Literature: The Storyteller’s Books

Instructor: Shiladitya Sarkar

February 18 to 20, 2010 | 9.30 am to 5.30 pm
M. C. Ghia Hall, Mumbai

Isaac Bashevis Singer once commented that literature should describe the absurd but it should never become absurd itself. It is a poignant remark, especially in the context of reading and writing in the contemporary domain. It is a time when tacky literature, chic literature, literature pre-empting an audience, etc are ruining the sublime thrill of the written word. Alongside, academic jargons have robbed much of the fun in approaching a text. Philip Roth, writing about a conference held in the honour of Saul Bellow, remarked how agitated Bellow became listening to the jargonized discussions about his work and he left the hall, fuming. So its time to re-read, revisit, and reclaim the thrilling verve of literature. Alongside, the passionate curiosity about writers, writing, and the involvement of the readers needs to be asserted. Otherwise, the critical faculty would lose itself in little zones of aridity dotted with useless scholastic hyperbole. This would be the intent of the instructor. He would expose the audience to the works which are part of the accepted canon and also those which haven’t been institutionalized. The basic thrust of the series would be on writers, the creative act, and the interventions of the reader. Sure, a few theories that have effected a paradigm shift in approaching literature would be discussed. In brief, the course would highlight the symbiotic act between reading/writing, between readers and writers, not to mention of the ways writers view themselves one another through their societal and individual prism.

Day 1: The Persona

1. A Writer’s Perspective on another Writer: Maxim Gorky’s profile on Leo Tolstoy
2. The image of Artists/Writers in Novels:

o Doctor Zhivago
o Doctor Faustus
o The Picture of Dorian Gray
o Death of Virgil

3. Why do I Write? Writers analysing their own Self and Craft

4. The Writer and the Repressive State- Societal Norms: Attitudes and Responses

o Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
o Milan Kundera
o Boris Pasternak

5. Death of the Author: Roland Barthes

Day 2: The Crucible: Themes that act as leitmotifs in literature

1. Guilt:

o Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime And Punishment
o Albert Camus: The Stranger

2. The Inexorable March of Death:

o J.M. Coetzee: The Age Of Iron
o Susan Sontag: The Way We Live Now
o Thomas Mann: Death in Venice
o Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories

3. Absence as Presence:

o Toni Morrison: Beloved
o Juan Rulfo: Luvina
o Rabindranath Tagore: Shey

4. Threaded by a River:

o Mikhail Sholokhov: And Quiet Flows The Don
o Ritwick Ghatak: Titash Ekti Nadir Naam
o Amitav Ghosh: The Hungry Tide
o V.S. Naipaul: A Bend In The River
o Manik Bandopadhyay: The Boatman Of The River Padma

5. Illness as Metaphor:

o Anton Chekhov: Ward No. 6
o Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain

Day 3: The Act of Reading/Inheriting and Preserving the Literary Quotient

1. Italo Calvino: Why Read The Classics?
2. Towards a Non-Western Paradigm: Edward Said and Chinua Achebe
3. How Writers Read: Orhan Pamuk, Jean-Paul Sartre and Amitav Ghosh
4. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
5. Alice Walker: In Search Of Our Mother’s Garden

Shiladitya Sarkar is a painter and writer. He was educated in Presidency College and the University of Kolkata and read Political Science for his Bachelor’s and Master’s respectively. Literature, Philosophy and Cultural History are also his areas of interest. He worked briefly as a journalist with Indian Express and Times of India. Starting with his first solo exhibition at Chitrakoot, Kolkata, Shiladitya’s paintings have been exhibited in the UK, the USA, Singapore, Hong Kong, West Indies, Indonesia, and the UAE. He has also participated in solo and group shows at Jehangir Art Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts, Lalit Kala Academy, Bharat Bhavan and in many private galleries in India. Shiladitya’s book, “Thirst of a Minstrel” – a biography of Ganesh Pyne was published by Rupa in 2005. He was also the invited writer for the exhibition: Modern Myths-Changing Images in Indian art, University of Texas. He writes on contemporary art for Art India Magazine and is currently working on a novel and a book on the painter Surya Prakash.