#GALF2024 Full Schedule
sandra lobo
Enviado: 15 de fevereiro de 2024 17:54
Para: V M <vmi...@gmail.com>
Assunto: [GOABOOKCLUB] #GALF2024 Full Schedule
*** Please be polite and on-topic in your posts. ***
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/CAN1wPW5J21gOOzLWOdayE7J4Ze02TC86EfO3DA9-4fKMbPwjyQ%40mail.gmail.com.
Frederick Noronha
* There should be space for new faces, instead of the same names showing up.
FN
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/AS8PR10MB6294C92DDF5DAFC998BAE354A54D2%40AS8PR10MB6294.EURPRD10.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.
Braz Menezes
On Feb 15, 2024, at 12:54 PM, V M <vmi...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
*** Please be polite and on-topic in your posts. ***
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/CAN1wPW5J21gOOzLWOdayE7J4Ze02TC86EfO3DA9-4fKMbPwjyQ%40mail.gmail.com.
<IMG_20240215_232212.jpg><IMG_20240215_232029.jpg>
Cecil
And the Jaipur Literary Festival should take note and have 71% of the time allocated to writers from Jaipur. And 12% to Rajasthani writers.
And yes, newness should take precedence over merit.
We should celebrate and promote mediocrity.
As long as they are willing to pay for Editing, Typesetting, Consultancy, Publicity...
Of course Printing and Launch Expenses have to be borne by the author.
Cheers!
Cecil
Frederick Noronha
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/2e2b4d7a-4a27-4741-ba15-a9b11209e47fn%40googlegroups.com.
Jeanne Hromnik
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/2e2b4d7a-4a27-4741-ba15-a9b11209e47fn%40googlegroups.com.
Gilbert Lawrence
Frederick FN Noronha
I think you missed Cecil's point :-) FN
Jeanne Hromnik
--
*** Please be polite and on-topic in your posts. ***
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/0c557a88-24c6-4a22-8df0-7bbfe1ff8b8an%40googlegroups.com.
Frederick FN Noronha
Frederick FN Noronha
So, why produce them at all? FN
Jeanne Hromnik
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/ea6a96a6-8b1a-4120-85c5-42d6f2db8f01n%40googlegroups.com.
Frederick Noronha
Consider this. FN'Literary festivals are anti-reading': Why lit fests are for performers not writers
The Times of India group, whose lit fest in Mumbai and Delhi have just concluded, no longer devote any space to books on a regular basis
hidden December 14, 2015 07:27:59 ISTby Gouri Chatterjee
I have this friend, and she's a dear one. I’ve known her for ages. But I simply can’t fathom her. She is going all the way to Jaipur from Calcutta to listen to Thomas Piketty. She could have, if she’d wanted to, read Piketty’s seminal work, Capital in the Twenty-first Century. She hasn’t yet, and with no background in economics and with our busy winter season upon us, she dare not attempt it between now and 21 January, when the Jaipur Lit Fest is slated to begin and where Piketty is scheduled to speak.
But that precisely is why she wants to go. To pick up pointers from Piketty’s speech which will give her an idea of what the hoo-ha over him is all about. And that's precisely what I think is so wrong with Literary Festivals – they are anti-reading. That is why the proliferation of Lit Fests in India is such bad news.
RELATED ARTICLES
My friend is not alone. More than one journalist, Indian and foreign, and more than one publisher has confessed that the bulk of the massive crowds that have made Lit Fests such a success in this country are neither great readers nor hoard secret ambitions of being a writer themselves. Many are not even familiar with all the names that light up the dais. The consolation is supposed to be that at least they are being exposed to the finer things of life like books, so we should not turn up our noses and dismiss them as “tamashas”.
My friend will surely buy a copy of Piketty’s book in Jaipur and dutifully queue up to get it autographed by the big man himself. That’s the done thing at lit fests, but will she ever get around to reading it? Will she even feel the need to after having heard the pearls of wisdom from the master’s lips? If she had really wanted to know about his take on capitalism she could have done so already. She has had enough time.
The book that set the world mouthing inequality was published in 2013 and made it to the bestseller lists and stayed there for months in 2014. If she had had a modicum of economic sense then the Rs 987 she will have to shell out for the book would be a damn sight cheaper if she had sat and read the book quietly at home instead of paying for flights and hotels and whatnots at Jaipur.
But then, where is the fun in that? How can your drab walls and faded curtains compete with the glamour and glitz of a Diggy Palace in Jaipur’s glittering winter sunshine, or a packed open-air crowd with the resplendent Taj Mahal in the background or the sprawling Kanakakunnu Palace in Thiruvananthapuram or even the tiny Dhanachuli village in the hills of Kumaon?
The list is long but exotic locations are the one certainty of India’s 60-odd lit fests. Add to that the excitement of seeing the 44-year old Piketty and others of his ilk, many being stars in the conventional sense too. You get to see them up close and personal, maybe even party with them in the evening; that's money well spent, right? The Hay festival, which has come to India too, has advertised itself in its homeland as “a party that is first and foremost a party”.
Seeing your favourite authors on stage, hearing them read out from their books or explain why they wrote what they wrote (e.g. Kiran Nagarkar at Chandigarh a few weeks ago said the harangues in his books like Ravan and Eddie were born of an internalised rage, of a need to say, “Look at me, look at what’s happening to me!”), getting a chance to ask them questions, discovering new writers you had never heard of — all this can be heady indeed.
But all this jollity comes with a price tag. And the most expensive item on the bill is the transformation of writers into performers, authors into salesmen. A Nobel laureate like JM Coetzee can get away with just reading out one of his stories and refusing to take questions from the audience but most writers cannot be such prima donnas. Whether they are good public speakers or not, whether they are graced with the Madonna-like looks of a Jhumpa Lahiri, whether their books are meant for the general reader or not, they have to sing for their supper, give talks, take questions (which could range from the banal “How many books have you read” to the confounding “Have you been circumcised?”).
As the guru of lit fests in India, the co-founder of the Jaipur Lit Fest, William Dalrymple has often been quoted as saying, “If writers are good speakers and crowd-pulling performers, literary festivals are best suited for them. It gives them a terrific fillip to their profile and to book sales.” (Dalrymple attended countless such festivals in ten countries in the year his book Nine Lives was published.) Even if they are not, they have to mumble on, in the process probably falling in their readers’ (and soon publishers’) esteem for failing to be the rock stars that Amish Tripathi or Chetan Bhagat are.
But writers have to solider on. For them it is promote or perish. Writers these days have to have their own websites, be active on Facebook, send off tweets every few hours and generally be as visible as possible. Lest the reader forgets him and goes off with whoever is grabbing their attention at that moment. Even the greatest names in the world of letters are unable to withstand the pressure to attend Lit Fests from their publishers, their agents and, not least, their own inner selves.
Writing is a solitary act. It is only human for writers to want some first-hand adulation, a slice of celebrity-dom. Not to speak of the free holiday in fancy places and plush hotels with limousines and love thrown in. As someone has noted, “Would Dostoevsky have got additional material for The Idiot if he’d had to spend a week mixing with sycophants at the St Petersburg Festival of Literature?”
The biggest news to come out of these Fests have had little to do with books per se. Rather, it’s all been about who said what to whom. If it was not VS Naipaul insulting the American ambassador’s wife’s intellect then it was Naipaul dismissing Nayantara Sahgal’s diatribe against colonialism with an acerbic “My life is short. I can’t listen to banalities. Banalities irritate me” – both at Neemrana some years ago. Or it was about leaked emails between William Dalrymple and Aatish Taseer this year wherein Taseer responds to an invite to the Jaipur Lit Fest by practically demanding that Dalrymple write nice things about his book if he wanted Taseer to attend?
The organisers must be thrilled. What better publicity could there be. Whether that helps the cause of books is not their concern. After all, why should the promotion of books be the objective of the Rajasthan tourism department, or the Kerala tourism department that backs both the Kovalam and Hay Festivals, or even the Times of India group, whose lit fests in Mumbai and Delhi have just concluded but who no longer devote any space to books on a regular basis, not even a weekly book review page, in their flagship, the Times of India.
So it is up to us, dear readers, to take a stand. There is absolutely no reason for us to know that Jhumpa Lahiri’s children have made her a better writer, as she is said to have revealed in Jaipur a couple of years ago; it should be enough for us to read her books and find out for ourselves what sort of a writer she is. The best expression of a writer’s thoughts has to be in his writings, not in his spoken words. That is why he or she has chosen the lonely, uncertain life of a writer.
We readers too can be like them, by opting to walk the solitary path of reading. If we are content to judge authors by their works and not their personalities, if we are ready to put substance over style, then Lit Fests would lose their relevance. Honestly, how can something as intimate as a novel be turned into a successful live event?
But of course, I haven’t been able to dissuade my friend from going to Jaipur. Will readers be more supportive I wonder.
What to read this fortnight:
London Fog by Christine L. Corton / The Quilt and Other Stories by Ismat Cughtai
Present:
London Fog: The Biography by Christine Corton
It killed Londoners in droves, and inspired writers and artists from Melville to Monet: an atmospheric exploration of pollution in the capital. Given that climate change is the flavour of the month and Delhi is in the thick of its own peasouper.Past:
The Quilt and Other Stories by Ismat Chughtai
Or any book by her. This is her centenary year. She was commemorated recently by the Rajasthan government when it dropped her stories from school textbooks as they “did not fit into the local culture of Rajasthan”. See for yourself.Join our Whatsapp channel to get the latest global news updates
Published on: December 14, 2015 07:27:59 IST
Gilbert Lawrence
So, why produce them at all? FN
Selma Carvalho
--
*** Please be polite and on-topic in your posts. ***
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
Frederick FN Noronha
They're just treated as ignorable....
Maybe we need to ask: why?
In which case, we can safely leave Goa-related books to be discussed in Timbuktoo.
So, why produce them at all? FN
Cecil Pinto
Please do not mention Sajan in the same paragraph as Gilbert or me.
Sajan has a higher IQ and Knowledge Quotient than either me or Gilbert. Or both of us combined.
Sajan is a Mallu who thanks to his great wealth (acquired by knowledge) owns properties in Goa.
Just because he posts brilliantly does that qualify him as a writer? Author?
And Goa? Goan? Where's the book!
Gilbert has a book which he (rightly) keeps pushing.
I have never written a book.
Cheers!
Cecil
P.S.
1) I think Selma's writing and books are brilliant. I just wish she would do more writing, and less promotion of her writing.
2) But then what do I know? I am a social commentator, 'world famous all over Goa and coastal Karnataka' who Rico throws out of all the groups he controls.
Now Rico is a far better man than me, so I do not protest.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/CA%2BcjhjhxNWoHM3%2BiUE7jGrz9VJGJ808PZdRTH3evJd5czvT3XA%40mail.gmail.com.
Eugene Correia
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/CAMCR53JWT4jPhbdFs0FL7X_XJXn7U5ak%2B3D4tzu8RQtoWfBmKA%40mail.gmail.com.
Jeanne Hromnik
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/CAJhbo_5CA1gihDxH%3DcztRwJ5KsMBsfznafMahX%2B4n%3DXcjXKeEA%40mail.gmail.com.