Jaipur Literary Festival: Day One

The Jaipur Literature Festival kicked off yesterday. One of the extraordinary things about the festival is the air of complete celebrity which surrounds certain authors at the festival, especially Hindu and Urdu poets. Scenes in front of the main hall resembled what one might normally see at a television or film awards show, except instead of besequined women the paparazzi mobbed old men whose beards were only outmatched by their poise and gravitas. The crowd was equal parts kafta pajama equal parts rumpled collared shirt; I still can't believe how lucky I am to be at a festival with authors like William Dalrymple, Amit Chaudhuri, Geoff Dyer, Alexander McCall Smith, Tina Brown, and others.


The day began with an opening ceremony, followed by speeches from William Dalrymple, Faith Singh, and Girish Karnad. The first panel I attended was "The Art of Criticism", with Amitava Kumar, Geoff Dyer, and Amit Chaudhuri, moderated by Nilanjana S. Roy. The ostensible topic of discussion being Criticism (or its lack thereof in modern literary circles). Chaudhuri was late because of the terrible fog in Delhi; he apologized for his head not being as sharp as it "should be...but don't ask me how much sharper it could be." The basic problem (as was completely agreed by the panel) was the lack of clear political and ideological alignment in the critical press. Chaudhuri sounded a more hopeful note, citing journals like n+1 as an example of a successful blend of ideology and criticism. 


This of course reminded me of the panel n+1 had on the "lack of good Iraq war films." (this panel occurred in summer 2008, long before the premiere of Hurt Locker. It was not American filmmakers' lack of a good theoretical understanding of war films; quite simply, it was a lack of good war films. All someone had to do was make one. Similarly, what the panel today hinted at but couldn't seem to convey was that the only impediment to good, modern criticism is simply our willingness to sit down and write it instead of surf the internet for pornography.


The best part of the hour was when the poet, translator and critic Arvind K. Mehrotra inveighed on the proceedings. Reminding the panelists that as early as the early-19th century, Bengali authors (I am killing myself for forgetting the name he mentioned) were already bemoaning the lack of good criticism in Bengali literature. The point is, he said, was not why there was not any good criticism but why there was no criticism at all.

The afternoon brought "Visible Cities", an ad-hoc panel with Amitava Kumar, Geoff Dyer and Amit Chaudhuri. Max Rodenbeck was supposed to attend this one. I thought it was going to be one of those terrible ad-hoc panel affairs, where the audience is too scared to go back on the suppositions that led them to attend and the panelists obviously haven’t prepared. Not the case here: Chaudhuri’s experience with Calcutta and Dyer’s outsider’s view of Varanesi made for an interesting discussion about the place of city in narrative. How do we know a city? Kumar made insightful comments on Susan Sontag’s notion of “The Sign of Saturn”. A melancholic is someone fundamentally stolid and uninterested in completing works. But do we want a complete work anyway? (Walter Benjamin).

After that came "Adaptations" with Michael Frayn (Noises Off) and Esther Freud (Hideous Kinky), a discussion about adapting books and plays to film. This one was a bit disappointing, with the usual recourse to how authors see their works as losing something essential when they are adapted to film. Frayn gave some decent anecdotes about films he has adapted and seen adapted by others. The absence of Louis De Bernieres (Captain Corelli's Mandolin) was probably the cause of all this.


Arvind Krishna Mehrotra


Geoff Dyer


Michael Frayn & Esther Freud