(Published in the Business Standard, April 26, 2011)
In the first chapter of The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee starts with a quote from Shakespeare, and a personal story about a patient, Carla.
He runs through the conversation he will have with her, and notes ruefully that there is something rehearsed even about his sympathy, given the demands of the months he’s spent working as a cancer fellow: “In those ten indescribably poignant and difficult months, dozens of patients in my care had died. I felt I was slowly becoming inured to the deaths and the desolation — vaccinated against the constant emotional brunt.” Two paragraphs down, without ever losing sympathy for the individual struck with cancer, Mukherjee has moved deftly to Solzhenitsyn, to a bigger picture, using, as he writes, “the past to explain the present”.
Reading The Emperor of All Maladies before it won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, I was struck, as were many other reviewers, by how polished Mukherjee’s writing was (“The emperors of exploration”, Business Standard, February 1, 2011). Mukherjee, a cancer physician and researcher, had no creative writing or journalistic background — the two traditional catchment areas for non-fiction writers.
But in the middle of his busiest years as a surgeon and a cancer fellow, he had served a kind of apprenticeship — pieces by him had appeared in medical reviews (Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine) and in mainstream publications known for their demanding editorial standards (The New Republic, The New York Times). Mukherjee’s recording eye for detail, matched with a deep empathy for his patients and an ability to do the historical research required, made this not just a prize-winning book, but a classic and lasting work of non-fiction.
In 2010, when Basharat Peer’s memoir of Kashmir, Curfewed Night, was published, one of its most enthusiastic champions was William Dalrymple, who called Peer a “new star of Indian non-fiction”. A few months later, Dalrymple spoke of his excitement at what seemed to be a new trend — the slow shift towards non-fiction replacing our somewhat obsessive focus on Booker-winning novels and other fiction.
Samanth Subramanian, like Sonia Faleiro, is one of the new stars of non-fiction; Following Fish, narrative journalism exploring India’s coastline, remains one of the best food and travel books of recent times. “This is just the beginning,” he says. We both agree that a handful of authors and non-fiction books from the subcontinent isn’t enough to call a movement, yet.
But as Subramanian points out, what may be changing – and where Dalrymple is correct – is a sensibility, as our curiosity about our own stories is matched by the willingness to actually go out and tell them. “There’s never been a paucity of academic non-fiction – good or bad – in India,” Subramanian notes. “But general non-fiction, journalistic non-fiction hasn’t had much of an outlet.”
Even among the journalists, someone like Sonia Faleiro, who wrote Beautiful Thing after reporting on the lives of bar dancers for Tehelka, or even Suketu Mehta, whose Bombay biography Maximum City sparked a curiosity about Indian non-fiction seven years ago, narrative non-fiction is something you have to earn. Few Indian publications support essays longer than 1,500-2,000 words; and even fewer would offer that space to issues other than politics.
The Caravan, run by Jonathan Shainin and a crack team of writer-editors, who include author Anjum Hassan and former Random House editor Rajni George, is one of the few magazines that look for and nurture narrative non-fiction, aside from a handful of men’s magazines that occasionally commission lengthy essays. (You could make the argument that magazines like Esquire and Playboy contributed much more than centrefolds to US culture —by commissioning short stories, long interviews and long journalistic essays, they helped several generations of writers to survive and grow.)
It’s tempting to see Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer triumph as confirmation of the Indian success story in non-fiction; but in a way, Mukherjee’s success as a writer is a very American, not Indian, success. What would it take to have a The Emperor of Maladies come out of India? More supportive publishing houses, more magazines with demanding editorial standards, more imagination and willingness to go after the untold stories on the part of writers? I don’t really have the answers, but it’s an interesting question.
Tailpiece: The release of the Ibn-e-Safi thrillers (Poisoned Arrow, Smokewater, The Laughing Corpse and Doctor Dread) could revive nostalgia for the days of “clean” blood-and-guts fiction. Ibn-e-Safi’s son says his father, already a well-known Pakistani writer when he considered writing the Jasoosi Duniya series, rose to the challenge when he was told that the books wouldn’t sell in India without sex and violence. He refused to include women, and his spy stories proved successful all the same.
There may have been precedent, though. Indian tastes ran to Alistair Maclean, whose thrillers were notable for his stern abjuration of romance. Maclean famously said that sex gets in the way of the action, a sentiment he may have borrowed from yet another creator of largely celibate heroes, Desmond Bagley, who said that sex gets in the way of the plot. How James Hadley Chase managed to juggle both will, presumably, remain a mystery.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Speaking Volumes: Greg Mortenson's Bitter Brew
(Published in the Business Standard, April 26, 2011. This was such a sad column to write; Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea set me and several other friends on a journey of exploring how best to make donations of money, books or time to local libraries, and briefly inspired a few very big dreams. The sense of betrayal is very strong, for many of us who were Mortenson fans, and I'm hoping that the Central Asia Institute will get its accounting and focus in order and continue to build and maintain schools.
But even if the Three Cups of Tea story has been tinged with bitterness, I am grateful that reading that book years ago led me (and others) to so many interesting library and literay efforts. It was through Mortenson's book--and through the generosity of a friend who gave me Wood's book--that I discovered Room To Read, and the work it does in India among other countries, for instance.)
If you wanted to change the world, 2006 was a good year in which to find inspiration, in the lives of restless men with a will to make the world better and a yen for mountaineering.
Two of them, Room To Read’s John Wood and the Central Asia Institute’s Greg Mortenson, released books in 2006 that would continue to inspire people around the world for the next five years. One of them is in trouble, his story questioned after an investigation by CBS’ 60 Minutes.
There are many parallels between Wood’s story and Mortenson’s tale. Wood, trekking in the Himalayas, stumbled across a Nepali school and was struck by the absence of books for the children. The Microsoft employee returned with the promised books, building what would become the first of many libraries and schools as part of the Room To Read network. Wood founded Room to Read in 2000, writing about the experience in Leaving Microsoft to Change the World in 2006.
Wood’s focus was on Room To Read’s roughly 1,128 schools and 10,000 libraries, built and maintained across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and parts of Africa. His book is a corporate memoir — inspiring, but crisp and blunt about the challenges of running an organisation that wanted to change the way the world’s children read. His teachings are blunt, gleaned from experience; it’s from Wood that you learn how much better the small, open-to-all reading room works in India, for instance, rather than the intimidating, closed space of the government library.
Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea belongs on the inspirational literature shelf. His story was gripping: in 1993, Mortenson wrote, his passion for mountaineering got him into trouble, and he stumbled into the tiny village of Korphu in Pakistan’s Karakoram range. Nursed back to health by the villagers, Mortenson promised himself he would return and build them a school, which he did despite the rugged terrain and despite being briefly held captive by a group of men who appear to be from the Taliban. The Central Asia Institute, founded by Mortenson, has established 145 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But what made the book a bestseller was the drama, and Mortenson’s ability to touch people’s hearts. The title is drawn from an incident where he sits down with the statutory wise man of the village, Haji Ali: “...Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honoured guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea….’”
It was this kind of wisdom, as well as the message of hope, and Mortenson’s clearly etched passion for educating girls that made Three Cups of Tea such a bestseller, much-loved in India and elsewhere in the world. As with Wood, Mortenson’s lesson seemed to be that it was possible to change the world – “one school at a time” – though the numbers make you wonder which man was more focused on the actual goal.
It is this aspect of the book, and the Mortenson legend that the CBS television show sought to investigate. The accusations carry weight because they are made by a respected writer — wildlife and mountaineering expert Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air and Into The Wild. Krakauer casts doubt on Mortenson’s story of stumbling into Korphu at death’s door — the reality seems to have been more prosaic, with Mortenson pledging to build a school after a normal trek. He also challenges Mortenson’s account of being held by the Taliban, with one of his “captors” denying the story. Mortenson’s responses have been evasive, and he has no good reason for refusing to appear on the 60 Minutes show.
But the real damage arises from the 60 Minutes investigation of how the money raised by Mortenson’s charity is spent —the implication is that the charity spends almost as much on funding Mortenson’s book tours as it does on actually setting up schools.
The CBS show has spread dismay and sadness around the world; the accusations suggest that Mortenson exaggerated much of the truth — and that his charity is unprofessional. No one questions the real, if limited, value of the work he has done; and if organisations like Room To Read have done more in roughly the same time-span, it is not a crime for a charity to be disorganised. There is, as Krakauer and others have pointed out, a more serious breach of trust — those who believed in Mortenson’s legend and the power of three cups of tea are entitled to ask why there weren’t more schools, and fewer book tours.
The real sadness is in having to separate the wisdom of Three Cups of Tea – listen to the people you’re trying to help, believe that you can make a difference, slow down and take time to understand the way things run – from its accuracy. I thought, like many other readers across the world, that this was a true story, and it is heartbreaking in a way Mortenson may not understand to be told that it is, instead, a very colourful one.
But even if the Three Cups of Tea story has been tinged with bitterness, I am grateful that reading that book years ago led me (and others) to so many interesting library and literay efforts. It was through Mortenson's book--and through the generosity of a friend who gave me Wood's book--that I discovered Room To Read, and the work it does in India among other countries, for instance.)
If you wanted to change the world, 2006 was a good year in which to find inspiration, in the lives of restless men with a will to make the world better and a yen for mountaineering.
Two of them, Room To Read’s John Wood and the Central Asia Institute’s Greg Mortenson, released books in 2006 that would continue to inspire people around the world for the next five years. One of them is in trouble, his story questioned after an investigation by CBS’ 60 Minutes.
There are many parallels between Wood’s story and Mortenson’s tale. Wood, trekking in the Himalayas, stumbled across a Nepali school and was struck by the absence of books for the children. The Microsoft employee returned with the promised books, building what would become the first of many libraries and schools as part of the Room To Read network. Wood founded Room to Read in 2000, writing about the experience in Leaving Microsoft to Change the World in 2006.
Wood’s focus was on Room To Read’s roughly 1,128 schools and 10,000 libraries, built and maintained across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and parts of Africa. His book is a corporate memoir — inspiring, but crisp and blunt about the challenges of running an organisation that wanted to change the way the world’s children read. His teachings are blunt, gleaned from experience; it’s from Wood that you learn how much better the small, open-to-all reading room works in India, for instance, rather than the intimidating, closed space of the government library.
Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea belongs on the inspirational literature shelf. His story was gripping: in 1993, Mortenson wrote, his passion for mountaineering got him into trouble, and he stumbled into the tiny village of Korphu in Pakistan’s Karakoram range. Nursed back to health by the villagers, Mortenson promised himself he would return and build them a school, which he did despite the rugged terrain and despite being briefly held captive by a group of men who appear to be from the Taliban. The Central Asia Institute, founded by Mortenson, has established 145 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But what made the book a bestseller was the drama, and Mortenson’s ability to touch people’s hearts. The title is drawn from an incident where he sits down with the statutory wise man of the village, Haji Ali: “...Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honoured guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea….’”
It was this kind of wisdom, as well as the message of hope, and Mortenson’s clearly etched passion for educating girls that made Three Cups of Tea such a bestseller, much-loved in India and elsewhere in the world. As with Wood, Mortenson’s lesson seemed to be that it was possible to change the world – “one school at a time” – though the numbers make you wonder which man was more focused on the actual goal.
It is this aspect of the book, and the Mortenson legend that the CBS television show sought to investigate. The accusations carry weight because they are made by a respected writer — wildlife and mountaineering expert Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air and Into The Wild. Krakauer casts doubt on Mortenson’s story of stumbling into Korphu at death’s door — the reality seems to have been more prosaic, with Mortenson pledging to build a school after a normal trek. He also challenges Mortenson’s account of being held by the Taliban, with one of his “captors” denying the story. Mortenson’s responses have been evasive, and he has no good reason for refusing to appear on the 60 Minutes show.
But the real damage arises from the 60 Minutes investigation of how the money raised by Mortenson’s charity is spent —the implication is that the charity spends almost as much on funding Mortenson’s book tours as it does on actually setting up schools.
The CBS show has spread dismay and sadness around the world; the accusations suggest that Mortenson exaggerated much of the truth — and that his charity is unprofessional. No one questions the real, if limited, value of the work he has done; and if organisations like Room To Read have done more in roughly the same time-span, it is not a crime for a charity to be disorganised. There is, as Krakauer and others have pointed out, a more serious breach of trust — those who believed in Mortenson’s legend and the power of three cups of tea are entitled to ask why there weren’t more schools, and fewer book tours.
The real sadness is in having to separate the wisdom of Three Cups of Tea – listen to the people you’re trying to help, believe that you can make a difference, slow down and take time to understand the way things run – from its accuracy. I thought, like many other readers across the world, that this was a true story, and it is heartbreaking in a way Mortenson may not understand to be told that it is, instead, a very colourful one.
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