Saturday, August 8, 2009

The one word answer

As a response to a comment about "Need to Talk," I wrote: No. It meant: no, it isn't about the special need of Nepali people to talk a lot, and no, I don't believe all writing needs a thesis. If I were trying to prove a particular point, I would need a point. But I am not trying to prove a particular point. I am trying to write very generally about the things I see and experience. Sometimes I write about the thoughts that come into my head, unceremonious, uninvited.

Often, the posts I write for the paper are pointless, *and* badly written. Rarely, they are pointless and well written. A couple of them are perhaps well-written, and with an overarching point.

If I wanted to make a point, I would write reviews or commentary. My column in Kathmandu Post doesn't even have a name, because it would be dishonest to give it a semblance of organization. Yet, I talk about the commonplace, the ordinary. I must be doing something right, giving the commonplace and the ordinary a divergent persona, a separate voice, that people read it, and dare I say, enjoy it.

Here are few posts that have no point to them, but are not without meaning:

http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/04/moonrise-and-eunuch-song.html

http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/01/kolkata.html

http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/04/bihari-nightmare.html

And here are some that perhaps articulate the points they try to make:

http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/03/weak-finish.html

http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/05/waiting-for-tarkari.html


I take pleasure in sentences, phrases that are potent or lyrical or simply limp with pointless whimsy. I do sincerely believe that the essays I write have a meaning to them, if not a point or a thesis that can be stated in a few sentences or less. I like to think of my essays as a bouquet of impressions and expressions, part of which wilt and disappear, part of which will come back to the reader at a later time.

The mangoes growing in the rubbish heaps around Kathmandu--apparently it made a lot of people here happy to read about it. Somebody else said--write more about mad men nodding yes, yes, yes. What was the point to their fascination with that?

3 comments:

  1. interesting point. whats the point? i wouldnt like to take any side, but as a person who writes at times, and writes about "pointless" things as well, i cant help but saying whats the point to so many things in this world? like politicians (not all though) talkin and talking abt this and that, its more pointless since its been found out to be untrue on a lot of occasions. or so many other articles in newspaper that come and go everyday, be it on politics or society or whatever. if the idea is get people thinking, or aware, then i think many a times an image of something (as in a "pointless" depiction, or art of any form) can leave a much impressionable thought than anything else. if not then whats the point in art or a painting that depicts a scene, and hence the talent of the painter?
    my point of reading this or any other writer is not only to always get a point, but to look at the way how he/she has weaved words to potray something. thats a difficult art. something good alawys makes me think or makes me wonder or smile. and gets me by, sometimes even broadening my horizon of ideas. after all the point of living is not only the concreteness of earning, living, eating, policizing or whatever.

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  2. every piece of published writing ought to have a point/thesis of some sort ... other than the writer's own gratification. otherwise, it's just intellectual masturbation.

    good observation, of course, is the fundamental prerequisite of any readable non-fiction, but observation itself, even if buttressed by a decent flow of the narrative, is not enough to produce memorable pieces. there has to be an intellectually stimulating or aesthetically appealing world-view of some kind embedded in the piece. only then does a piece tend to rise above mediocrity.

    good fiction or non-analytical non-fiction have their theses subtly embedded in them; the subtext is woven aesthetically into the narrative. needless to say, you have yet to hone that art, irrespective of what some of your readers of a very crappy paper might have conveyed to you.

    if you are happy with being confined to sj's anthologies (who reads them, btw?), you could afford to be complacent and continue in the current mode. but one would have thought you had the potential to emerge as the definitive face of Nepali Writing in English (NWE), relegating the likes of manju thapa, samrat u and a handful of other flag-bearers of NWE to the trash can of history. Going by the pieces here, it's fairly obvious to me that won't be happening for at least another half a decade, barring a miraculous transformation in the quality of your writing.

    anyway, i won't be visiting this blog any more. it's a waste of my time. no offense, but even reading flash fiction @ twitter might conceivably be a better use of one's time. no kidding.

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  3. well, nobody is forcing you to read any of this stuff, i am sure.

    when one writes a column, sometimes one writes well enough to be satisfied, most of the time one tries to meet deadlines. i don't write to please anyone. not even Aditya at Kathmandu Post. i write whatever the hell i want, however badly.

    if you are a fellow writer, share. if not, really, don't waste your time here.

    i have been writing for a while, and i know my weaknesses and my strengths.

    i disagree about the "thesis" part of your argument: some forms of expression are more lyrical than critical, and how much you get out of a piece depends entirely upon how well you can read it.

    which is to say, "good fiction or non-analytical non-fiction have their theses subtly embedded in them; the subtext is woven aesthetically into the narrative" is "execution dependent" on both sides--the writer's, and the reader's.

    i don't know how much of Manjushri's stuff you read/have read, but she is a real writer, someone who can't be relegated to "the trash can of history," as you put it.

    i am not trying to be, am not interested in being the next face of Nepali writing in English. there is writing, and there is not writing, and for me, writing trash is preferable to not writing. this may not be a point of view that interests most people. i am also trying to start writing in Nepali again, which is going terribly, but it is ongoing.

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Yeah. Do that. I'm lurking, waiting for your comments. Yeah. Do it just like that. You know I like it. You know you want to. Yeah.