The World Book Fair at New Delhi is about to begin, and INDIAreads will be there.

Do visit the INDIAreads stalls – we can’t wait to have you paw our brand new merchandise even as you struggle to manage a cheap sandwich with one hand, and a screaming brat with the other.

It’s always a pleasure to hear you gossip about the authors in hushed tones (“Amartya Sen – isn’t he the guy that invented Amul..?”), and it really makes our day when you ask us 50 painfully mundane questions and end up buying nothing. We live for those moments!

The theme at this year’s fair shall be ‘Indian Cinema’.

Cinema and Literature – Really…?

As long as the cinematic medium has existed, the movie industry has looked to literature for both inspiration and content.

But when turning a literary masterpiece into a movie, do the two mediums share enough commonalities so as to enable a smooth transition…?

The filmwallahs would answer ‘yes’. From ‘About A Boy’ to ‘Wuthering Heights’, the conversion of popular books to big screen pictures has been a recurring theme in film, particularly in recent years with the success of huge franchises like Harry Potter and the Twilight saga.

While much discussion centers around adaptations that aren’t seen as having lived up to the literature on which they are based, there are many adaptations that actually enhance an existing story; or completely supersede it.

Example: Fight Club – a brilliant movie, stemming from an okay novel.

Or Clueless, which takes a novel from 1815 and makes it relevant to the modern day by setting the story of Jane Austen’s Emma in the context of a Beverly Hills high school.

But all faffing aside – the tendency to make film adaptations of books stems largely from the desire for a guaranteed audience, and is not quite the ‘natural progression’ for a book as advocated by some filmmakers.

Flipside? Stories are abridged, scenes are added, movie-only fans (newbies, resented by the hard core lit enthusiasts) are born, and those who followed the series from its inception are often left feeling a little disappointed at the end product.

The greatest difference between movies and novels is that cinemagoers share a much more social, passive experience than bookworms – who enjoy an active, solitary read. This means that while those reading the book have their own visions of characters and events, film audiences are forced to share a single vision of what these aspects of the story look like.

This alienates the book fan further – what was once a personal experience for him/her, is now universal; with the perceptions and prejudices of producers, directors, actors and audiences – all influencing the final product.

All is not lost, though.

In Part II, we shall take a look at some of the more successful experiments to have managed the leap from literature to cinema.

Leddies.

The Velenntyne Day is here, and louve is in the air.

(sniff) Can you smell it?

Annyway.

Let’s celebrate romance by taking a look at some of the more romantic literary characters to have tumbled out of ‘romance novels‘ (and similar works of propaganda that were almost certainly metaphors for the authors’ own failed love lives);

1. Edward Rochester of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre – (Alternately cold, imperious, and withholding; he proposes to Jane without disclosing the much-married madwoman imprisoned in his attic)

2. Richard Sharpe of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series – (“He’ll fall in love with anything in a petticoat”, according to Patrick Harper – Richard’s loyal friend)

3. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – (In 2010, a protein sex pheromone in male mouse urine, that is sexually attractive to female mice, was named Darcin in honour of the character)

4. Heathcliff of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights – (A man prone to domestic violence, kidnapping, murder and digging up dead lovers – a fact perhaps unknown to Gordon Brown when he compared himself to “an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff” in 2008.)

5. Rupert Campbell Black of Jilly Cooper’s The Rutshire Chronicles – (Cooper has acknowledged that Rupert’s character is based upon Andrew Parker Bowles, the ex-husband of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. Incidentally, she left him for Prince Charles – a man with a face for radio)

That’s just the beginning of my list. I could go on and on, but let me not kill all that love in one go. So more later….Till then

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!!!

How would one explain the Kindle to Charlie Dickens…?

No wait; that’s a separate blogpost. Let’s get to know Charlie a little better first.

Charles Dickens: The name conjures up visions of plum pudding and Christmas punch, quaint coaching inns and cosy firesides, but also of orphaned and starving children, misers, murderers, and abusive schoolmasters. Dickens was 19th century London personified – he survived its mean streets as a child and, despite being largely self-educated, possessed the genius (that trademark leftie trait) to eventually become the greatest writer of his age.

Charlie was born on February 7, 1812, the son of a clerk at the Navy Pay Office. His father, John Dickens, continually living beyond his means, was imprisoned at the Marshalsea(a prison on the south bank of the River Thames in Southwark) in 1824 for failing to pay his debts.

A 12-year-old Charles was subsequently removed from school and sent to work at a boot-blacking factory – earning six shillings a week to help support the family. This experience cast a shadow over the clever, sensitive boy, and became a defining episode in Charlie’s life. (He would later lament, “How I could have been so easily cast away at such an age.”)

This childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment, although unknown to his readers until after his death, would be a heavy influence on Dickens‘ later views on social reform; and not least on the world he would create through his fiction.

Not surprisingly, Dickens’ characters are some of the most memorable in fiction.

Often these characters were based on people that he knew: Wilkins Micawber and William Dorrit (his father), Mrs. Nickleby (his mother). In a few instances Dickens based the character too closely on the original and got into trouble, as in the case of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House, based on Leigh Hunt, and Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield, based on his wife’s dwarf chiropodist.

Their names, too, are funkier than most. Characters such as Sweedlepipe, Honeythunder, Bumble, Pumblechook, and M’Choakumchild are recognizable as Dickensian even by those unfamiliar with the stories.

Charlie’s friend and biographer, John Forster, said that Dickens made “characters real existences, not by describing them but by letting them describe themselves.”  Characters such as Scrooge (miserly) and Pecksniff (hypocritically affecting benevolence) became defining terms in everyday vernacular.

Charlie would go on to write 15 major novels and countless short stories and articles before his death on June 9, 1870.

He wished to be buried, without fanfare, in a small cemetery in Rochester, but the Nation would not allow it. He was laid to rest in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey, the flowers from thousands of mourners overflowing the open grave.

Incidentally, among the more beautiful bouquets were many simple clusters of wildflowers, wrapped in rags.

More about him later, though; must get back to my very empowering ‘Five Point Someone’.

In the meantime, please feel free to buy/rent, and academically fondle thereafter, the following Dickensian Classics at INDIAreads;

1. A Christmas Carol: You know the tale, you’ve seen the movies, but if you haven’t read the book you’re missing half the story. Dickens‘ little tale of human redemption has a million versions out there; make sure you get the original at INDIAreads.

2. David Copperfield: Charlie’s eighth novel was a thinly disguised autobiography, with many of the story lines mirroring Dickens‘ own life. ”Dickens never stood so high in reputation as at the completion of Copperfield.” – John Forster, Dickens‘ friend and first biographer.

3. Great Expectations: Strongly autobiographical again; though not as openly as in David Copperfield. Charlie actually reread Copperfield before beginning Great Expectations – to avoid unintentional repetition. Called Dickens‘ darkest work by some, it was very well received by Victorian readers and remains one of his most popular works today. Many consider it his greatest use of plot, characterization, and style – and a masterpiece of literary work.