Time whizzes by and I, I write of glimpses I steal

Thursday, February 05, 2015

The blind leading the blind



What do you make of Chetan Bhagat, considering he's often credited to have gotten more and more Indians to read through his books?


I don't know. Is it that you write third rate books and people can't do much better than to read those third rate books? Is it really an achievement? What is the achievement exactly?

We can't count Chetan Bhagat as an airport novelist. He's not an airport novelist -- he apparently writes about important, relevant things. In other countries when they are having kind of a moment in which they are writing about significant things, you see some great literature come out. Chetan Bhagat is not great literature. 

...

Chetan Bhagat doesn't find an audience because no one outside India can read him. He might just be a symptom of the fact that in English, India is basically a semi-literate country and Chetan Bhagat is the best it can do.

It doesn't seem to me that we need to look for a deeper explanation.


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