Defending an Author

Being sometimes urged on to write something, articles,stories,poetry , just for the sake of writing, I also wonder often that where does the urge come from. And then naturally follows the question , that why do authors write, is it only some form of escapism on their part and even if it is from some, then is it to be condoned or not ? Is it that they want to throw in the towel and simply sit upon something which has 'nothing to do' - churning thoughts, ideas and plots and keeping on moving the pen and typing on the computer. But I personally keep such uncharitable thoughts more for that unsavoury breed of idlers called as philosophers rather than the people who have given me priceless hours of delight, and joy, and adventure, and emotion.

To start with, of course I know that most of the authors have written and are writing for money, simply money. Even the greats have had to do it occasionally, and the lesser mortals by compulsion. What I hate though is the hype that is sometimes created around a third-rate author, though it is another matter that the author concerned himself/herself feels embarassed in private at the praise that the world is handing out to him/her. ( Once the hype is there, you can neatly divide the followers into two categories :- the enthusiasts, and the fools. Of course, there are those who are seeing money in justifying the hype, but then they are not followers but props upon which the whole flimsy and yet magnificient structure is standing upon)

So, I start with the more sincere breed among the authors - the ones who either write to simply say what they've got to say, or the others who write for propaganda in something which they believe in. In this latter category I can put people like Rand( for capitalism) or Gorky(for communism) or even Zola( he himself admitting that he his simply investigating the effects of heredity and environment). In fact, all of these latter people, the people who belong to the latter category , might themselves not be called very sincere. Rand and Gorky are themselves much muddle-headed in sorting out what they want to say and see, though probably for different reasons; Gorky simply because he was muddled up, and Rand because she dared not show the true teeth of herself and her capitalism, since not being things which could be publicly very appraised. Painfully I have to put Zola also in the somewhat insincere though he always built up the situations, the tensions, the characters so remarkably well, and in fact called up an image before the reader. But these only point to fine natural talents, honed by an acute observation and enhanced by a desire to write, to tell something to the world, to be immortal as only an artist can. But then why I call him insincere ? Maybe his lack of versatility is the spot on his shirt-collar. Why does he have to write always about the wretched, not only financially but also morally, why always a cold impassioned view of things, why nothing good shines through, why nothing which has not caught the rust of the society in which the protagonists are living. Even if there is someone who is meant to be heroic, there is always something tragic lurking about, clinging to that character. Why not somebody like a Mr. Crisparkle from Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood ? Dark tones are all very well, but even in a totally dark work there is something disturbing to the core of the heart, and that is only when you are producing something keeping a definite direction in mind, doing something worthwhile with the sincerity of your heart and soul, something which prevents your work from becoming simply a social commentary of the times, valued more maybe by sociologists and historians rather than discerning readers.

I say discerning readers, since readers often reject great works also. I have seen masses and the intelligentsia, both in agreement for once, reject something which is in fact quite excellent , which has always been very inexplicable to me, but more on that later on sometime. People have rejected Walter Scott for his rather tedious language, but I think that is more due to a lack of a feeling of romance rather than anything else. Or maybe because the SMS language is hip , and not the Scotty one. But I started out with something other than this to talk about, and I will not budge.

Zola reminds me of something which all authors do and have to do - pilfering. But then again, a question arises in my mind that is it pilfering or not ? I of course do not mean by pilfering the ages old issue that every artist takes something from all the artists that he has ever been introduced to, and possibly owes something to other artists as well since the world in which he is living has been shaped, guided, and moulded by them all along the way. But what I mean is pilfering from circumstances.
Taking the case of Zola by instance. Living himself in poverty of course gives him invaluable materials to use in his writing, but observing others dispassionately and to use their emotions, their details of life, their lifestyles in your work - is it pilfering or not ? Of course, an author cannot survive without setting some sort of background to his stories and without throwing in some details to make the setting credible to the reader, and I am not crying hoarse that an author shouldn't do this, of course he should, but I am only asking myself that how much right has a person to wring out of the intensity of the life that people around him are living the few pages of writing. Also sometimes harsh on the author him/herself. He has to act so many parts just like an actor, that just like an actor he could end up being totally dead of emotion, totally drained of emotion if has turned out to be a brilliant author/actor and while having lived the private lives of all the characters that he has acted out, he couldn't act his own ever, he couldn't live his life ever.
Does an author use his fellow-men and their emotions just as their more scientifically-inclined counterparts do so with rats and rabbits ? Or do only some, maybe more shallow in emotions like Shakespeare and Chekhov, do so ? ( Forgive my judgement, consider me a dolt, but then this is my blog) I think that the answer lies here. The answer lies again in gauging the sincerity of the writer. Authors like Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde (both maybe very witty on that account) look to me just the sort of people who would not stop from playing upon the feelings of anyone, who would not stop from prying, while on the other side of the spectrum are authors like Dostoyevsky who felt everything themselves and wrote, and maybe that is why not very versatile. In the middle are probably the best, the likes of Dickens, Scott and Ibsen, a little prying into the affairs, and a little sincerity, and combined entertainingly enough.

And now the question, that why does an author write ? After all, its his ideas, his imaginings, his stories. Why should I care about them. And in today's world, someone very irreverent enough might even ask that an author is simply a service provider to him/her, content to his taste is getting delivered to him/her and the author is getting paid for it, then why the hullaballoo , why regard the author greater than the games developer, the coder who is coding those wonderful artificial intelligence into the characters of my game , why ?

As for the first question, the answer which comes uppermost in mind that an author is simply an egotist, bent on imagining that what he writes is important and amusing to the world, is for the edification of the world in general , a lazy animal who has converted his pastime of writing beautifully into a money-making business for himself, a career for himself. But is it the right answer ? Yes , they are his stories, but he his not writing only because he has some inflated notions of their importance, but rather because he is living different lives through his characters, he is become the God , he has created men and animals and the world in which they all act as he chooses them to act ? Well, but not much different from a computer games developer, from a simulation game . Not much different ? Don't you spot it ? He has simply not created those characters, but he is living with them, inside them , he is living each of their lives himself, he has become the veritable God who has created man and yet is living in the heart of each man. And don't you see the challenge of it all - he has to become the developer, the psychiatrist, the actor, and the businessman all in one, and there lies the answer to the second question.

Of course, this blog is simply the work of an incorrigible egotist. And an enthusiast.

Things I hate about Ayn Rand

It feels like it would be better to get off the load of some things off my chest while starting to blog. And one of them is Ayn Rand. Of course her books look to me too silly to get to be a load , but the adulation and hype surrounding her seems to me too dangerous, and also quite puzzling. Knowing that most of the young people are not the ones to cause a July revolution, it becomes still more puzzling to me that what can attract them to Rand ? I can easily understand them being not attracted by Ibsen or Dickens and swearing by Sheldons and Agathas, but what hip do they find in Rand ?

So I come necessarily to the conclusion that to believe in Rand is fashionable for most and only serious for some, as many things are fated to be in this world, good or bad. A more comforting thought to me that people are not behind a Toohey en masse. Since that's what I see Rand as, through her writings she seems to me quite manipulative (and successful at that) and domineering, imposing her opinions on everyone else. Now for a more serious tone.

The first time I encountered her was reading The Fountainhead. I was very thrilled by Roark and dismayed by the fact that somebody as cruel and cold as Roark, Dominique , and Wynand were being put upon a pedestal. The whole novel is about a hate of incompetence , but leaving aside the first question that darts through the mind at this stage that how competent is the writer herself and who is she to judge others, the biggest question that arises is that whether incompetence is something evil ? For Rand has not simply despised incompetence, she has not merely showed the evil effects that incompetent people can have on earth but she has equated the incompetent with evil. I cannot, for the life of me, agree with this. What if I say that Roark and other heroes of the novel are themselves incompetent, incompetent socially, dysfunctional to an extreme degree - is incompetence limited to the sphere of one's profession only.

Of course, there are Tooheys, of course there are missionaries mostly because they have either been disillusioned of life or they had had never the illusion of life. So you will find many lifeless or cruel sort of people in theological activities, but Maugham tackles them better than Rand here. The shallow sincerity of most of the missionaries has always been brilliantly exposed by Maugham , but leaving him aside , Rand has really tackled the shrewd, public characters like Toohey and the hyped-up dummies like Keating or the female writer(I again forget her name too) very well. But what Rand conveys is that every missionary is like that, every person is in fact like that , everyone is selfish.

Of course that's true to me. A person who gives two pence to the beggar does not give them for the beggar's sake really, it is only that he is getting enjoyment out of his charity. Different people take pleasure in different ways, the charming child through caresses and the perverse,wilful child through more taunts being levelled at him, through more scorn being heaped upon him. Some people get a more enjoyment out of thinking of eternal life, so they keep washing themselves in holy waters and sacraments ; some like to think of themselves being remembered by posterity, so they keep trying to do great things ( great may not necessarily be good). But does it matter ? The point is simply that the real heroes are those whose selfish pleasures lie in doing good to others. I do not care that when a mother is sacrificing her only morsels to her unaware child she is doing so only for a selfish pleasure, I only care that it touches my heart. Of course, it is preposterous that anybody should do anything unselfishly, but it is not preposterous that a person, always selfish, yet does something for the other ( maybe due to his selfishness only). The problem with Rand is that she simply does not try to clear the misconception that people are unselfish, but she goes further on imply that no person can do anything for the other unless there is some ulterior, ugly actions or feelings of disillusionment or frustration behind those. It is as if she herself is now not believing in selfishness - why can't she simply believe that there are good actions done in this world for the sole purpose of goodness, that is for the sole selfish purpose of "easing of conscience" and a "feel good factor" for the do-gooder. The do-gooder need not be a Toohey.

As for characters like Roark, very thrilling, very strong mentally , but dismaying. He is cold, ruthless. He has only his assertions to back him that whatever he is making is the best, but should he not understand the types of people, their psychologies, and in what sort of a house would they want to live in. It is like that he's forcibly invading the privacy of people whose houses he is designing ( not simply Dominique's when living with Wynand). Although I admired in fact the astute mental makeup of the man who refuses to see anything beyond himself, yet I did not see the resulting ruthlessness as very admirable.

By the way, I then bought Atlas Shrugged and could read it only halfway through, too disgusting and not even a realistic story. Worse than The Fountainhead easily, strange that the former is more famous. But an interesting new element, brilliantly tackled, is Rearden's wife who looks her husband sort of dirty if he demands passion, who looks upon sex as only something to formalize completely and solemnize completely the rituals of marriage, and nothing more.Rand has always been very good at attacking some of society's conventionalities and ideals, its only that she writes with a propaganda , and no propagandist ever becomes a good writer.