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Tuesday, May 2, 2006
The return of Derkaderkastan
Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani is released today, heralded by a flurry of reviews and extracts in the papers, and, as committed STML-watchers will know, we had quite a lot to say about the book some time ago, here, here, and here. And then we shut the hell up, because we realised we’d been taken in by the same towering pile of hype and bullshit as everyone else, and felt sheepish. Bad us.
Still, it was even more depressing to open the Arts sections of various broadsheets over the long weekend and read the same reviews – and virtually the same opinions – of the same ten-or-so books in EVERY SINGLE ONE. With hundreds of books released every week, it remains astonishing how successful the PR people at Random House, Hodder, Penguin, Bloomsbury et al are at shoehorning their books into the papers (below graph from last week’s Publishing News).
While there is undoubtedly a debate to be had about whether reviews actually sell books (most signs, it has to be said, point to No), it can also be asserted that without any reviews at all, literary titles (as opposed to genre fiction or topical non-fic) stand little or no chance of making an impact. So, without trying to sound like a whining small publisher (but succeeding all the same), it’d be nice if journalists would cast their nets a little wider, and not just review the last thing Random House took them on a junket for.
Of course, the main journalistic incitement for reviewing one of the big boy’s releases is knowing that everyone else will be doing it, and you can stick your oar in too. So you can read our review of Londonstani over at RSB now.
[Update/SPOILER ALERT: There's more discussion in the comments]
Sarfraz Manzoor wrote a good article about this topic in the Observer at the weekend called “Why do Asian writers have to be ‘authentic’ to succeed?”
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1764420,00.html
The hype puts me off – maybe if Londonstani wasnt being touted as the greatest novel ever written ever ever ever in the year 2006 I would read it. But Sarfraz Manzoor makes some good points about why the way some Asian writers are marketed and sold as is quite patronising and misinformed.
By Jay on 05.04.06 12:05 pm
It is a good article – it was one of the many that I saw over the weekend that made me want to write a review – and a review that concentrated on the story not the circus…
There’s a real problem here though, in that Londonstani’s twist hangs entirely on the question of authenticity – and fluffs it utterly in my opinion. And none of the reviews can mention this, because it’s not acceptable in reviews to spoil the ending, so the reviews sound not only bad, but cruel, because they can’t cite the one thing that pisses off everyone who reads the book… I might post more on this later, but I don’t want to go on and on about a poor book!
By stml on 05.04.06 12:57 pm
Let me guess – the twist in the tail is that the novel is written by a non Asian guy?
By Jay on 05.04.06 2:04 pm
Boom boom! Tsh! Yeah, got it in one there. The narrator’s actually white. And it makes the whole book feel like an extended joke on the reader – you’ve been giving it the benefit of the doubt all the way through, willing it the believability (a different thing to authenticity) it occasionally stretches, and then it turns round and goes Ha! Fooled you! But you weren’t that sure anyway, you were just being nice…
More than that though, is the feeling that the twist is tacked on – he had no idea how to end the book, it had been bought by 4th Estate for this huge sum, and it needed finishing. I might be wrong about that, but they sent out this first-third-preview at the end of the year, months before they had full proofs, and claimed in the press release then they were still waiting on a finished version, so…
I’m pretty sure that’s what lies behind the cruel reviews though, and Sarfraz Manzoor clearly hasn’t read the book – it’s ‘authenticity’ is in the end absolutely central to the narrative. But if he’d ended it differently, it could have been a much better book. As I said in my review, I really enjoyed the early stages…
By stml on 05.04.06 2:49 pm
So the whole thing becomes some kind of joke, presumably played on the non British Asian reader? To me it sounds like some kind of loss of nerve – write in this highly stylised way full of the patois of London Asian youth, then make it into a kind of ironic metafictional game. But the novel is being sold as giving an insight into that whole milieu and culture.
Plus, Tony White already wrote a novel in East End Bengali Cockney, so it’s not like its a shocking thing for a white guy to write a novel written in the London Asian patois.
Too clever by half I think. I think I’ll just read ‘Tourism’ instead – that got a couple of decent reviews. But I’m not sure if I’m in the mood for ‘sub-Houellebecq’ liberal baiting. Sarfraz Manzoor described it as ‘dick-lit’, which half makes me want to read it and half not. Anyway, dick-lit, a new genre is born?
By Jay on 05.04.06 9:31 pm
No, no, no, the author is Gautam, is who he claims to be, the narrator is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish… ah well, we tried – just read the book, or don’t…
By STML on 05.05.06 1:48 am
I read the review in Saturday’s Guardian and the reviewer said that Londonstani works best as a novel for teenagers. This was the same opinion of the reviewer in the Independent and the reviewer in the TLS said exactly the same thing. Sounds to me like the novel has been seriously over hyped and maybe even pitched wrongly.
By Cixous on 05.07.06 10:10 pm