Jonathan Harker is a real estate agent who has to travel to the mountains of Transylvania to meet Count Dracula to discuss affairs of the latter's latest acquisition, a rundown castle in England. Harker braves the journey, even though he has his own doubts when the innkeeper (where he stays for a bit) gives him a crucifix and asks him to keep it for his mother's sake. What follows is a bizarre adventure that starts with his imprisonment by the Count and ends with his escaping the dreaded castle where the dead rise from their graves. He keeps a count of the incidents that occur in the castle, and even when he is finally in the arms of his love, Mina Harker, he is visited by nightmares of the stay with Count Dracula.
Lucy Westenra is a demure English girl, who's biggest problem at the moment is being proposed to by three very eligible gentlemen. Dr.Seward is a psychiatrist, Quincey Morris is American and is fun to be with, but above these two, is Arthur Holmwood whom she truly loves. But weird things start happening to Lucy when she starts sleep-walking and is, one night, found in a graveyard with a man in a black hooded overcoat. She also has a mysterious wound on her neck which worries her doctor, Lord Van Helsing who has arrived to treat her at the behest of Dr.Seward.
When Lucy dies due to excessive blood loss, her family and friends are none the wiser about the meaning behind it. But Van Helsing has his own doubts, which are proved when he finds Lucy's coffin empty in the crematorium. What's even more bewildering is Lucy back in the same coffin during daytime, looking as beautiful as ever, without the slightest signs of being a one week old cadaver.
How did Lucy die? And why does she seem to be regaining her youth after death? And what are those 50 wooden boxes that the Count despatched to England from his castle? What does Mina have to do with all this, other than being Jonathan Harker's wife? How many more will fall prey to the Count, and become the Un-Dead?
Bram Stoker answers all these and more with his amazing horror story of a book, 'Dracula'. The book is a set of letters (between the various characters) and diary entries of the Harkers & Dr.Seward and traces the series of events that lead to the revelation of the true identity of Count Dracula and Mina Harker.
The language is pompous, characteristic of prim and proper English men and women, with exaggerated proclamations of friendship and faithfulness. But then, the novel was written in 1897 - enough reason why every sentence written reeks of chivalry! Some of those are so cliched-ly chivalrous, that if it weren't for the fact that the book is about vampires, it would seem outright funny. It's set in the England of yore, where women were treated as delicate darlings in the truest sense of the phrase.
The way the author has painted the characters, leaves nothing to doubt. Making the movie must have been a relatively painless affair, thanks to the vivid details presented in the book. What I loved about the narration was the way the author kept the interest going, even though the concept of vampires and Dracula, in general, are very well known these days. The puncture wounds on the victims, the garlic used to keep the vampire away, escaping wolves and a zoophagus mentally-ill patient - we know what it's all about, but still we can't wait for the actual words to appear in the book! Now, that's what I call a page-turner.
What remains now is the on screen adaptation of the book. Something tells me I shouldn't watch it alone. And maybe I should sleep with a couple of garlic cloves under my pillow!
An excerpt (from the back cover of the book) -
There he lay looking as if youth had been half renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leach, exhausted with his repletion.
If this cannot get you interested, I don't know what will!
You can read the book online on Dracula's page - apparently, the work is now in public domain in the US and other countries where copyrights expire for works published before 1923. (Whatever that's supposed to mean!)
If you feel the book is just too much trouble, well, you'll just have to catch the movie. The latest I heard of is the one with Gary Oldman as Dracula and Winona Ryder as Mina Harker (directed by none less than Francis Ford Coppola). But for a true bibliophile, nothing beats the touch and feel of a book. Absolutely nothing. So while you get a tub of popcorn and sit in front of the television, I will snuggle into my bean bag with a cup of hot chocolate and my favorite tome.
I'm no good with reviews. But once in a while you come across this amazing book or movie and it's just very very hard to not talk about it. Very hard, indeed, to not tell people to read it or watch it. Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy may not be in the same league as J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter series, but if you're a fan of fanfic - rest assured - you will love these books. The imagination is vivid, the plot is non-complicated and above all this, the hero - Bartimaeus - is absolutely AWESOME! I'm no good with superlatives either, so 'awesome' will just have to do.
Remember the genie from Alladin's lamp? Remember 'I dream of Genie'? Yep, it's the same kind of genie, only very cheeky and spelt 'djinni'. Bartimaeus is around 5000 years old. In his own words -
"I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni, N'gorso the Mighty, and the Serpent of Silver Plumes! I have rebuilt the walls of Uruk, Karnak, and Prague. I have spoken with Solomon. I have run with the buffalo fathers of the plains. I have watched over Old Zimbabwe till the stones fell and the jackals fed on its people. I am Bartimaeus! I recognize no master. So I charge you in your turn, boy. Who are you to summon me?"
From 'The Amulet of Samarkand'
To add to the fun, he also talks in footnotes! The author's style of narration is the first of its kind that I have come across. The narration is partly through the eyes of Bartimaeus himself, and partly as a non-participant of the story. And since Bartimaeus is such an all-knowing, all-seeing, cheeky-and-witty-as-hell djinn, he tells us a lot more about magic and demons using footnotes. And trust me on this - these books are some of the few books where I actually laughed when I was reading them. Example? Here you go -
Situation: Bartimaeus is currently transformed into a fly, doing some eavesdropping. He buzzes too close to the guy and, whup! he's hammered by a rolled up paper and is left lying on the floor in a daze. He manages to crawl out of the pub into the open street. And what follows is -
Out in the street I kept the pub door in view, while inspecting my tender essence. It's a sorry state of affairs when a djinni who _________[5] is laid low by a rolled-up piece of paper, but that was the sad fact of the matter. All this changing and being batted about was not doing me any good. Mandrake...It was all Mandrake's doing. He'd pay for this, first chance I got[6].
[5] Insert achievement of your choice from the following selection: (a) fought the utukku single-handed at the battle of Qadesh (b) carved the great walls of Uruk from the living ground (c) destroyed three consecutive masters by use of the Hermetic Quibble (d) spoke with Solomon (e) other.
[6] Not that I could not do anything to him in my current state. At least, not alone. Certain djinn, Faquarl among them, had long espoused collective rebellion against the magicians. I'd always dismissed this as so much hogwash, impossible to achieve, but if Faquarl had come up to me with some boneheaded scheme right then, I'd have joined him with much high-fiving and inane whoops of joy.
From 'Ptolemy's Gate'
Now who wouldn't like an adorable djinni like Bartimaeus!
The books in the trilogy trace the series of events that happen between Bartimaeus, the magician Nathaniel (aka John Mandrake) and a commoner, Kitty Jones. Nathaniel (which is the magician's birth name, supposed to be guarded very dearly but which inadvertantly is learnt by Bartimaeus - thereby forming a different relationship between the magician and the demon) summons Bartimaeus for the first time to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the wicked power-hungry magician, Simon Lovelace. What follows is a game of cat and mouse, with each wanting possesion of the amulet which has the power to absorb any magical attack and protect the wearer. How the plans of Lovelace are thwarted by Bartimaeus and Nathaniel forms the rest of the plot in 'Amulet of Samarkand'.
In 'The Golem's Eye', Nathaniel is older and is now a government official looking into the activities of a bunch of revolutionary commoners, headed by Kitty Jpnes. Their aim is to overthrow the tyrannical rule of the magicians and form their own ruling mechanism. Bartimaeus and Nathaniel come together again to find and capture Kitty Jones, but before that to get rid of a crazy Golem. I won't divulge what it is, so go ahead and read the book.
'Ptolemy's Gate' is the second most interesting of the trilogy, the first being 'The Amulet'. It starts slowly, but gathers pace soon enough and before you know it, you're having the most amazing rollercoaster ride of a book! We get to know more about Bartimaeus' past and his relationship with the boy magician Ptolemy in this book. Kitty Jones plays a bigger role in the events and Nathaniel undergoes a life-changing realization when he sees what he has become in the past years.
I wish I could just write the whole story here, for it's all so exciting and well, awesome. But I refrain. I'd probably murder it in cold blood (which I have succesfully done to a lot of my own so called stories), and that's the last thing I want to do to Bartimaeus.
There's magic, there's humor, there's action and some tragedy too. No surprises that the Amulet is to be made into a movie. Remember how they killed the essence of Harry Potter with those movies and their half-baked plots? Apparently, Bartimaeus is not an exception.
And before I leave you in peace, one last witty bit from Ptolemy's Gate - had me laughing in the waiting lounge of an airport, to curious onlookers who probably thought I'd lost it for good!
Thing was, I knew this mercenary. Both times we'd met we'd had a difference of views, and we'd done our best to resolve it in a civilized fashion. But whether I squished him under a statue, blew him up with a Detonation or (as in our last encounter) simply set him on fire and hurled him down a mountainside, he never seemed to suffer the slightest injury. For his part, he'd come annoyingly close to killing me with various silver weapons. And now, just when I was at my weakest, here he was again. It gave me pause. I wasn't scared of him, ofcourse; dear me, no. Let's call it judiciously nervous.
As always he was wearing a pair of ancient leather boots, scratched and worn, which positively stank of magic[1]. Presumably, it was these that had triggered my Pulse.
[1]: In contrast to most of my masters (Mandrake's) shoes, which just positively stank.
Oh, this is just my kind of literature! And as always, don't let my review bring down your interests in reading the book - forget the review, remember the book! It's just that I'm amazingly good with words when I have absolutely nothing to say. And always at a horrible loss for words when there's something very interesting/good/important/useful/creative/intellectual to be said. Yes, I'm weird in that way. And yes, I was born like this.
I'm officially out of space in my little bookshelf. I don't find place for my precious Calvin and Hobbes' books (their size is not quite the standard size) and I don't like keeping books the way it's kept above. I like them all neatly arranged, indexed and then ordered by what I read often (read multiple times that is) and what I would like to read later. But no. No space! And I'm still in two minds whether I've to invest in a huge book shelf like the ones we see in the studies of famous writers and artists. I'm not sure my family can take that shock. It's just too early!
So till then, I'll just have to do with my little bookshelf. The new books will now start invading the space in the showcase. And when that's full, there's always the coffee table in the living room. God willing, if that's also full, I'm thinking about the dining table. C'mon, one needs place for books in one's house, right? We'll just have to be happy that I don't intend to move my masala dabbas out of the kitchen cabinets and use that for books. Now that would be a truly shocking shock for the family. Tell you a secret? I actually would love to see the look on my Mom's face if that happens! Evil me.
And the book currently out of the shelf and in my hand -
P.S: Yes, you guessed it right. I finally learnt how to download photos from the camera into my laptop. Talk about slow learners, eh? Better late than never, you see.
" Kira Arguonova entered Petrograd on the threshold of a box car. She stood straight, motionless, with the graceful indifference of a traveler on a luxurious ocean liner, with an old blue suit of faded cloth, with slender sunburned legs and no stockings. She had an old piece of plaid silk around her neck and short tousled hair, and a stockingcap with a bright yellow tassel. She had a calm mouth and slightly widened eyes witha defiant, enraptured, solemnly and fearfully expectant look of a warrior who is entering a strange city and is not quite sure whether he is entering it as a conqueror or a captive." -- Ayn Rand, 'We the living'.
So starts the introduction of Ayn Rand's first hero, Kira Alexandrovna Arguonova. All of 16 years old when she enters her city, to the ruins of her bourgeois life. The State has nationalized her father's business and their property. The city that she knew has changed, but she is the only one in her family who sees the hope and possibilities that lie amid the ruins and the Red posters proclaiming 'Proletarians of the world, unite!'. She is also the only one who's dream is to become an engineer and build bridges of aluminium.
'We the living', Rand's first novel, talks about the struggle of Man against the State (to quote the book). The State here represents any authoritarian rule, any dictatorship in any country. Like all her later books, 'We the living' talks about life and the essence of being alive. This novel can be seen as a precursor to 'Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged', her theory that man must live for himself alone. Kira, who strongly believes in it, finds it difficult to live life by the terms dictated by the Communist State which demanded, not independence, but self sacrifice. The other characters in the book, each convey a tenet towards this theory and it finally comes together during the climax when the two most important men in Kira's life, Leo and Andrei, stand a face-off (or face a stand-off?) - where both the men are wrong, and both are right.
The beauty of Rand's novels is the image of the hero. Be it Kira or Howard Roark or John Galt. The character is just so awe-inspiring, that it continues to haunt you even days after you've read the book. 'We the living' is the first and only book I've ever read in my life so far that made me cry. The pain, the emotions and the conflicts in Kira's life are conveyed so beautifully, in a typical Rand-ian way that one completely identifies with it. It is like watching a movie or even as if it is happening in front of you to see. The words hit you that hard, and leaves an imprint for a long time to come.
'We the living' is different from Atlas and Fountainhead in the way that this is not a happy novel. All the trademarks of Rand are there, yet the human element is more pronounced in 'We the living'. The heroes in this novel are more human than her later heroes. As Peikoff says in his foreword to the centennial edition of the book, 'Kira, though not intended as a self-portrait, is Ayn Rand intellectually and morally; she has all of Ayn Rand's ideas and values.' This is probably as close as we can get to the person behind the genius of Ayn Rand.
One would have read a lot of books on life in Soviet Russia during the times of the Revolution, but this book is a true showcase to the bitter and painful reality of life, especially for people like Kira and Leo who believe in living life on their own terms, for themselves. The poverty, the hunger, the rations and the Communist propaganda - the ugly truth about the Utopian dream that the Marxist leaders promised to the masses. Misplaced ideals and a directionless move towards what they think is a fair and just society, combined with this heady feeling one gets with brute power in their hands brings Russia (or USSR to be more precise) to its knees, or rather the people are brought down to their knees. The long lines in front of cooperative stores to get their daily rations of bread, oil and sugar, the stringent rules for non-proletarians or the erstwhile bourgeois and the all pervading Reds paint a grim picture of how rotten life was for everyone under the hammer and the sickle. And the only reason it is so vivid is because the author wrote it from her own life, the life that she lived and breathed when she was a citizen of Russia.
Every book of Ayn Rand that I have read has touched me, my life in ways even I cannot fathom. It brings this feeling of incompleteness that I may have lived this many years without a purpose, without an ideal that could be life-changing if only one had the will to stick to it in the face of adversity. It takes a lot to follow your mind and your heart, and be willing to die standing up for your values and beliefs. On second thoughts, living by one's convictions is far more difficult that having to die for it. It takes a hero to do that. Not just any hero, an Ayn Rand hero.
Like Howard Roark. Like Francisco D'Anconia, Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart. Like John Galt. Like Kira Arguonova.
Photo: Taken by me, a day before I finished the book.
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this as a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested forthis problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."
- Opening lines of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", by Douglas Adams.
This is what I call my kind of book - utterly irrelevant lines, totally funny and absolutely no pressure on your brain to remember or understand a virtually non-existent plot. Like a Superstar blockbuster. Heh heh.
Don't worry about my last post. I changed my mind. ;-) I do that sometimes.
False Impression (Jeffrey Archer) A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) (Yes, it is a pity that I haven't read this book yet!) Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts) The Afghan (Frederick Forsyth) The Historian (Elizabeth Kostova) The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud) Golem's Eye (Jonathan Stroud) Ptolemy's Gate (Jonathan Stroud)
Two amazing books in one week! The Gods must love me a lot indeed! ;-)
This is by far the most simplest, most touching book I've ever had the good fortune to read. I'm not exaggerating!
It's the memoir of Sayuri, the daughter of a fisherman who becomes a geisha and her struggles on the way to finding her destiny. What strikes you first about the book would probably be its simplicity. The language, the narration - it doesn't weigh you down with all the verbosity that one would generally find in a 'memoir'. After a point, you might not even be conscious of the language or the fact that it is a book and you're not exactly in Kyoto seeing the entire thing happening in front of your eyes. The entire story is said from the perspective of Sayuri and you can actually feel a difference in the narration when it is from a 9 year old girl from a fishing village and a 30yr old geisha - the innocence that gradually fades away as Sayuri meets the people that make and sometimes break her life.
What I found spell-binding was the way of life for a geisha. I remember those calendars we used to have at home with a Japanese girl in a kimono for each month of the year (if I remember correctly, it was Mitsubishi's calendar - way back in the 1980s) - well, that girl is a geisha. Me didn't know that - I thought all Japanese women dressed that way! I couldn't have been more wrong.
Their way of life is so fairy-tale-like that it's just so amazing that people used to be like that (they could still be like that for all I know!). From the make-up, the hair (did you know their hairstyles are waxed into place and they have special cradle like contraptions to rest their heads when they sleep at night so their hairstyles stay in place?!), the kimonos (my favorites - the author gives awesome descriptions of each kimono and each one outshines the one before) and their etiquette and what not!
A beautiful book, reminds me of a lazy afternoon with a cup of hot masala tea and Mom's potato bajjis. Aaah, heaven!
Read it. My book-review sucks, but the book is way cool. **wink**
Maybe I can even watch the movie now and see how close my imagination is to the portrayals on screen!
Finished reading Ayn Rand's Fountainhead for the second time. I'm yet to come across a book that can stay on your mind every waking moment for at least a week after you finish reading it.
I want to meet Howard Roark. Yeah, as simple as that. If possible, I want to BE Roark. The philosophy is so amazingly simple! But the simplicity ends right there. There cannot be a more tougher set of ideals (or principles in life) to follow than what Roark does. His absolute love for architecture makes you want to..I dont know, it's just so overwhelming! That's the word - overwhelming.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to read this book again. And again. And yet another time. You'll be forced to, it's that addictive. You get transported into this surreal world where people can play the most dirtiest of politics, at the same time be the pinnacle of integrity. Your feelings towards the characters changes so many times in the course of the book. One time you feel disgusted thinking about the guy, 10 chapters later you fall in love with that same character.
I'll just be making a mockery out of the whole thing if I attempt to write about the book. Reading this book should be written down on the things-to-do-before-I-die list. At least thrice.
There's a reason why a book written in 1943 is still under publication (recently had a 25th anniversary edition published!).
A part of you changes everytime you read the book. That's for sure. I've had two already.
Do you believe in God?” the old man asked, as if we had known each other forever but had somehow neglected to discuss that one topic. I assumed he wanted reassurance that his departure from this life would be the beginning of something better. I gave a kind answer.
“There has to be a God,” I said. “Otherwise, none of us would be here.” It wasn’t much of a reason, but I figured he didn’t need more.
“Do you believe God is omnipotent and that people have free will?” he asked.
“That’s standard stuff for God. So, yeah.”
“If God is omnipotent, wouldn’t he know the future?”
“Sure.”
“If God knows what the future holds, then all our choices are already made, aren’t they? Free will must be an illusion.”
He was clever, but I wasn’t going to fall for that trap. “God lets us determine the future ourselves, using our free will,” I explained.
“Then you believe God doesn’t know the future?”
“I guess not,” I admitted. “But he must prefer not knowing.”
“So you agree that it would be impossible for God to know the future and grant humans free will?”
“I hadn’t thought about it before, but I guess that’s right. He must want us to find our own way, so he intentionally tries not to see the future.”
“For whose benefit does God withhold his power to determine the future?” he asked.
“Well, it must be for his own benefit, and ours, too,” I reasoned. “He wouldn’t have to settle for less.”
The old man pressed on. “Couldn’t God give humans the illusion of free will? We’d be just as happy as if we had actual free will, and God would retain his ability to see the future. Isn’t that a better solution for God than the one you suggested?”
“Why would God want to mislead us?”
“If God exists, his motives are certainly unfathomable. No one knows why he grants free will, or why he cares about human souls, or why pain and suffering are necessary parts of life.”
“The one thing I know about God’s motives is that he must love us, right?” I wasn’t convinced of this myself, given all the problems in the world, but I was curious about how he would respond.
“Love? Do you mean love in the way you understand it as a human?”
“Well, not exactly, but basically the same thing. I mean, love is love.”
“A brain surgeon would tell you that a specific part of the brain controls the ability to love. If it’s damaged, people are incapable of love, incapable of caring about others.”
“So?”
“So, isn’t it arrogant to think that the love generated by our little brains is the same thing that an omnipotent being experiences? If you were omnipotent, why would you limit yourself to something that could be reproduced by a littleclump of neurons?”
I shifted my opinion to better defend it. “We must feel something similar to God’s type of love, but not the same way God feels it.”
“What does it mean to feel something similar to the way God feels? Is that like saying a pebble is similar to the sun because both are round?” he responded.
“Maybe God designed our brains to feel love the same way he feels it. He could do that if he wanted to.”
“So you believe God wants things. And he loves things, similar to the way humans do. Do you also believe God experiences anger and forgiveness?”
“That’s part of the package,” I said, committing further to my side of the debate.
“So God has a personality, according to you, and it is similar to what humans experience?”
“I guess so.”
“What sort of arrogance assumes God is like people?” he asked.
“Okay, I can accept the idea that God doesn’t have a personality exactly like people. Maybe we just assume God has a personality because it’s easier to talk about it that way. But the important point is that something had to create reality. It’s too well-designed to be an accident.” “Are you saying you believe in God because there are no other explanations?” he asked.
“That’s a big part of it.”
“If a stage magician makes a tiger disappear and you don’t know how the trick could be done without real magic, does that make it real magic?”
“That’s different. The magician knows how it’s done and other magicians know how it’s done. Even the magician’s assistant knows how it’s done. As long as someone knows how it’s done, I can feel confident that it isn’t real magic. I don’t personally need to know how it’s done,” I said.
“If someone very wise knew how the world was designed without God’s hand, could that person convince you that God wasn’t involved?”
“In theory, yes. But a person with that much knowledge doesn’t exist.”
“To be fair, you can only be sure that you don’t know whether that person exists or not.”
SPOILER ALERT - If you haven't finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince yet, you wouldn't want to read what's coming up.
Source: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, by J.K.Rowling
And Harry realized, with a shock so huge it seemed to root him to the spot, that Malfoy was crying — actually crying — tears streaming down his pale face into the grimy basin. Malfoy gasped and gulped and then, with a great shudder, looked up into flu-cracked mirror and saw Harry staring at him over his shoulder.
Malfoy wheeled around, drawing his wand. Instinctively, Harry pulled out his own. Malfoy's hex missed Harry by inches, shattering the lamp on the wall beside him; Harry threw himself sideways, thought Levicorpus! and flicked his wand, but Malfoy blocked the jinx and raised his wand for another —
"No! No! Stop it!" squealed Moaning Myrtle, her voice echoing loudly around the tiled room. "Stop! STOP!"
There was a loud bang and the bin behind Harry exploded; Harry attempted a Leg-Locker Curse that backfired off the wall be-hind Malfoy's ear and smashed the cistern beneath Moaning Myr-tle, who screamed loudly; water poured everywhere and Harry slipped as Malfoy, his face contorted, cried, "Cruci —"
"SECTUMSEMPRA!" bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly.
Blood spurted from Malfoy's face and chest as though he had been slashed with an invisible sword. He staggered backward and collapsed onto the waterlogged floor with a great splash, his wand falling from his limp right hand.
"No —" gasped Harry.
Slipping and staggering, Harry got to his feet and plunged toward Malfoy, whose face was now shining scarlet, his white hands scrabbling at his blood-soaked chest.
"No — I didn't —"
Harry did not know what he was saying; he fell to his knees beside Malfoy, who was shaking uncontrollably in a pool of his own blood. Moaning Myrtle let out a deafening scream: "MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!"
As Langdon sat alone, absently gazing into the darkness, the silence of his home was shattered again, this time by the ring of his fax machine. Too exhausted to be annoyed, Langdon forced a tired chuckle.
God’s people, he thought. Two thousand years of waiting for their Messiah, and they’re still persistent as hell.
Wearily, he returned his empty mug to the kitchen and walked slowly to his oak-paneled study. The incoming fax lay in the tray. Sighing, he scooped up the paper and looked at it.
Instantly, a wave of nausea hit him.
The image on the page was that of a human corpse. The body had been stripped naked, and its head had been twisted, facing completely backward. On the victim’s chest was a terrible burn. The man had been branded . . . imprinted with a single word. It was a word Langdon knew well. Very well. He stared at the ornate lettering in disbelief.
“Illuminati,” he stammered, his heart pounding. It can’t be . . .
In slow motion, afraid of what he was about to witness, Langdon rotated the fax 180 degrees. He looked at the word upside down.
Instantly, the breath went out of him. It was like he had been hit by a truck. Barely able to believe his eyes, he rotated the fax again, reading the brand right-side up and then upside down. “Illuminati,” he whispered.
Stunned, Langdon collapsed in a chair. He sat a moment in utter bewilderment. Gradually, his eyes were drawn to the blinking red light on his fax machine. Whoever had sent this fax was still on the line . . . waiting to talk. Langdon gazed at the blinking light a long time. Then, trembling, he picked up the receiver.
An undercover media investigation reveals a shocking lack of literary appreciation among some of Britain's famous publishers and agents.
One of the most enduring myths of the book world now stands exposed: the belief that great publishers and literary agents instinctively recognise a good work when they see one. Stories about earnest editors rescuing literary gems from "slush piles" always sounded a bit exaggerated but who would have thought that these might be pure fiction? Now, we know — thanks to an undercover media investigation, which has revealed a shocking level of a lack of literary appreciation among some of Britain's famous publishers and agents. Let alone discovering new talent, they were not able to recognise even some of the existing classics such as the Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul's In a Free State when these were submitted to them disguised as new works by aspiring writers.
The Sunday Times, which carried out the sting operation, said it sent a typed manuscript of Sir Vidia's Booker Prize winning novel under an assumed name to 20 publishers and agents — and all turned it down! Some did not even care to acknowledge it. Those who did regretted that it was not something that greatly excited them.
The newspaper reported that "typical" was the reply from a leading London literary agency, PFD, which wrote back: "Having considered your material, we do not feel, we are sorry to say, sufficiently enthusiastic or confident about it." Ditto another well-known agency, Blake Friedmann. It was not impressed either by the "content" or the novelist's "writing style."
Offering its apologies, the agency explained: "In order to take on a new author, several of us here (at the agency) would need to be extremely enthusiastic about both the content and writing style. I'm sorry to say we didn't feel that strongly about your work."
There was bad news from yet another agent, Barbara Levy, who thought that although the novel was "quite original" there was not enough spark in it to interest her. "In the end, I'm afraid we just weren't quite enthusiastic enough to be able to offer to take things further," she replied.
Another highly-regarded and prize-winning novel submitted to the same set of publishers and agents suffered a similar fate. Stanley Middleton's Holiday, which shared the 1974 Booker Prize with Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist, was also rejected almost by everyone — including Bloomsbury and Time Warner — on grounds that it was not their sort of book. Only one literary agent showed some interest and wanted to see more chapters before making up her mind. Both In a Free State and Holiday were widely acclaimed when first published in the 1970s, and the former still remains among Sir Vidia's more important works.
So, what's going on? Surely, there is something wrong somewhere when the country's best literary minds — those who decide what others should read — appear to be so completely devoid of critical insight. Even after allowing for the fact that the novels in question were published in a different era and that literary tastes have changed dramatically since then the episode tells us something about how publishing decisions are made these days with attention focussed solely on marketing. And not so much on marketing the book as on marketing the author.
Important factors
In recent years, age, gender, and the "looks" of an author have become important factors in making publishing judgments. While a beautiful face may no longer be a pre-requisite for a career in films, publishers are becoming increasingly obsessed with whether a prospective writer is young and glamorous enough to attract readers. And if they have an "interesting" and headline-grabbing personal history that is regarded as a bonus.
The "new" school
The "new" school of publishing believes that in an age of competing forms of mass entertainment a book does not sell on its literary merit alone but rides on the back of a whole lot of extra-literary factors, the most important of which is the "marketing" potential of the writer's personality — looks, lifestyle, ability to sound clever on the telly etc. etc.
Older authors, unless they have consistently topped the charts, are seen as a marketing liability. "Being 29, blonde, good-looking, and vaguely famous should be enough to get you a book published nowadays," according to Nicholas Clee, former editor of The Bookseller, Britain's most authoritative trade journal.
No wonder, there is a rash of books by B-list celebrities while serious writers struggle to find acceptance. Increasingly, publishers also tend to prefer first-time authors — more so, if they are young and telegenic — because they find it easier to "tease" the market with an untested commodity than risk money on those whose previous works may not have done well.
An apocryphal story doing the rounds is that a journal is planning to resubmit Sir Vidia and Mr. Middleton's novels to another set of publishers and literary agents — this time disguised as debut works of fictional twenty-something "blondes"! We await the outcome with bated breath.
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