Literary tour de force

The Hindu : Book Review: "It is said of Samuel Johnson that "if he could make the fishes talk, they would talk like whales," which is a satirical comment on his verbose style. And one can say, if Asokamitran could make a whale talk it would talk like a fish. So simple and yet so effective.

That he has chosen this style even at the beginning of his writing career nearly four decades ago, sorts him out as a conscious literary artist different from many of his other contemporaries. He started writing much earlier than what did appear in print.

Once he started getting published, he sent even those manuscripts he had written 15 years earlier, at a time when he was much younger, to the magazines for publication with little editing and revision, as he was fully aware they needed none! As he himself says in one of the pieces in this anthology, a reputed English journal not only accepted his story but also commended that "it was something new and innovative."

Now the publisher has brought out in two volumes a complete collection of his non-fiction prose writings, his views, reviews and creative essays he wrote in the little journals, including Kanaiyazhi, which he had edited for more than two decades.

The subjects on which he wrote vary as much as from marble to metaphysics but the distinctive and innovative way he deals with every theme holds the attention of any serious reader.

The anthology is in two volumes. This constitutes 40 years of his writing in different journals on different occasions and as such, handsomely brought together broadly under five chapter-heads such as experiences, views, writers, books and fine arts.

"Experiences" mean the author's highly personalised response to events or people. One may even read them as short-short stories. Can anyone visualise Asokamitran, wielding his pen like a sword attacking a political party and its leaders, breathing fire and brimstone? Yes, he did, under a pseudonym "Kingaran".

This was during the short period when he was moonlighting with the late lamented Swadesamitran, which was owned for a brief period by the Tamil Nadu Congress in the late 1960s.

The leaders of the party chose him, the most unlikely of all writers to write political columns of wordy violence and which he did commendably too! The hilarious account of this short-lived glory as a furious journalist is a delightful read in the book, Dickensian in thought and execution!

He says that although he was inwardly unhappy and very much wanted to forget what he wrote as soon as he finished writing that stuff, but reading them later, after nearly two decades and more, he felt they were not at all that bad that he should have felt so apologetic.

As a matter of fact, I feel some of them should have been included in this collection that would have gone a long way in adding a historical perspective to this delightful anthology.

As one reads these two volumes, the social history of Tamil Nadu in the last four decades comes before our mind's eye. This way, I would rate this work as significant as Dr. U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer's autobiography that projected the social and cultural life of the Tamil society in the 19th Century.

Iyer also had a sharp eye for details, self-effacing simplicity of style, clothed in subtle irony and wry humour. Both Iyer and Asokamitran share the gift for understatement.

If one could classify the first volume (purely subjective responses to events and people) as "akam" in the classical Tamil literary tradition (all the ancient Sangam works were anthologies), the other one is definitely "puram", dealing dispassionately with books, writers and fine arts. Perhaps, Asokamitran is one among the very few writers, who reads the works of his peers and also younger contemporaries.

Unlike some of the writer-critics, who have respect only for such of those writers, who belong to their school of thinking and writing, Asokamitran is refreshingly different.

He does not carry any ideological cargo but only committed to the idea of which work is well-written and which is not. The number of books and authors he has dealt with in his columns is really amazing.

Asokamitran, because of his brief sojourn in the Gemini Studios during the early part of his working career has been carrying his intense love for the movies right through. In fact, his first novel, is about films. In this anthology, there are several pieces on movies and stars written with rare insights.

He has definite views on all the aspects of fine arts, like painting, sculpture and music. To have a comprehensive and critical view of the Tamil society, its strength and weaknesses, in the last four decades, one should read the book that would serve as an intelligent man's guide."