Case in point : I once went to a book reading session by Upamanyu Chatterjee (the author of English, August .I shall give a review on that one soon... ). I managed to fish out a detailed description of what happened there in one of my notebooks :
"
I listened to a short story reading by Upamanyu Chatterjee.
The story was good, but poor chatterjee proved to be interesting only in parts. He seems to understand that fact himself, and apparently that is why he spared us the agony of having to sit through a discourse on his life. But the story reading only got animated in those parts where he thought his listeners were going into a thoroughly bored sleep.
The most interesting part of the whole exercise was the Q&A session. Various questions on his life, writing, and experiences were asked, and he thankfully seemed not to have ready made answers for them. The best however was this one:
There was a lady in the audience who caught my attention about as soon as I had walked into that hall, she was wearing my fav. color, but everything else about her was too loud. Too much make up, the sari revealed too much of her contours, and her hair was dyed to a shade that looked particularly ridiculous on her plump figure and oldish figure. That she had spent at least an hour dressing up was obvious, but her manner seemed to suggest that she wasnt in the least bothered about the way she looked. Perhaps that is why, I got this "phony" feeling from her...
Anyway, during the question and answer session she asked " I remember a murder scence from the book ----- . you must have chosen the setting carefully, in the temple..."
Poor Mr. chatterjee couldnt remember which part of the book she was talking about! He rubbed his temples helplessly, and then waved his hands in apparent despair and said " I am sorry, I dont think I remember this part"...
And the lady says " It was a very brave thing to do"..
And pat comes the reply : "Oh, really??"
I laughed hard because the comment from the author seemed to suggest that he was bewildered. Then he went on to explain that most of the time people seemed to interpret different meanings from the books he had writtern. First, Agastya sen was all about depicting the two worlds in India. But ppl thought is was damn funny and inspiring and so on.
Some ppl seem to enjoy complicating matters. Instead of just enjoying the story by reading it, they look into hidden meanings, hidden metaphors and so on which the author possibly never intended. And they then call the author a mastero, much to his astonishment....."
I listened to a short story reading by Upamanyu Chatterjee.
The story was good, but poor chatterjee proved to be interesting only in parts. He seems to understand that fact himself, and apparently that is why he spared us the agony of having to sit through a discourse on his life. But the story reading only got animated in those parts where he thought his listeners were going into a thoroughly bored sleep.
The most interesting part of the whole exercise was the Q&A session. Various questions on his life, writing, and experiences were asked, and he thankfully seemed not to have ready made answers for them. The best however was this one:
There was a lady in the audience who caught my attention about as soon as I had walked into that hall, she was wearing my fav. color, but everything else about her was too loud. Too much make up, the sari revealed too much of her contours, and her hair was dyed to a shade that looked particularly ridiculous on her plump figure and oldish figure. That she had spent at least an hour dressing up was obvious, but her manner seemed to suggest that she wasnt in the least bothered about the way she looked. Perhaps that is why, I got this "phony" feeling from her...
Anyway, during the question and answer session she asked " I remember a murder scence from the book ----- . you must have chosen the setting carefully, in the temple..."
Poor Mr. chatterjee couldnt remember which part of the book she was talking about! He rubbed his temples helplessly, and then waved his hands in apparent despair and said " I am sorry, I dont think I remember this part"...
And the lady says " It was a very brave thing to do"..
And pat comes the reply : "Oh, really??"
I laughed hard because the comment from the author seemed to suggest that he was bewildered. Then he went on to explain that most of the time people seemed to interpret different meanings from the books he had writtern. First, Agastya sen was all about depicting the two worlds in India. But ppl thought is was damn funny and inspiring and so on.
Some ppl seem to enjoy complicating matters. Instead of just enjoying the story by reading it, they look into hidden meanings, hidden metaphors and so on which the author possibly never intended. And they then call the author a mastero, much to his astonishment....."
In any case, coming back to the Hitchhikers guide, the one thing I must say in its favor is that it is very imaginative. It is amusing at times, and tiresome and downright boring at other times. And my biggest complaint about the whole set of books was that the story was not compelling enough for me to sit and read it at a stretch. I actually had to take a lot of breaks while reading it, because I tended to fall asleep in between.. and that is not something I usually do.
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