All the books I wrote, and had published—in the '60s, '70s and even in the '80s—came out in India after their publication in England and the US without benefit of publicity, book tours, readings or any of those events that in the '90s seem to have become de rigueur in the publishing world.
To me the book was always a kind of secret that I had—and very few even knew I had one. I wrote in secrecy and the books were published in a state as close to secrecy as print can get.
But I seem to have fallen into a Rip van Winkle sleep at some point. Now, in the new century, I wake up and blink at the bright lights that glare down at a stage on which stands that frightened creature—the writer—pulled out of the burrow and revealed in the full glare of publicity, trying desperately to retain a few rags of decency in this harsh spotlight.
During the years when no one knew, or cared, what I was writing, or getting published, I drew strength and solace from such fellow writers and their words as:
Proust: "Real books must be children not of broad daylight and small talk but of darkness and silence."
Rilke: "What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going into yourself and meeting no one for hours on end—that is what you must be able to attain."
Walter de la Mare: "Again and again he must stand back from the press and habit of convention. He must keep on recapturing solitude."
Emily Dickinson: "If you talk to no one, you are amassing thought which will be bright and golden for those you left at home—we meet our friends and a constant interchange wastes tho't and feeling and we are then obliged to repair and renew—there isn't that brimfull feeling that one gets away." She even shunned men and women, she said, because "they talk of hallowed things and embarrass my dog".
But, to be serious—and honest—my books were reprinted in India by a few brave publishers of the time who were more accustomed to bringing out textbooks with steady sales and the modern classics of Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan for considerably less. It was no more an encouraging scene for them than it was for the writer: readers of the time tended to prefer the work of acknowledged British and American authors—P.G. Wodehouse, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy the staple fare—and showed no intention of encouraging 'native' writers. Nor did schools and colleges, while the library scene in India has never been anything but dismal. So I should acknowledge the fact that Orient Paperbacks and Allied Publishers were the first in India willing to take a risk with my books. And it remained a risk till the '80s when a generation of young writers—Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth—came out with books that dealt not just with the past but with the present, in language that was vivid, energetic and forceful.
This generation had also caught the imagination and attention of publishers and readers in the West. They were winning the literary prizes, big ones, and suddenly the rather dusty, shabby publishing scene began to look rather exciting, even glamorous. Writers were no longer considered pathetic "losers" but—suddenly, enviably—winners.
The media, and its inevitable gossip columns, have had much to do with this.
| | | | "Time was when my sister approached her publisher and he asked her , 'you need money?'" | | | | |
|
It became important for a writer to be presentable in public: the public clamoured for "personalities" and, in response, personalities sprouted. Often quite photogenic ones (publishers went so far as to demand to see an "author photograph" before offering a contract). Whereas earlier no writer or publisher admitted there was a monetary angle to the business, now writers openly bragged of the advances they received and the royalties they collected. There was a time when such matters were not mentioned. My sister, a paediatrician, once wrote a book on babycare that became a bestseller in Bengal, and was disappointed at receiving no share of the proceeds. When she finally dared approach her publisher to ask for them, he gasped, "You need money? Why didn't you tell me?" and with a flourish wrote out a cheque for her of a modest, though well-rounded, figure. Magnanimously, he added, "Whenever you need money, just come to me." Understandably, she never went back. An episode hardly believable now when writers regularly check up on their sales and expect up-to-the-minute calculations.
And why blame them? Must writers not live? Ought publishers not to provide them with the means to do so, possibly even giving advances for books not yet published or even written so writers may get on with writing the books expected from them? Ought they not to expect royalties and accept generous prizes and grants that make it possible to live by one's labour? If these did not exist, or were withheld, writers would be forced to go to work in schools, banks, post-offices, wherever literacy is required, and steal time for what they are meant by nature to do. The image of the writer—or painter, or composer—starving in the garret is no longer contemplated, nor should it be.
Not that all this worldly success, and the pursuit of it, is without risks, and the writer should be aware and vigilant. Now that worldly success has been made acceptable and popular, something to be courted, it can too easily follow that the publisher will demand books that earn back those advances and justify the expenditure on publicity and distribution, and slowly, but surely, turn the writer into a good financial bet just as one actor may prove to be such a treasure and another may not. The pressures exerted on both the publisher and the writer today simply did not exist 40 or 50 years ago. But there is no free lunch and the writer soon learns that if he wishes to earn, he must learn to please. An insidious pressure, this, not one that encourages freedom or fearlessness.
Somewhere along the way, respect for such difficult qualities as these has been lost, and must be recovered, and cherished—repeatedly and steadily and passionately—because it is from that that literature grows.
(Anita Desai's works are being reissued in India by Random House with introductions by well-known authors, including Salman Rushdie.)