Of dying habits, sour grapes and the hypocrisy born of compromise - 1

Why book-reading is passé in these times

To be honest, I do not presume to possess the answer to that. Just that... once upon a time, when I was a kid...well, more like a paltry dozen years back, I was convinced that all great, or at least, all worthwhile people could boast refined tastes, a keen sense of discernment in literature, art, conversation, that they spoke confidently, with elan, with a deep-seated interest in the motivations of man, his quirks, his transgressions...

I must say I am eternally grateful to my parents and especially my brother for inculcating the reading habit in me as a boy. True, while other kids grew to be strapping physical specimens, I turned out a sporting zero, sidestepping the playfields in apprehension of the friendly invitation to participate. Of course, I am something of an exercise freak now, but that is a story for a different day.

My brother was a strange and wonderful creature, even all those years ago. Prodigiously intelligent, he would speak authoritatively on sundry subjects that piqued my imagination. His vocabulary was formidable, and his literary exploits unmatched in my experience. While my peers gushed over proponents of literary-harakiri, namely Enid Blyton and obvious successors Crichton, Archer, Sheldon and innumerable other offenders, he would stimulate me to seek out Conrad, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevysky. I confess I would often regard him with incredulity. I recall reading Famous Five on the sly as a primary-schooler, and labouring through Resurrection -- Tolstoy's formidable investigation of one man's lifelong tribulations with guilt -- under his watchful eye....

"Ah, the naivete of effervescent childhood!", I might exclaim, but boy! am I glad I wasn't allowed to run the free paths of vapidity the vagrant mind insinuates itself into.... To cut a long story short, I grew up cherishing images such as Mr.Pickwick's trial, Oskar's recollections of his grandma's voluminous skirts, the various clandestine arrangements of the Aurelianos, the dark recesses of Kurtz's haven.....

For the record, i consider the following three works primary influences in my literary journey towards maturity (no particular order):

At the time, I was easily impressionable, and was struck by how themes of alienation and abnegation ran through all these works, rendering them virtually inseparable in my consciousness. Now, older and wiser, I still enjoy Rushdie, in spite of the overt magic-realist influences, and Marquez's tome still seems alive and vibrant, despite its self-defeating tone. The Tin Drum was a precursor to Midnight's Children, and its influence on Rushdie is unmistakable.

But my most profound reading experience of recent years was

Here was a book both unreadable and impossible to put down. I have time and again expressed my deepest disdain for popular fiction(bestsellers), in whose honour colourful words have been coined such as "page-turner", "edge-of-the-seat-thriller", "unputdownable", "potboiler" and so on. Very amusing. Now here is a book that purports to be about the horrors of WWII, the paranoia, the insidious threat of doom... and I have never felt more threatened soaking up a book's atmosphere. I look forward eagerly to reading it again and again. It just doesn't go away. A million characters flit mysteriously across the page, and I surrender myself to the book's flow. I learn a thing or two... about the evanescence of practically everything, even fear.

To be continued....