Barbarians
at the Gate
There
are many mysteries that are difficult to resolve. Foremost amongst them is the
urge that some people have to write someone else’s biography.
Autobiographies are understandable. After
all, a person would like to tell his or her story.
It should be noted here, though, that more
than women, it is men who think their story is worth telling. Their peacock
aspect simply refuses to go away.
But biographies? Why, for heaven’s sake?
True, there is an academic need to know about the lives of the Great People who
died more than half a century ago. But why of those died only recently or even
the living? The other day a friend who works in the publishing world told me
this was because there is a new trend in publishing. This was to commission the
biographies of more-or-less anyone who had been in the news, preferably on TV.
And, since journalists are being sacked by
the truckload by newspapers, it had become easy to find writers. The lack of
writers used to be a big problem in the past.
That’s not all: There is also the buyback
clause in the agreement. This ensures commercial viability. That is what
economists call the positive externality.
But there is a negative one as well. It is
that the subject of the biography dictates the content.
The result is small flood of biographies of
people you really don’t want to know about. Someone, for example, is writing
the biography of man who is known to have been involved in a number of
financial shenanigans recently.
The reason why Icalled up someone who has
retired from publishing to ask why this was happening. He said the structure of
publishing had changed.
Earlier a company brought out between 30 and
100 titles a year that sold slowly over three years. Now the game was to bring
out quickies that had to sell in three months.
Books, he said, have become like fortnightly
magazines where sales are based on the cover story. In the case of books, he
said, if you can put together a quick 200250 pages for ~200-250 (or one rupee
per page) well, as the British say, Bob’s your uncle.
Sell a couple of thousand copies and move on.
As if this is not bad enough, unlike in the
West, in India few large publishers are interested in serious biographies. Nor,
indeed, are historians who should be writing them.
There are the occasional ones, of course. But
by and large our historians avoid biographies. It is infra dig, somehow. The
result, to put it mildly, is very unsatisfactory for readers.
The odd exceptions Happily, this is not
always so. From time to time we do get some decent biographies. One such recent
one is of Feroze Gandhi by an 84-year-old Swedish journalist. His name is
Bertil Falk.
The book is published by Roli Books. It is
properly researched and referenced.
It is flat in its narration, which is agreat
attribute for a biography. And it doesn’t hold back on the unpleasant aspects
like the relationship between Nehru, Feroze and Indira.
In short, it is an excellent piece of work on
a man who was not very interesting except for the fact that he was Jawaharlal
Nehru’s son-in-law, Indira Gandhi’s husband and Rajiv Gandhi’s father.
Another recent and excellent biography,
although not published in India, is of Karl Marx by Gareth Jones, a Cambridge
professor of history. It isn’t what you would a riveting read or what you’d
carry on a plane because it is 750 pages. But it is sufficiently detailed to
make you want to spend more than just a couple of hours on it.
Another superb one was the biography of
Genghis Khan – yes, the Great Khan – by Jack Weatherford. It challenges the
common wisdom about the man, so much so that even Dr Manmohan Singh has
endorsed it.
There are many others but very few, alas,
that have been written by Indians about Indians that would meet the tests of
genuine scholarship. Most of what is there is written by untrained persons.
It is a sign of an immaturity in an industry
that claims to cater to the intellect but produces mere comic books. This is
what our publishers are doing when it comes to biographies.
The time has come, now for Indian publishers
to get their focus right and start commissioning academic historians to write
proper biographies of major Indian personalities. They will not regret it.
KITABKHANA
TC A SRINIVASA-RAGHAVAN
Books have become like fortnightly magazines
where sales are based on the cover story
Source | Business Standard | 10 January 2017
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
No comments:
Post a Comment