Dear John
Dear Abhi and Amit,
The bad news is I’ve been cheating on you with another prominent desi blogger. Try and be strong for your readers.
The good news is you both dumped me over my (superior, of course) literary tastes on the same day, you shallow buggers:
She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!” [Link]
I read this person daily and they opened my eyes to new things (even stuff I didn’t care about like Bollywood was made mildly tolerable). About a year into the relationship the cracks started to show. I think we both saw them but…its hard to give up on something that you’ve invested time in together. Eventually they went their own way. And then, just recently, after I wrote this book review he wrote this counter review, and I knew we weren’t meant to be together. The passive aggression (see the second stab) over literature is plain for all to see. A good friendship was a better idea. He just doesn’t get my rawer tastes. [Abhi]
… from the Economist review of Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence: ‘Mr Rushdie ought to bear in mind that a novelist is at heart a storyteller, not a serial creator of self-delighting sentences.’ What baffles me is that there are actually many people who love those self-delighting sentences, such as the good friend who sent me the above link… [Amit]
I think the lesson here is, never let your blog-flings meet. It will only end in tears, mascara and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. Then they’ll try and heal the pain in an all-night session of Kite Runner, Q&A and Brick Lane. Break-up onanism is the saddest kind.
on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008, 8:05 am in Humor, Literature, Salman Rushdie › 
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Manish: Don’t worry about Amit. He’s secretly a fan of The Ground Beneath Her Feet. I have video footage of him applauding lustily when Rushdie read out one of his more convoluted passages in Jaipur last year.
More seriously:
“Mr Rushdie ought to bear in mind that a novelist is at heart a storyteller, not a serial creator of self-delighting sentences.”
I could easily retort that the writer of this sentence “ought” to “bear in mind” that a reviewer is not the Flying Spaghetti Monster, doling out meatsauce-dunked stone tablets that list what a novelist should and should not be permitted to do. It’s entirely possible, of course, that The Enchantress of Florence is a pompous, over-written book, but if so, it needs to be examined on its own terms, as an individual work, not as a representation of a certain style of writing. Making a sweeping declaration that a novelist’s only (or principal) task is to be a storyteller amounts to dismissing some of the greatest, most inventive books ever written. This is a pitifully limited view of literature.
if i reveal my favorite books of all time to be: bridget jones’s diary and bridget jones, edge of reason who do you think would fit my e-harmony compatibility profile? or should i just lie and say the bible?
Taking a cue from Naipaul’s interview in the Guardian, I tell chicks that, “I read the classics a lot. It sounds very learned, but it isn’t. I’m trying to understand Suetonius. I’m reading him in the original. There’s something strange about him, something unfinished;” works like a charm with bespectacled chicks and such. Do note that whilst delivering these lines, it helps if you gaze an inch above the said chick’s head and scratch your imaginary beard slowly and methodically; this will create the aura of a thinker, an unassuming intellectual, that these women crave.
very funny…reviews counter reviews are fun…who says u cannot be friends even if u argue on every issue, pull each others hair and support different campaigns like in the movie speechless;-)
life will be too boring if two people agree on everything..variety is spice of life..
All these negative reviews are making enchantress of florence more enticing for me..
I think I agree with NY times article…books do matter..I was just thinking the other day that since I was 4years old books were my best friends and last 15 years away from family books are my constant companions never leaving me whereever I moved, I have to admit my longest most romantic most blissful relationship in my life so far is with books and great writers like Aynrand, Rushdie, Hesse, Toffler or Bach..