Lunch With a Bigot: The Writer in the World by Amitava Kumar

Lunch With a Bigot: The Writer in the World Reviews

• 
  Nitya

  Some of the essays in this collection were beyond me (either leaving me feeling daft and okay about that OR feeling daft and being prickly about it for a while), primarily due to the author's predilection to build sentences and paragraphs that don't seem to talk about the same idea, but flit from one to the next. The links, where I could see them, were tenuous at best.
  
  Some essays, however, I instantly connected with. I relished them, paying attention to every word, nodding along, stopping only to highlight or annotate. Like the essay on how his daughter affected and influenced his writing life. Or the interview with Arundati Roy (reminding me of a time when I admired her and why). Or the piece on reading like a writer, where he clearly articulates my own disquiet with Indian writing in English (till recently, a market cornered by diaspora writers) as being "all too often, an act of translation on behalf of the West" and then pointing me towards regional voices, known and unknown. He goes on to talk of Jhumpa Lahiri and Salman Rushdie, exceptions, of the growing breed who translate better, by "an ability to turn what is local or of limited valence into what is broadly intelligible in its sameness as well as its startling dissimilarity."
  
  But what swung this book into the can-easily-recommend category for me was the last chapter on dealing with the loss of his mother. Here is where he left behind his cynical, slightly condescending tone, instead putting his grief on display for all of us to see, sympathise with, crumple before.
  
  

  You think you are prepared for the news of a loved one's death. You have read somewhere that there is no way of readying yourself for such news - and because you take this as a warning, you think you are prepared also for the surprise. When it finally comes the news sweeps aside, with gigantic force, all the matchstick barriers you had put in place. All you can see spreading as far as the distant horizon is the sudden and undeniable reality that your mother is now forever gone. The world you have known since birth is now less than what it always was for you. You don't necessarily put this into words. Instead, a part of you separates from your self, and, like a bird sitting on a distant branch, watches you weeping on a bench below. You don't know how long the new reality is going to stay this way.
• 
  Leif

  Amitava Kumar: a name for my future radar. Lunch With a Bigot is a great collection of essays that range rather widely, from digressions on
  Naipaul V.S to conversations with
  Arundhati Roy to meditations on his mother's funerary rites to essays on Hindi cinema. It's all great stuff, but best taken in small doses I feel; the range makes it all a flavourful array, and that is worth savouring, surely –– especially when some of the meals are shared with radical opponents whose words choke the throat (the title essay, along with other political directions here, are by no means bracing but are certainly thoughtful beyond the usual platitudes).
• 
  Zach

  This book was a solid three stars for me most of the way through.
  
  The essays ranged a bit in quality, and Kumar absolutely shined when he turned his intellect outward. His discussion with Arudhati Roy, the boxer on the flight, and the essays on Kashmir were strong and hit hard. His contemplations on writing tended to be more hit and miss, as I find most writers writing about writing tend to be. The weakest essay in the book was his piece on ten rules of being a writer-- it felt very self-satisfied, and that obsession with self pops up in a number of the essays in ways that got on my nerves.
  
  And then I hit the last essay and legitimately started sniffling in public. The books started on a strong note and left me with a lasting emotional impression.
• 
  Shubham Gupta

  After having read two of his books, I think I can finally put a finger on what I dislike about Kumar. It is the fact that he writes in a self-assured manner, as if he is convinced that he is a great writer. A few of these essays were promising, but most were just okay.
• 
  Chris

  This was originally published at
  The Scrying Orb.
  
  Reading and writing are a major topic of exploration in these essays. Kumar is an advocate of writing as an expression of the real, a way to decipher and interpret the everyday — politics, identity, culture — the sacred role of fiction in making palpable these essential things. The well known strategy of the writer infusing their personal experiences and family character into the plot.
  
  He also determines economy of language as required. Short, direct sentences. Avoidance of adverbs, overuse of adjectives, all flowery language whatsoever. Carver, Hemingway, Roth, Naipaul*. I enjoy most of the named writers and styles. Certainly I love many books determined to translate ‘the real’. Yet, I’m utterly baffled whenever anyone makes grandiose declarations of what literature should ultimately be.
  
  I mean when I hear anyone anyone, not just this writer, say something along the lines of:
  
  - Writing should be a translation of real life, serious in aim, and high in pursuit.
  - Never write anything that doesn’t directly serve the story; no diversions.
  - Vampires / magic / future technology should be done in this way. (it happens in all genres)
  - Never use two words when one would do (and don’t tell Proust!).
  
  To that I say: literature can be a million different things! Many of them good! Use ornate language even if it isn’t strictly necessary! Divert away, so long as it is interesting! Adverbs surely aren’t always so bad.
  
  It’s this hardline notion more than anything else that makes me unlikely to read Amitava Kumar’s fiction, or of many lit critics who espouse similar. But what he does excel at is journalistic concerns — recording public events, interviewing ‘common’ people, conducting talks with filmmakers and writers. There’s some really insightful pieces here. I’ve added Indian films to my to-watch list that I would never have heard of otherwise.
  
  Kumar does an excellent job of translating the presence and importance of great writers to the page. And also less known personages, like a muslim taxi driver who was assaulted after the Boston bombings. The words of the bigot of the title — a Hindu radical who hates and dehumanizes muslims — are chilling and well recorded, and show that extreme right wing rhetoric is basically the same everywhere, no matter how applied. And it is Arundhati Roy’s line, in an interview with Kumar, about using court injunctions as napkins that sticks with me after finishing this book.
  
  *Kumar names some other Indian writers too, but having not read them, I can’t recite from memory. With a handful of exceptions, the vast majority of writers namedropped are men.
  
  
• 
  Kavya

  oh my goodness, what a load of bull.
  
  these are the kinds of essays that make me feel safe to be the contemptuous cynical reader i can occasionally be and even revel in that mode; bookmarking political moments like they are personal life histories while trying, but failing, to say something of consequence about them. also, does he like literary festivals or is he trying to say he has to do it as a writer but just can't stand them? or does he think he is damn political reading the satanic verses or doesn't he? does he hate the jaipur lit fest? i just couldn't understand and it all gave me the kind of dull headaches that i only get from trying to keep going with books that i know three sentences in i should just throw away.
  
  i don't get it; of course, we are all part of a tide of history but i am somehow very very suspicious of people who say -- i went to college in the 80s when x,y and z political event happened and somehow their identity and political consciousness is the crux of their reflection on postcolonial india and you are left wondering, so okay, other than the fact that you were in the 80s in x,y and z political moment, trying to be a writer, what is your point? why is this a book?
  
  somethings should really just stay blog entries. nothing annoys me more than people who commentate on their times with nothing of substance to say other than their writerly preoccupations.
  
• 
  Ruby

  "The comfortable ritual that I enter into now-a part of the privilege of living in a place like the United States-of choosing and reading books from the shelves that line my study, could not have been imagined at that time."
  
  "The contrasting images that arise in my mind make me reflect on the strange process through which books-and libraries-help you mark and discover the stations of your displacement. Books narrate history, and not simply by what they tell you between their pages."
  
  "In this process of discovery of the divided world, and the motion within it, lies nothing as narrow as a static lesson about inequality, undeniable as it may be."
  
  "It is only in books and in language that the disappearance of books and languages is to be mourned. And also fought."
  
  "Media outlets are not only complicit with the state, they are also indistinguishable from each other."
  
  "Criticism is, or ought to be, a judicious act. It is nothing if it isn't a practice of discrimination, even hypervigilant discrimination. Most often, however, it becomes an exercise in shoring up a preconceived argument."
  
  "Now that nonfiction so routinely uses fiction devices, novelists rub the danger of appearing lazy and dated when they dress up real-life happenings as genre fiction. What was once newsworthy is easily made banal."
  
  "...I will always experience everything as if I have to hurry and meet it in the future. Before the present takes hold of it and cosigns it to the past that is now forever lost."
  
  "Your hometown is always where your roots lie, but I think it can also be about the spreading branches and, in a new season, fresh blossoms."
• 
  Colin Davey

  Recently returned from a trip to Goa, where we found a marvellous bookshop in Calangute called "Literati", and it was there that I found this book. On your first visit to a country as vast and confusing as India you feel you need some sort of "key" and this, as well as my increasing interest in the essay form, was my motivation to buy this book. It is full of good things and I recommend it, even though it is not quite that "key" to India - which would be a huge ask anyhow - that I wanted. Kumar is a fine skilful writer who explores India with an expat's eye.
• 
  James

  I found this book because of the several essays included on writing and the writing process, but even the other essays, often about things that I have no background in, were always informative, entertaining, and interesting. The author is an Indian-born Hindu professor at Vassar married to a Muslim woman, and the title essay is about his confrontation with a Hindu fundamentalist, vehemently opposed to Muslims and religious intermixing. A mentally and emotionally stirring collection of smart essays.
• 
  Jennifer Tucker

  Perhaps I wasn't the target audience. Perhaps I wasn't savvy enough about Indian history or politics to understand the nuances. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right headspace when I started the book. No matter, it will go back on my shelf...and I will try again later...perhaps when I am feeling more clever.
• 
  Sayantani Dasgupta

  Terrific! Besides the obvious amazing pick of subjects, I will mention the best part about these essays—the author’s voice. They made the entire range from lunching with a bigot to the writings of Rushdie spectacular.
• 
  Suman Joshi

  If you like writing, studying human relationships and commentary on politics and current events this is the book for you ! Wonderful writing ! Thoroughly enjoyed this
• 
  Gel

  I am, I suspect, not the audience for Lunch With a Bigot. I know very little about India - its internal politics, its literary figures, even its Bollywood superstars. Mostly I was interested in reading another book by Kumar, whose A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb is one of the most awkwardly titled but also the one of the most memorable books I have read in the last decade. I recommend it regularly.
  
  Lunch With a Bigot, on the other hand, is a bit harder to pin down. A collection of essays, the book ruminates on India, life as an expat (Amitava Kumar has lived in the US for many years as a professor of literature but travels back to India regularly for work), his family ties, Indian politics, literature... I am enriched for having read Kumar's writing and learned a lot; certainly my reading list grew longer as I was reading the book than it was before I opened it. I started to type out a list of highlights - which essays were politically thought provoking, which ones taught me things I didn't know, which ones were fascinating reflections on the role of writers, which ones were laugh out loud funny, which ones were very sad and insightful - but eventually I would have had to mention most of the book. Every essay here has something to offer. I was fascinated with how similar Indian domestic politics are, despite the vast superficial differences, to the US. I was fascinated by the interviews and Kumar's descriptions of famous (and not so famous) people. I look forward to reading some of his fiction.
• 
  Avishek Bhattacharjee

  ২৬ টা প্রবন্ধ -পড়া, লেখা, নস্টালজিয়া, মানুষ ও জায়গার একটা অদ্ভুত কিতাব অমিতাভ কুমারের "Lunch With A Bigot "
  সাহিত্য ও সাংস্কৃতিক সমালোচনার একটা ভালো নিদর্শন পাওয়া যাই এই বই থেকে | লেখকের অতীত এবং অতীত ঘেরা একশো ছোট গল্প লুকিয়ে আছে প্রত্যেকটা প্রবন্ধে | সেই গল্পের মাধ্যমেই উঠে আসে Naipaul, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Ray দের লেখা ও কাজ নিয়ে তুল্য মূল্য আলোচনা | প্রত্যেকটা বিশ্লেষণ হয়তো সব পাঠকের পছন্দ হবে না কিন্তু সব বিষয়কে খুব আধুনিক-শিক্ষিত মাপদন্ডে বিচার করেছেন লেখক | অল্প হলেও কিছু লেখা আমার সেফ ও নিউট্রাল মনে হয়েছে যেখানে উনি আরো স্পষ্ট ভাবে কিছু বক্তব্য রাখতে পারতেন | মানুষের জীবনে ধর্ম, ধর্মের রঙ,বিশ্বাস ও বিশ্বাসের গন্ডি নিয়ে লেখা গুলো পাঠকদের ভাবতে বাধ্য করবে | কাশ্মীরের সমস্যা,আফজাল গুরুর মৃত্যু,আর এই উগ্র জাতীয়তাবাদ'র কি কারণ (শুধুই কি ঠিক-বেঠিক,সাদা-কালো না নাৎসিদের মতো আমরাও ..) অল্প হলেও খুঁজে পাওয়া যায় লেখা গুলোর মাধ্যমে | বলিউড ও বাদ যায়নি , কিন্তু সেখানে লেখকের নিজের রাজ্যের অত্যন্ত ভালো অভিনেতা "Manoj Bajpai" কে নিয়েই বেশির ভাগ লেখা রেখেছেন |প্রবন্ধ গুলো যেন বারবার নিজের শিকড়কে আঁকড়ে ধরার একটা বৃথা চেষ্টা-চোখে আঙ্গুল দিয়ে দেখায় (বর্তমানে লেখক আমেরিকায় থাকেন)|
  আধুনিক ও তথ্যমূলক লেখাগুচ্ছ |