have never figured what it could be.]

Alas, now there are no big literary feuds in Marathi.

Literary feuds can end up in a real fight. Head butting for instance.

In India this year,  we almost had one when Mr. Girish Karnad attacked Mr. V S Naipaul but sadly there was no retaliation from Mr. Naipaul and hence no fight and fun.

The sixth episode of the The Simpsons' eighteenth season "Moe'n'a Lisa" has Jonathan Franzen fighting with Michael Chabon.

"Franzen and Chabon are hysterical. They get in heated fight, Franzen breaks a table over Chabon's head, Chabon accuses him of fighting like Anne Rice"

Look at the following picture of Mr. Kaplan. Little girl is telling her mom: I don't just want to write. I want to be in literary feuds.

What an ambition! "I want to be in literary feuds" Like Durga Bhagwat, I may add!

Artist : Bruce Eric Kaplan, The New Yorker, 27 June 1994