BOOKWATCH
Literature in the making
GRANTA — the magazine of new writing — celebrates its 25th anniversary with a special edition that brings together the old and the new. Lest it be construed that old articles have been included in a magazine that has built a reputation of being a platform for new writing — a publication where many a famous writer first found a window of opportunity — it should be said at the outset itself that some writers who "helped" Granta make its reputation have returned to contribute new articles; teaming up with others who, the publishers hope, will make it big some day.
Among the 19 contributors to this issue are two Indian names — Amit Chaudhuri and Pankaj Mishra — and Toby Glanville who traces the course of the river that gave the magazine its name. What Glanville articulates through his "picture essay" — photographs taken earlier this year while following the Granta from its source to its meeting with the Great Ouse at Ely — also finds mention in the editor, Ian Jack's "Motley Notes", wherein he discovers that the river has rather humble beginnings in a "small pool of blackish water"; much like the magazine he edits, some would say given that it began as an in-house publication of Cambridge University.
Jack's "Motley Notes" makes for interesting reading as it dwells at some length on the early days of the magazine; both in its initial incarnate dating back to 1889 and its current run, beginning 1979. In particular, he traces how the magazine — in its second life — began exceeding its brief from the very beginning, growing out of Cambridge and abandoning with ease its self-declared preoccupation with prose.
Granta Jubilee, £9.99.
* * *
Info-nuggets
WHEN a publication is titled The Book of Useless Information, it may seem a tad unfair to club a quick guide to Hollywood films along with it. But, both books — the former billed as an "official Useless Information Society publication" and the latter, quiz-master Derek O'Brien's Hollywood: The 100 Greatest Films — seek to provide quick facts, and, therefore, belong to the same genre.
A product of many sharp minds of Britain, The Book of Useless Information is promoted by one of the contributors, Keith Waterhouse, as "totally bloody useless". Maybe so, but browsing through the nuggets of trivia included in the book is time well spent.
Sample these: "Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow down a film so you could see his moves"; "the first actress to appear on a postage stamp was Grace Kelly"; "Adolf Hitler's great-great-grandmother was a Jewish maid"; "Abraham Lincoln died in the same bed that had been occupied by his assassin John Wilkes Booth"; "Yasser Arafat is addicted to watching television cartoons"...
O'Brien's book is strictly for movie buffs; giving details of the entire cast and production teams of 100 films — classics as well as his personal favourites — along with the storyline, the USP of each film and a host of interesting asides.
Hollywood: The 100 Greatest Films,
Derek O'Brien, Penguin, Rs. 275.
The Book of Useless Information, Keith Waterhouse and Richard Littlejohn, Lotus, Rs. 175.
* * *
Legends revisited
THE two dozen legends picked by Meena Arora Nayak for The Puffin Book of Legendary Lives offer very little new by way of stories. Any child who has grown up on Amar Chitra Katha would be familiar with the legends. Evidently, Nayak knows this only too well. Which is why, probably, she decided to slant her narrative to capture what she thought was the true essence of the legendary figures included in the book instead of merely putting together their stories.
Since Indian history is a virtual mine of such legendary characters, the U.S.-based Nayak has sought to make her book representative of the length and breadth of India; giving up the usual North India bias. Consequently, one finds in the book a chapter dedicated to Rani Chennamma of Kittur in modern-day Karnataka "who fought the first battles with the British and led us to the brink of the First War of Independence in 1857".
As for the time span in a history that goes way back, Nayak set 1857 as the cut-off on the premise that the historic personalities of the freedom struggle deserve a book unto themselves. Beginning with a focus on Valmiki (rather, the transformation of a bandit into the author of the Ramayana), the book moves forward to end with the "morning star of India's Independence struggle", Rani Chennamma — who, by the author's own admission, she chanced upon while searching for a legend to sign off with.
The Puffin Book of Legendary Lives, Meena Arora Nayak, Puffin, Rs. 250.
ANITA JOSHUA
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
