How to Review Books You Haven’t Read
Many years after Thathachari Rangachari was released from jail, he took up the only available job that an ex-felon could find. He joined a think tank. On the side, to make ends meet, he became a book reviewer for a national newspaper. (Yes! Indeed. Since you are are wondering. Rangachari was a cousin, a stone-throw away from his mother’s side in Palakkad, to that fictional revolutionary demi god Thathachari Venkatachari, who was made famous by that great goateed existentialist O.V.Vijayan)
Why did Rangachari get the job? We will never know. Some whispered that it was because he wrote labyrinthine prose that absolved the corrupt and made the honest feel guilty about their uncompromising mien. Others said, the proprietor of the newspaper was a closet Marxist and sympathized with Rangachari’s successful effort to lead a failed Revolution in India. Those on the hard-Left giggled that Rangachari was a bourgeois pen-pusher who deluded himself that the Revolution would begin when he undermined the natural sloth of Indian bureaucracy by showing up on time. Either way, in a few years, what Rangachari couldn’t achieve as a revolutionary, he did so as a book reviewer. Taking Machiavelli’s advice to his spleen, he was both loved and feared. His adjectives trembled in rage, his adverbs sought to punish the nouns, his prepositions could stand no meandering, his gerunds were legendary but it was his devastating use of the semicolon that made writers tremble. His technique was impeccable. This was particularly true when he wrote long reviews of hardcover books that he never read but merely used as pillows to mimic the hard floors of the jail cells.
Then, one day, Rangachari was found dead.
As is often the case with reviewers, he was murdered with an ink pen pierced into his heart. The crimson that flowed from him and the blue of his quill merged giving him the appearance of a corpse who was late for his appointment with a taxidermist. The raised eyebrow, the accompanying sneer worthy of a Twitter profile, the smile on the bloated corpus — all revealed that the murderer was someone known to Rangachari. The police suspected a cabal of authors. They were soon ruled out for most of them had an alibi. To make their ends meet, these authors were teaching Creative Writing courses to rich, overfed, trust fund puppies who thought writing was the way to buy respectability.
In a few days, being as clueless as ever, the police picked up a young copy editor who — after a few days of being subjected to enhanced interrogation that involved repeatedly reading socially conscientious essay on nuclear weapons, dams and tribal inequities — confessed to his crime. Yes, I did kill Rangachari, but please stop this torture.
But why?
Turns out he was in search of Rangachari’s secret sauce to write reviews that had made him the one true specter that haunted authors. The police discovered the algorithm for reviews hidden in an amulet that circumambulated his underbelly. Clearly, like Dante, Rangachari believed that authors ought to be consigned to that sweaty purgatorium between the hell of writing and the heaven of finishing the damn book. In the interest of preventing further bloodshed by wannabe reviewers in search of the algorithm, the police decided to release his secret recipe.
We present it in entirety:
* * * Notes for Noteworthy Notables in a Notebook: (To be followed in strict order)
1. Say, if the book to be reviewed is Love In the Time of Cholera.
Rangachari’s handwritten annotation on the margins:
In case you haven’t read it, don’t worry: It’s about a man seducing a married woman for his whole life, and when in their old age she finally relents to bed him, she finds him — shall we say — less than prepared. They both agree that the whole experiment with geriatric love making was a bad idea in the first place and conclude that they should have simply played bingo instead. There, that is great literature for you. Mania, sex, and erectile dysfunction.
2. Anyhow, begin the review by mentioning something far removed from the book at hand. How about NASA’s discovery of water on Mars, the planet of War, which as you should know is that truant playing astral object, other than Venus, that flirts with Earth. By implication, the Earth is stuck in a love-triangle with Mars and Venus, who both seek to get it on. But Earth believes in polyamory and so she wobbles with whoever takes up her fancy that day. Suggest that the heroine of the novel is like Earth, a proud wobbler.
Rangachari’s handwritten annotation on the margins:
If you want the review to be controversial — add a touch of misogyny. Suggest that women and Earth are the real guilty parties and men have lashed out to avoid suffering from syphilis. Ask Nietzsche.
3. Then pick up a tangential character. In our case, Simon Bolivar. Write three paragraphs on him, his entourage, the corset that crushed his mistresses’s breasts, his politics, the horse that he rode till he had an attack of hemorrhoids, which is exactly what Bolivar’s presence was to the body politic of Latin America. Make obscure references that masquerades one’s fetish for obscurantism as knowledge.
4. Bemoan the loss of the finely crafted sentences to texting and Twitter. Ask aloud: who now has the ability to parse the truth from the half-truths? (Sly suggest, yours truly) This, inescapably, is a clever way to wax about the place of love, hate, cigarettes, llamas, pornstars in Nazi uniforms and the human condition. Talking of humans, always remember to throw in Hannah Arendt. This will win you points with the educated, literary kind. And if you are so inclined, add a touch of the phrase ‘banality of evil’. Sautee this section with outrage about the fate of humanity and finally let it simmer with the veiled references to Nietzschean eternal cycle.
5. The most important ingredient, lest you be mistaken for an artistic dilettante — you must always throw in some numbers. If you mention GDP of, say, Venezuela and compare it to Chile — first lead the reader down the garden path. Tell him what he always was afraid to ask. A ha! It is nominal GDP not purchasing power parity based GDP as the author mistakenly writes. Who can trust the GDP deflator these days. Make a clever reference about the fact that literature anticipates economics, the way Jane Austen was a leading indicator toThomas Piketty.
6. At this point, the reader is sufficiently confused as to what the review is really all about. Now is when most amateurs usually make the mistake. They go soft. They seek to talk about the book, explain it to the unsuspecting and befuddled. Beware! Tighten up your breeches. Remember those Kegel exercises. This is not the time to relent. Instead, press on till you mail your editor: Peccavi!
7. Unfurl the great arsenal of your vocabulary to describe the needs of third world literature: caduceus, heterodoxy, post colonial, liminality, heteroglossia, juridical, ilex, subaltern, hautboy, gallimaufry, leptospirosis, diurnal, hermeneutics, Brylcreem, urinary tract infection. Each of these words should be used at least once individually or in pairs, preferably as alliterations. Liminal Leptospirosis. This is what distinguishes between the good and the great reviewers. Pritchett from Updike. Tintin from Asterix. Rakhi Sawant from Mallika Sherawat.
8. Now comes the critical issue that all good reviewers must ask: can Indian writing in English reflect the reality of India. Make sure you suggest knowingly at the foolishness of this question. A nudge and wink later, cough in the direction of someone who thought it was profound to say that India contains contradictions. (Misquote that Walt Whitman phrase, then wait and see if any one notices. Evidently not.) This will prove that you know India in its pointillistic detail while the wannabe lather about in generalities. It is important to get the tone right. Sneering condescension is vital.
9. Always mention Chetan Bhagat, the Indian middle class and its unrelenting greed. First patronize the middle class readership as children of those slowly come out of millenia of illiteracy and poverty. Then point out that Bhagat speaks to a deep craving. But lest you take him seriously, ignore him as a tedious writer and then ask prophetically: Who is the Camus of Chinchpokli or Where is the Garcia Marquez of Ghatkopar?
10. It is unlikely at this point there are more than five people who will ever get to this part of the review. Many will have dropped off. But before doing so, they would have shared it on Facebook, some Instagrammed its portions. Don’t however think that the battle is won. The author and her agent wait for that one line of muffled praise that can then be tweeted, slapped on paperback editions, and be put up as Facebook status messages. The upsides are great. You’ll be invited for their annual parties where you can bemoan about our celebrity obsessed culture and say profundities like: “Kim Kardashian, if she weren’t real we would have to invent her.” So, beware. The enemy is tweeting. And maybe also reading.
11. All good reviews must seek to contextualize. By this one means, not the situatedness of the text or the society out of which it came — but the history of your own misreadings. Only by making it personal can there be greater authenticity to the pronouncements. Talk of the day you saw Paul Auster eat an almond flavored ice cream and how it reminded you of unrequited love. Throw in a few anticipatory barbs at the other critics. Call them ‘stupid’ or ‘insular’, especially if you are on Twitter.
12. Ask if the book answers that one original question. What is the original question? Well, make one up. Can man truly love a woman more than his iPhone? Can woman find herself by watching Anthony Bourdain? If it is Wednesday, will it rain? Would Hitler have been less crazy if he had a better hair cut? The answer to these questions is alway a big fat no. No, the author doesn’t address these questions. Not in any way that would make sense to Confucius, Henry James or Taylor Swift.
13. Finally pronounce on the book. The key to this is always read page 99 and decide. If you like it, then pan the book but praise the author. If you dislike that page, then praise the book and criticize the author’s politics. The secret is cognitive dissonance. Let the enemies of the author read what they like, let the friends of the author read what they want. In the meanwhile, once you finish writing the piece, call up your editor and tell him, you need another three days to get back. Always say, the book sucked the life out of me.
14. Take a nap. Always take a nap when you finish, for it is only in that inbetweenness of wakefulness and sleep, can you experience schadenfreude towards your awake, laboring self. The regret of having wasted your life writing reviews no one reads is exquisite.