Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me, by Andy Martin

Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me, by Andy Martin

(minor spoilers)

A fascinating premise with the promise to uncover insights into the making of an epic is marked by inchoateness.

To be a fly on the wall as Lee Child, bestselling author whose books have sold over 200 million copies, wrote his next Jack Reacher bestseller, "Make Me". To watch, literally, over the shoulder over the world's bestselling author as we wrote, plotted, edited, rewrote; as he thought, ruminated, fretted, breezed through a novel.

The process would take several months—222 days, as it turned out—and the final draft was edited down by 2000 words, and where the first paragraph itself took several days to hammer and iron out. In 2014, starting on September 1, as he always did, Lee Child set out to on his computer, with spellcheck and autocorrect off, because he was not going to let some darn computer tell him what was correct and what wasn't.

Child starts off with the first words of the first chapter. ""The first day is always the best," Lee said. "Because you haven't screwed anything up yet. It's a gorgeous feeling.""

Why didn't Child write, "Keever was a big guy and moving him wasn't easy"? Why did he instead write, "Moving a guy as big as Keaver wasn't easy." Because that would be "too expository. This way we waste no time. It's compact."

Yes, adverbs are frowned upon, as in, "The dirt was always freshly chewed up" becomes "The dirt was always chewed up." Because ""we don't need freshly. Adverb. One word too many. Better styling. Economy.""

Notwithstanding that Child would go on to record a well-received series on writing for BBC Maestro,  his views on writing theory are decidedly blasé. "So much of writing theory is just airy-fairy to me. They say a character is supposed to want something on every page. ... No! It's the reader who wants something on every page. Not the character. The character does not exist. It's just a way of mediating the wants of the reader."

Review: Vritrahan, by Ratul Chakraborty

Vritrahan, by Ratul Chakraborty

Vritrahan is a stunning work in free verse by Ratul Chakraborty that retells the story of Vritra. 

When a book is praised by none other than the late Bibek Debroy as ‘a remarkable work… transcends the Vritra story’, and when Sanjeev Sanyal calls it ‘a ‘mad’ project to single-handedly revive the ancient Indian tradition of composing epics’, you know you have a unique book in your hands. 

The story of Vritra is an old one. It is found in the first mandala of the Rig Veda, where Vritra is depicted as the personification of famine. Most will however know Vritra from the Mahabharata, where his account is found in at least two places. The primary narrative is in the Udyoga (thirty-third) and Teertha-Yaatra (forty-ninth) upa parvas, in the Agastya and Indravijaya upakhyaanas, respectively. Furious with Indra for having killed his noble son, Trishiras, Prajapati Tvastha created the fearsome asura, Vritra, and tasked him with defeating and destroying Indra. Vritra is born from a yagna, from the flames of revenge.

Uprising: The Liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, by Neelesh Kulkarni

Uprising: The Liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, by Neelesh Kulkarni

 
A freedom struggle with guns, clandestine meetings, and songs. That makes it a quintessential Indian freedom struggle, with music by Sudhir Phadke and songs by the legendary Lata Mangeshkar and Mohd Rafi. 

India’s struggle for Independence culminated on the 15 August 1947, when the Tricolour was hoisted atop Red Fort and India was free of the British. So goes the oversimplified version of history. More than 500 princely states had still to be persuaded to merge with India, as opposed to staying independent or acceding to Pakistan—this was the last act of pettiness from a British empire fleeing its “Jewel in the Crown”, intent on destroying what they could no longer rule. Then there were territories still under the control of other foreign powers—the French and the Portuguese. 

Relatively less known is the struggle to liberate Goa (and Daman and Diu) from the Portuguese, which finally happened after a brief assault by the Indian armed forces in December 1961. Much less known is the struggle to liberate Dadra and Nagar Haveli—also from the Portuguese. Most Indians know it as a Union Territory. That a small group of freedom fighters, fighting not under the banner of ahimsa (non-violence), but armed as best as they could, overthrew the Portuguese and established an independent state in 1954, and then joined the Indian Union on 16 August 1961, would come as news and surprise to many. It is this story of struggle, planning, plotting, setbacks, and liberation that Neelesh Kulkarni has put together in his unputdownable book.