twitter

by Guest Sat Dec 17, 2011 11:45 am

i've been actively participating in twitter for 3 days now and have even created a real id now at the behest of one person i was following. frankly, i had underestimated twitter. for folks with free time, twitter can be mentally very stimulating. many of my favourite authors are there (rushdie and suketu mehta to name two). almost all journalists are there. you get flash news and links to their published articles as soon as they publish them. many business people i admire are there (anand mahindra, ratan tata and vijay mallya to name a few). though many also aren't. and boy, do they post interesting stuff and links?

by MaxEntropy_Man Sat Dec 17, 2011 12:06 pm

i thought you hated rushdie. do you change opinions more frequently than you change underwear? and the last sentence in your previous post should have ended in an exclamation point, not a question mark.

by Guest Sat Dec 17, 2011 12:45 pm

no, i like his earlier works -- grimus, MC, shame, the travelogue, the jaguar smile. after that he started writing bilge and living and talking recklessly. MC was a seminal novel for me (as much as tristan shandy, ulysses and hatter were for him). for me MC and rushdie opened new doors -- namely i started following writers he followed (so to say in twitter speak): borges, calvino, kundera, ted hughes, marquez -- all the magic realists. kafka too by extension 'cos he is the father of surrealism. so i do owe him a huge debt. no other writer have i followed so closely than him -- but after satanic verses i stopped. i feel he went crazy while or before writing satanic verses. he is not honest either. he disowns grimus for media appeal. but, in my opinion, it is a great book (awfully mimicking joyce -- yes; but still great). coming back to my point, no other writer was so open, in a twitter way, to leave his footprints in time. he is not a luddite. he wrote the satanic verses on a mac! but, maybe, that's why he screwed it up.

by Guest Sat Dec 17, 2011 12:49 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote: and the last sentence in your previous post should have ended in an exclamation point, not a question mark.

ha ha. even when it is a rhetorical question like this one?

by Guest Sat Dec 17, 2011 1:13 pm

sorry. tristram shandy not tristan shandy.

by MaxEntropy_Man Sat Dec 17, 2011 1:14 pm

in my opinion satanic verses is his greatest work followed by MC and haroun. MC's characters are a bit disembodied for me and don't have the emotional appeal of gibreelsaladinfarishtachamcha.

by Guest Sat Dec 17, 2011 1:27 pm

who is gibreelsaladinfarishtachamcha?

i am flumoxxed by your praise for satanic verses. i recall reading a hardcover copy of it (some 30 pages) in my last year in college and remember gifting it away to a friend who was absolutely delighted by my gift. i have kartography and hullabaloo in queue but i think i want to read satanic verses now. let me check if it is on kindle.

i agree MC's characters were disembodied -- but that was the intention. yet again in shame rushdie remarks in one authorial intrusion that he has seen his sister grow up in slices (in pakistan) 'cos he met her every few years while she was growing up.

edit. yes my kid successfully purchased satanic verses on kindle. what is kapil sibal doing? i thought it was banned here. i start reading tomorrow (sunday).

by MaxEntropy_Man Sat Dec 17, 2011 8:46 pm

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:who is gibreelsaladinfarishtachamcha?

you'll have to read the book to find out.

by MaxEntropy_Man Sat Dec 17, 2011 8:59 pm

the entire book is eminently readable. one should read it slowly to truly savor it and it demands multiple readings. but one particular chapter, chapter vii: the angel azraeel is quite simply some of the best writing in english i've ever read. it's been a while since i read the book, but there is a particular passage in the story, when gibreel farishta walks around in a dream like state, blowing into the trumpet metaphorically named after an angel in islamic mythology, azraeel. and every time he blows his trumpet, flames emerge from it and destroy everything in its path. while i don't recall it verbatim, i do remember the writing was so thrilling that my hair stood on end the whole time i was reading the chapter. just amazing stuff. nothing in MC or any other book even compares.

by Guest Sun Dec 18, 2011 2:17 pm

i just read an article by christopher hitchens where he mentions that rushdie's first language was urdu (ok hindi)! balls. rushdie the liar! anyway i'll get on with this book. but, liars r us.

by Guest Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:26 pm

i read the first chapter today. horrendous! i read the moor's last sigh -- the whole novel. i willed myself to suffer all of it. not a single moment of joy. all mental masturbation. calvino writes like that but he has moments of lucid prose -- zilch here.

but i will read this book in entirety. and, yes, i can cite you passages from novels that gave me goosebumps: the quality of the prose! but i want to read the passage you cite above. where is it? i see the book divided into sections with chapters within. the first section had only 4 chapters. under which section is your chapter? is it section vii titled: the angel azraeel? is it that chapter? i did read a page of it. this is g v desani gone beserk! but without the wit! the number of literary allusions...from fitzgerald to henry james on one page? but is this the chapter? let me also learn.

by Guest Fri Jan 20, 2012 11:14 am

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:my kid successfully purchased satanic verses on kindle. what is kapil sibal doing? i thought it was banned here.

so, i had a ringside view of the tamasha that went on at the jaipur lit. festival today -- via twitter. even rushdie weighed in. hari kunzru, amitava kumar and ruchir joshi attempted to read passages from the satanic verses. they opened the ambush-reading with the comment that SV was available for download and that they will read from their ebook reader. eventually their attempt was thwarted by the organizers of the event.

the tacit message in what they said is this (i think): the book is available for download. thus it is to be assumed that SV-ebook is not banned here. thus it is perfectly legal to read it aloud here.

for the record, what had happened was this: the govt. had placed a custom ban on imports of SV and penguin had cancelled its indian publication of SV. this was in 1989.

by Sponsored content

twitter

twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter

Re: twitter