* Taking potshots at Martin Amis is a bit like shooting at balloons at a local fair--it's ridiculously easy, it's fun, and everyone's doing it. Michiko Kakutani adds her mite: "Were Mr. Amis's name not emblazoned on this book, it seems unlikely to have found a publisher. It reads not as a satire or dark parable of modern life, not even, really, as a fully fashioned novel, but as a bunch of unsavory outtakes from an abandoned project: nasty bits and pieces best left on the cutting room floor."

* "At the end of a Peck essay, his subjects -- Philip Roth, Julian Barnes, Colson Whitehead -- are wounded, their books in ruins, massacred. Even if you're a fan of the work of these authors, you'll never be able to read their works again without hearing Peck's noisy voice shouting in the background: ''Forget it! You're wasting your time. The guy's no good.'' Finally: the over-the-top review of the over-the-top reviewer. The Babu isn't sure that Roth, Barnes and company know they're dead (white) men walking--even so, send Dale Peck over to India one of these days. His hatchet won't lack for work, and we'll even throw in a trip to the Taj Mahal for free.

Over at The Globe and Mail, Kate Taylor steps back and takes a look at the book reviewing debate. She mentions Peck, too. "Because few newspapers and magazines can stomach paying a critic for the hours it takes to read a book, most literary criticism is, in effect, amateur. Unlike film, theatre and the visual arts, which usually have dedicated staff critics, fiction is reviewed by freelancers, most of whom are novelists themselves. The ones like Peck who have the courage to stand alone as critics rather than cautiously align themselves with their brethren are few and far between."

* More on The Bookseller of Kabul: what the "part that provides the story" wants is a cut from the advances and royalties made by, presumably, the "part that wrote the story". Oh, and Mr Rais also wants the world to know that he's not a misogynistic patriarchal bogeyman, just a kindly, well, Kabul patriarch.

"The 1971 crisis, which led to the break-up of Pakistan and the inception of Bangladesh, has been very much of a hushed affair in Pakistani politics. But it appears that at least two young writers have decided lately to break the silence." The rest of this article from Dawn offers more in the way of examples from the work of Kamila Shamsie and Sorayya Khan rather than actual comment, unfortunately.

The Babu's been trying to read Zoe Trope's "book", for want of a better word, and in between suppressing the urge to either barf or pass out from boredom, came across this article: "Zoe's chapbook was No. 10 on Powell's bestseller list in 2002, an unheard-of feat for a small-press book. She has been adopted into a community of young blue-chip writers and endorsed by Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer. She has done dozens of interviews in the past few weeks, and PDKTF is already being translated into Italian, Dutch and Japanese.
Zoe may sell a million books at this rate. And I have no idea why." (Link found on Bookslut.)

"Coetzee gives few interviews, his two autobiographical books lay bare the recesses of the writer's inner life while withholding most external details, and his public image consists largely of a gaunt authorial picture that stares at you like an accusation from the book jackets. There is no way to know him other than through his writing." Siddhartha Deb is perfectly happy to follow the writing, rather than the man, in this review of Elizabeth Costello.

Amit Chaudhuri's doing a five-part article on language and Michael Madhusudan Dutt, among other things. Here's part one: "Around the late 1850s, after the long process of disowning, began the process of recovery, the reappropriation, by Dutt, of the Bengali language and culture, culminating in his epic poem, Meghnad Badha Kabya. Now, rejecting the language in which he had invested his literary ambitions, he turned to his mother-tongue, not yet quite a respectable language for the middle class."

Zadie Smith on Kafka's uncomfortable legacy. Ignore the strong Lit Crit in overdrive feel you get from this paragraph; the rest of the piece actually does have an interesting argument to make. "Where are Kafka's descendants? Only a handful--Borges, W.G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard--have successfully "channeled" the Kafkaesque in any meaningful way. The result has been queer. His influence seems to cause a mutation in the recipient, metamorphosing the novel into something closer to a meditation, a fantastical historiography, an essay, a parable. What is it about Kafka's lessons for the novel that cannot be contained within the novel in the form as we have come to know it? How does Kafka lead novelists away from the novel? "

Prince Charles is visiting India, and among the many proscriptions handed down by the royal minders ("don't offer your hand unless he offers his first, call him Your Royal Highness and then switch to Sir") was a nervous abjuration not to mention the Burrell word. Kitabkhana contemplated doing a Butler-Book round-up, but the good folks at MobyLives have been far more assiduous (scroll down the page, there are about four separate items on Burrell's Diana book). Besides, after spending an hour at a red carpet reception where the reception line fidgeted in the sun waiting for HRH to emerge and do the handshaking (or not) thingumajig, the Babu's lost all interest in the British Royal Family. The Prince, for the record, was a perfectly gracious, slightly elderly, jug-eared bloke, and the Babu spent most of his time thinking of Charlies he'd rather have met instead: Charlie 'Bird' Parker, Charlie Chaplin, Charlie's Angels...

India may have been leading the pack in the race to warp the minds and hearts of a new generation of scholars, but it looks as though we have competition. Abdelwahab El-Affendi defines "the new Orientalism" in The Daily Star.
"The new resurgent orientalism does not even put up the pretence of scholarly detachment or search for truth. Not only are its proponents eager to work for the CIA and Pentagon, preferably on the front line of recolonization, but it also wants to bring the CIA and the army into the classroom. The argument is no longer about what the student should be taught, but about what they should not be taught. Students should not be permitted to read Said, or Robert Fisk or Arundhati Roy. And above all, Middle East scholars must be discouraged from learning Arabic. The new colonial power which hopes to encounter its first major success in Iraq is one which does not apparently believe that knowledge is power but it certainly hopes that ignorance is."

Can the Paris Review continue without George Plimpton, or is it, as an anonymous friend of the late editor suggests, "a very fragile little roller-coaster"? The Village Voice investigates.

More on the subject of Big Little Magazines: "God knows we need a review that at least believes in standards and can intuit excellence," Robert Lowell wrote. The New York Review of Books is celebrating its fortieth anniversary. Highlights of this issue include: John Updike on El Greco, Andrew O'Hagan on Eminem,
Luc Sante on New York City, Freeman Dyson on Einstein and Poincaré, Larry McMurtry on Garrison Keillor, John Banville on George Orwell, Joyce Carol Oates on American literary fiction and a lot more.

While we're on little magazines, Biblio's insistence on living in a time warp has begun to beguile the Babu. Their May-June 2003 issue is now up online. Of especial interest: Tariq Ali on Al-Jazeera, Amita Baviskar and Seema Alavi on anti-war demonstrations (yup, we're talking serious time warp here!), Vijay Jung Thapa on Everest and Sridhar Balan on Jim Corbett.

The Prix Goncourt has been announced earlier than expected. The prizewinning book is about a woman who is sent to spy on Bertolt Brecht.

"Success will mean that a pioneering group of journalists who were hounded out of their jobs for tackling a nation's government head-on, and exposing a scandal within its highest levels, are back in business. Failure - whatever the true cause - will be seen as a victory for the authorities, and evidence that there are limits to free speech in the country in question, India." If you haven't picked up a subscription to Tehelka yet, shame on you. (Nope, they don't pay the Babu for these endorsements. He just has strong views on not allowing the Indian government to get away with muzzling a website that blew the lid off several high-level scams.)

The I'm Not Waving, I'm Drowning Department: Kitabkhana's looking for a new design and we're not entirely sure what readers want in the way of new features. We'll be adding a list of websites on Indian publishing/ the homepages of Indian authors, but what else do people want? Comment boxes? A messageboard? A new template? All suggestions welcome--and remember, the Babu's a lazy lout who's in the market for labour saving devices--nothing that causes him extra work will be countenanced.

"...[The] goons of the RSS-VHP-Bajrang Dal-BJP ilk have also displayed their love for living Indian culture by throwing rotten eggs and chairs on the stage; by slogan-shouting during performances; by cutting power-supply to the auditorium; and by forcing audiences into leaving, or performances into being cancelled. It is as if our acultural fundoos have taken it upon themselves to illustrate that the bigotry Habib Saab’s plays meet head-on is only too real. Given their passionate interest in culture, the attackers have not even seen the plays they are attacking." Githa Hariharan on the recent attacks on Habib Tanvir and his Naya Theatre.

The Idiot's Guide to Interviewing Jhumpa Lahiri: Blather on about how goodlooking she is, since of course that's the most important aspect of her writing. Ask her the torn between two worlds question. And if you're still stuck for a paragraph, ask how she deals with post-Pulitzer stress.
Book Magazine, on the other hand, chose to ask "librarians and English teachers" about Jhumpa, spoke to her mother, took her on a trip to Ellis Island--did all the hard work that should go into a proper profile, in other words, and it paid off.

"Making any book into a film is walking into a minefield. Readers are bound to compare the novel with the film, and unfavourably"-- Gowri Ramnarayan on adaptations. The Babu's not sure she's entirely right, though: Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility was faithful to Austen but (brickbats from dissenters welcome) not a terribly exciting film, whereas Rituparno Ghosh plays around with several elements in his adaptation of Tagore's Chokher Bali, but still creates a truly interesting piece of work. The touchstone for me, personally, has always been The English Patient: loved the book, loved the film and thought of them as two almost completely distinct creations. Then there was Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas, which functioned at a different level all together. As a version of Saratchandra's Bengali novel, it was a joke and a very bad one at that. As a three-hour-long drama centred around a traditional North Indian family who just happened to speak the odd word of Bengali and wear vaguely Bong outfits, it made excellent soap opera.

Two recent book launches in Delhi, or, why The Babu is an embittered soul: Launch number one was Ashok Banker’s. Wherein Ashok, who uttered the immortal line, “You will never see my picture on Page Three” (Page Three being the wretched hell of the tits-and-Indian-ass city supplements) is hijacked by various Page Three photographers, who immortalise his trademark white, I-have-been-changed-by-the-Ramayana homespun gig for generations of Kylie Minogue backside watchers. Next on agenda, Book Reading. This entails Ashok and talented actor Lushin Dubey indulging in melodramatic exchanges from Banker’s Ramayana. In Act Two, enter the Rambhakts who demand to know what Ashok’s view is on Ram’s world finally being reclaimed by Ram bhakts. Ashok says he has no opinion, he’s just a writer. Next up are the Secularists, who demand to know whether Ashok wasn’t upset by a) the demolition of the Babri Masjid b) the killing of Muslims in the Gujarat riots. To which, Ashok Banker replies that he has no opinions, he’s just a writer.

We all adjourn at this point for refreshments: in deference to the holy scriptures of the Ramayana, despite the fact that Banker’s reworked them via Tolkien’s sagas, the fare is vegetarian and distinctly non-alcoholic. The Babu, an embittered soul after these many hours of mediocre prose and below-par questions, reaches for a restorative, which turns out to be something called an Orange Blossom. “Lovely, innit?” trills an impressionable editor, “just like the mocktails in Calcutta bars!” The Babu waits until she’s taken a largish sip in order to deliver his verdict: “Wonderful, tastes exactly like puked up and twice-warmed blancmange.” To the sounds of a hapless editor retching in the loo, the Babu bids adieu to his friends.

The next one up is the launch of the talented Raj Kamal Jha’s If You Are Afraid of Heights. This is far more in the general mould of Indian book launches. Three fearsomely experienced panelists discourse at interminable length about a) the poetry of RKJ’s prose b) the postcolonialist framework in which RKJ operates and c) the fraught question of readership, to which they return the collective answer that none is only par for the course, and Jha, as a writer who owns a certain small but dedicated band of readers, is merely an unruly contradicting example.

Why, you might ask, is the audience silent during the two hours (the Babu does not exaggerate) in the wintry chill of the India International Centre lawns that this discussion soaks up? The answers are: a) they’re all friends of either the author or the panelists b) they’ve been discreetly paid off in advance c) they’re too stewed to the gills with free booze to contest the complete irrelevance of the evening.

What the evening establishes is this: Raj Kamal Jha is an intelligent, iconoclastic writer whose opinions are worth listening to, except that they’re drowned out by the white noise of many panelists attempting to prove their worth; that the only way to keep an audience glued to a book reading/ discussion is to keep them supplied with booze and snacks; and that the most important thing people who read passages from books need to know is this, speak into the mike and make sure that it’s actually on.

And the Babu stumbles out into the cold, seeking his next Kingfisher beer, wondering when the central paradox will hit people: Raj is perfectly capable of holding an audience spellbound on his own—so why was the paraphernalia in place at all? As for the book, it’s miles ahead of the experimental, tentative The Blue Bedspread: here, Raj is a poet of Calcutta, a somewhat over-mannered raconteur of the stories that never get told, a crusader who punctures our view of ourself by insisting that we recognise our silent complicity, our willingness to endorse views that are specious if they promote our own comfort. In other words, despite his nice-man demeanour, Raj is one of the last of the true revolutionaries. The failure of this polite, verbose evening at the IIC is an indication simply that we’re blocking his voice.

But the Babu’s left wondering why book launches, and readings, in India don’t obey a simple rule: delete whatever is extraneous to a conversation. Instead of which, the history of book launches seems to be a history of meaningless digressions. The man who grabs the mike is king, and he will rule until someone braver wrests the mike from his cold, dead hands, and his yappy, repetitive mouth.

"Given the dissonance between food fantasies and everyday eating, the birth of food porn was all but unavoidable." Molly O'Neill wanted to be "an interpreter of everyday life"--instead she's the "high priestess of a world that exists almost exclusively in the imagination".

"Houellebecq, en fait - the first book-length study of its subject - is not a straightforward piece of literary analysis, but a jumble of articles, diary entries, letters (the two men are friends) and court documents. The book lacks structure, but not substance. It provides an eloquent defence of a controversial author and a window on today's Parisian literary scene. Noguez shows how writers coalesce and split, how they bicker at cocktail parties, plot in restaurants and misbehave at discos." From The Times Literary Supplement.

Hmm, so this is what's wrong with the Indian media's not terribly literary books pages: they're filled with reviewers rather than critics.

"Alberto Fuguet heads a group of young Latin-American writers who espouse a new realism, dubbed McOndo, in contrast to the old magic realism of Garcia Marquez's famously imagined town of Macondo." Michael Dirda on Fuguet.

John Mullan offers a brief history of Western book cover design in The Guardian. In his youth, the Babu divided book covers into three politically incorrect categories. The "Sovietski" covers of the Russian books that flooded India in the Nehruvian and post-Nehruvian eras were colourful but unmistakeably alien, referring us to a mysterious mythology not quite our own. "Phoren" books were colourful, brash, vivid, as tempting as the "phoren" chocolates than in short supply in the country--they literally opened up a new world. And "amader boi" was how I thought of Bengali books: the accent most often on calligraphy rather than on pictures or photographic images, so that to walk through bookshops was to be confronted with the undeniable importance of the written word, raised to the level of an art form.

"His real fascination, though, I think, has always been with the disreputable side of human intellectual enquiry — with scientific, literary and religious flapdoodle. Especially scientific: He has been patrolling the boundary between science and pseudoscience for more than half a century." The Washington Times reviews Martin Gardner's 66th, or possibly seventy-somethingth--book.

I'm not a big fan of reading fiction online--the Babu needs the physical book, the beanbag space, the cat on the lap turning pages for you, etc--but I intend to make an exception for the Barcelona Review. One of those sites where you feel like a right eejit for having taken so long to find it. Not all the fiction is of stunning quality, but it makes a change from reading those interminable New Yorker stories.

The Babu needs a proofreader (defined as anyone who's willing to catch his typos--he can't offer a salary, but the previous incumbent in the job, ie his longsuffering partner, performed the necessary duties for a box of fresh-baked brownies every week...). Kitabkhana had mentioned a new publishing house, Zubaan, a while back on the blog: well, we got its email ID wrong. If you're looking for more information on them, the email ID is: zubaanwbooks@vsnl.net. (Think George Bush--there's a "w" in the middle.)
Ritu Menon's Women Unlimited is also up and running now--their email ID is womenunltd@vsnl.net. The Babu wishes both imprints good luck.

Irene Pepperberg on "that damn bird" and the question of whether animals might be able to share a language with humans: "Researchers such as Pinker and I get along well because I never claim that Alex has full-blown language; I never would. I'm not going to be able to put Alex on a "T" stand and have you interview him the way you interview me. But Alex has basic building blocks that are language-like behaviors — and also elements of phenomena like consciousness and awareness. Is Alex conscious? Personally, I believe so. Can I prove it? No. Does he have perceptual awareness? That I can definitely prove."
The Babu's been wondering for a while whether we've ever conducted experiments that work the other way round: are there human scientists around who can speak fluent dolphin, complete with clicks, for instance, or who can separate the many different layers that go into the mew of a cat, depending on whether it's talking to its kittens, a predator, a pigeon that might be potential prey, or a possible partner? Inputs welcome.

Everyone can use a friendly review. Even if the friend in question is Fidel Castro.

Even when it comes to humans, the way we see language can change--drastically. The Daily Telegraph has a lovely piece by Julie Myerson on the phenomenon of synaesthesia.
"The word "synaesthesia" literally means "joined sensation". It seems that in any normal person there's a division in the brain between the bit that perceives words and the bit that perceives colours. But in a synaesthete that division is missing. Hence an electric mauve "August" or a shimmering green "Wednesday". Even more unnervingly, other sensations can get joined up too. Some synaesthetes get tastes and shapes or even, occasionally, smells or textures when they hear music or see words."

Very few Booker Prize winners appear to react with apposite one-liners ("It is a far, far, better thing that I do now..."). Arundhati Roy's immediate reaction was: "Gosh!" (If you're reading this across the Atlantic, be aware that most Indian writers working in the English language are imprinted at birth with Enid Blyton and Billy Bunter catchphrases, which will then surface at the most inappropriate moments.) DBC Pierre was somewhat pithier: "What the fuck have I gone and done now?"

If you're intending to NaNoWriMo, your 50,000 words starts now, and you have about a month-and-a-half in which to make deadline. Stop wasting your time reading blogs!

"1. Borges (Jorge Luis). The entire collection as described in the following 238 lots, comprising: 18 autograph manuscripts, including lot 6, Joyce y los neologismos; lot 8, Two English poems and lot 10, El ?ltimo viaje de Ulises, 121 first editions, many with corrections and notes in Borges' hand, including lot 20, Fervor de Buenos Aires; lot 33, Discusion, with numerous annotations and corrections in Borges' hand, and lot 50, Ficciones one of the most important works of fiction of the 20th Century; periodicals, including a complete run of lot 165, Sur; lot 167, Anales de Buenos Aires; lot 168, Proa, and lot 166, S?ntesis, 114 books with prefaces, or contributions by Borges, 35 books from Borges' library, 20 from the family library, all with annotations and inscriptions, and other related items, e.g., statues, CDs, records, stamps, medallions (238).
£400000 - 450000"
There's a Jorges Luis Borges auction on. The Babu worked out that if he sells his partner, his grandmother, and his obsolete record collection, he might make enough to buy the five hundred pound Borges business card. (Deep, heartfelt sigh). (Link via Complete Review.)

Peter Finlay's going to be able to pay his debts--he's just won the Booker. Dirty But Clean Pierre might get to keep about 9,000 pounds from the Booker prize cheque--he's vowed to pay Robert Lenton, the friend he scammed and left homeless, 41,000 pounds. Vernon God Little: the first chapter...a review.

Is it just the Babu's customary crustiness, or is this really one of the most boring lists of all time?

King Lear had Alzheimer's; Richard III was a sociopath; and Julius Caesar had epilepsy. Shakespeare 101, courtesy this article on psychiatry and literature.

"While Coetzee (who gives virtually no interviews) is a vegetarian, an earlier essay suggests an ambiguous view of the animal rights question that is more in keeping with the taut balancing of arguments and utter lack of consolation that characterizes his novels." Interesting essay; the problem with depending so much on Elizabeth Costello, though, is that the eponymous character's views aren't necessarily shared by Coetzee himself.

Dalit writing moves beyond the simple delineation of the untouchable's woes in India--or is it merely finding another ghetto in the breastbeating memoir? Outlook offers some perspective.

"If only we could kill off everything, living would be so much better. Apocalyptic fiction is always in danger of being the literary equivalent of a child dashing chess pieces off the board." The VIllage Voice on Deluge.

"The reformed drug addict and gambler admitted to selling his best friend's home and pocketing the proceeds as well as working up debts of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a scheme to find Montezuma's gold in Mexico." Peter Finlay, aka DBC Pierre, does his bit to provide an alternative to the cult of the anodyne, photogenic, rent-a-quote author. He's not the bookmakers' favourite, though: as we gear up for the Booker announcement, the odds favour Monica Ali. Speaking personally, the Babu's putting his money on Peter Carey. Yeah, yeah, I know he's not in the running this year but 1) I'm having more fun reading his book than I did with Ali, Atwood and company and 2) I owe the man; the last couple of times I put hard cash down on his name, he won the Booker and won me a bundle. You've got to support your people, you know, through the lean, Bookerless years...

Meanwhile, D J Taylor on what it's like to be a Booker judge. Helpful tip: always point out that it was the other guy who rejected the new novel by the man who became this year's Nobel laureate, not you.

"The range and quality of the talent on offer was matched by the breathtaking level of accomplishment on display; it would be like having Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Philip Roth, Edward Albee, and Don de Lillo all addressing a seminar on American literature in New Delhi." Shashi Tharoor on the Great Indian Writers' Gabfest in Manhattan.

The Babu's back from his vacation and the first thing he learns is that neither L K Advani nor the NCERT chairman can count. This week, the Indian Express reported that a key NCERT history textbook appeared to have plagiarised generously from a more venerable US source. The story cites at least six clear examples of egregious plagiarism; NCERT chairman Rajput got a clean chit from L K Advani by suggesting that "only three lines" had actually been copied. It's "opinions tallying", says one of the authors. Yeah, right--word for word? Anyway, as a patriotic Indian citizen, the Babu feels it his duty to offer Shri Advani and Shri Rajput remedial math classes--and of course, as a true patriot, he promises not to charge them a single paisa.

"No, I really thought the Peter Carey was inferior Carey, that the Pat Barker was inferior Barker, that Anita Brookner was brilliant for 50 pages and then so terrible, I could hardly bear to finish it. I wasn't trying to be a giant-killer." An honest Booker judge. Really.

"The metaphorical bleaching of Monica Ali was a considered marketing strategy." Swapan Dasgupta pulls too many punches to be genuinely provocative, but at least he tries.

"They lived in a small house on La Loma, and in their living room Mercedes had someone build a wall up to the ceiling to avoid the noise, with a door. She put a pine table and a typewriter in the room. The room was very, very small. There was room for his table, a chair, and some sort of little easy chair. Those were the only things that could fit. Above the easy chair there was kind of a picture, something that resembled a calendar, a very tacky calendar that Gabo had hung there. Gabo went in that room and wrote all day. She built that room because Gabo had said, 'I have to withdraw for a year, and I'm not going to work. See what you can do to manage.'" The making of One Hundred Years of Solitude and other episodes from the untold life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

This profile does little to shake the Babu's private conviction that authors as obviously private as Jhumpa Lahiri should be left alone, not made to jump through the hoops of the celebrity mill.

Reviews are another matter, and The Namesake has drawn scant praise in India. Here's Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta: "Control is one thing, but The Namesake is filled with indirect speech and slanting narrative, relentlessly telling, telling, telling instead of showing, showing, showing, until we long to hear a voice, any voice. The prose has an exhausting blandness to it — indeed, a New York Times review calls it the 'Power Point voiceover'."
And in Outlook, here's Amitava Kumar: "The original Gogol wrote masterpieces like The Overcoat, the story of a poor clerk who buys a new coat which is then stolen from him. Gogol mixed fantasy and satire to mock the pettiness of bureaucrats. It is difficult to guess whether he would have relished his own transformation, thanks to Lahiri, into his namesake who shares none of his social vision and whose private rebellion amounts to turning his back on learning 'that one does not grate Parmesan cheese over pasta dishes containing seafood'."

A few Coetzee resources on the web: his reviews for the NYRB, The Guardian's archive of articles on the writer and his works, a BBC audio interview with Coetzee ("I doubt very much that this is going to have an impact on my life," he said of winning the Booker twice), excerpts from the citation.

For three long years, the Babu has spent early October down on his knees (or he would if he wasn't a practising agnostic) asking the Spirit Who Cannot Be Defined But Who is Everywhere to put in a word at the Swedish Academy for any of these writers when the subject of the Nobel Prize in Literature comes up: J M Coetzee, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie (though the prayers here became a tad less fervent after Fury) and Mario Vargas Llosa. This year's Nobel laureate in Literature is...J M Coetzee. In celebration, the Babu plans to spend the next five minutes singing the Ode to Joy, only slightly off-key. (N.B. If the Spirit's logged on, by any chance, how about a little effort on behalf of Vargas Llosa in 2004? Please?)

Note: Kitabkhana is off to celebrate Durga Puja and then some. We'll be back on October 10, and while we might manage some sporadic posting in between the dhunuchi naach and luchi-eating competitions, don't bet on it. In the Name of the Mother, Enjoy Shamelessly, as a bearded atheist reprobate friend of the Babu's used to say every festive season.

The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday, and though they gave the standard speculators barely a day to make their guesses, the professional army of second-guessers has risen nobly to the challenge. This year's Nobel goes to...Janet Frame...Adonis...Coetzee, Vargas Llosa, Roth and other usual suspects...and why on earth are we wasting our time with feverish speculation given that there's less than 24 hours to go? The Babu has absolutely no idea.

"A writer and his or her critical nemesis are a little like star-crossed lovers; in the end, they’re made not for each other but against each other." They're calling it The Worst Review in the World, and it came out a good century ago. Meanwhile, here's a prime example (third item on the page) of how not to respond to your critics, starting with Golden Rule No 1: never refer to yourself in the third person.

An update on Edward Said: Christopher Hitchens comes not to bury Said but to praise him, sort of, and does a bit of both; Mother Jones on Said's legacy; and a debate.

* Statutory Warning: If Our Staffer's Written The Book, We're Giving Him A Good Review, Darn It. Someone explain to me why a books page editor would kill a review on the grounds that it is "negative" and might hurt the sentiments of the staffer who wrote the book, while showing absolutely no regard for the right of the reader to be treated to an honest opinion.

Patrick French declines his OBE on the perfectly valid grounds that he can't find it in himself to accept an award that endorses the concept of Empire. Good man.

David Davidar on three high points in the world of English language publishing in India.