Keep calm and read a dangerous book

GAUTAM PADMANABHAN
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The cover of Ulysses by James Joyce

A book by Andy Miller

Lost for words
TOPICS
arts, culture and entertainment
books and literature


books and literature
English literature
authors and poets
award-winning books
literary greats
It must have been a moment of hubris when I agreed to do this fortnightly column. After all, I
reckoned I had read enough books to sustain it for weeks and had ample time to read new books for
future pieces. By the third piece, I was struggling to find titles from my library that were relevant to
this column. Since then, I have been on a binge, reading whenever possible throughout the day much
to the bemusement of family and friends.
No regrets, however, as like Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously, I have
rediscovered the joy and challenge of reading beyond one's comfort zone.
Caught up in his daily routines, Miller believed he did not have time to read the books he always
claimed to have knowledge of. Miller, who worked in a publishing house, had, like most of us in the
business, this ability to project erudition by mere familiarity with names of authors and titles.
But one day, by chance, Miller picked up Bulgakov's The Master & Margarita and rediscovered the
joys of reading. He then set for himself the task of reading 50 books within a year and the result is an
often hilarious, and even inspiring, memoir of his experiences. Miller wrestles with books such as
George Eliot's Middlemarch that even Salman Rushdie claimed he had not read, while he finds War
and Peace a surprisingly easy read. One of the most entertaining chapters deals with the many
similarities between The Da Vinci Code and Moby Dick! Miller also explores the social side of the
bibliophile through reading groups, social media and interactions with authors and the culture of
white lies people in the publishing world practise while selling books. White lies are also our defence
when we reject a manuscript, for we never know if we have just passed over the next big bestseller or
prize winner. Crammed with personal stories, jokes, footnotes, trivia, blog entries and lists, Miller's
book is ultimately about the subjectivity of our reaction to books, which, if we are honest enough to
admit, are often not in tune with received wisdom.
One title that features prominently on my list of unread books is James Joyce's Ulysses. I was,
therefore, sufficiently intrigued by a review in The Economist that described a book on the history
ofUlysses as riveting. Kevin Birmingham's The Most Dangerous Book is indeed a gripping history
about the creation of Joyce's masterpiece and the battle that followed to publish it.
Birmingham, a Harvard Professor, eloquently traces the birth of modernism and the roots of Joyce's
inspiration in the fast-changing moral and political landscape that was the early 20th century. He
takes us into Joyce's unique writing process as Joyce constructed Ulysses out of personal experience
while using Homer's myth for structure. It is also the remarkable story of how Joyce went on writing
despite battling attacks of debilitating eye disease and frequent surgery while facing the constant
threat that the book would never see publication due to the stringent obscenity laws of the time.
Equally remarkable are the stories of the people who championed Joyce and braved arrest to either
publish extracts or smuggle into the U.K. and the U.S. copies of the book, which was first published
in France. Finally, the matter was settled in court in 1933 with a landmark decision that judged the
book not on the basis of a few obscene passages but in its entiretyas a work of art. When we look
back on Ulyssesthrough today's perspective, we are most likely to wonder what the fuss was all
about. But as Birmingham succinctly sums up, After Ulysses, books seemed less likely to deprave
and corrupt us. If anything, they convinced us that the most dangerous fiction was our innocence."
And finally, as we enter the awards season, comes a book that is a biting satire on the literary scene
in London. Edward St Aubyn's Lost For Words follows a year in the life of the Elysian Prize for
Literature, a thinly veiled version of the Booker. The cast of characters includes a bunch of highly
unqualified judges, self- obsessed authors, literary editors and agents who are all pursuing their own
agenda. To add to the general chaos, a self-published Indian prince plots to assassinate the chairman
of the judges for not shortlisting his magnum opus, while his aunt's cookbook makes it to the
shortlist, thanks to the publishers mistake of submitting the wrong book!
St Aubyn, who has been on the Booker shortlist, captures all the backbiting and behind-the-scenes
politicking, and spices it up with hilarious extracts from the nominated books and the sex-capades of
the nominated authors!
Incidentally, Lost For Words has won the only literary award that St Aubyn was not aware of, the
2014 Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, beating Sebastian Faulk's authorised Wodehouse sequel,
the highly enjoyable Jeeves and The Wedding Bells.
Keywords: Books, authors, Andy Miller, The Year of Reading Dangerously, The Da Vinci
Code, Bulgakov, The Master & Margarita, Ulysses, Lost For Words