2009-06-26 - 8:12 p.m.
Dear Rana Dasgupta
Have you always been a good writer? I've been rereading stories from Tokyo Cancelled (or, at least, that's what I had intended to do - more and more it's looking up as though I'm going to end up rereading the whole thing) and I've noticed that your writing changed a lot between Tokyo Cancelled and Solo. (If this were a review I would probably say that you 'matured'.) I mean, a lot of it surely has to do with the content of these books. Tokyo Cancelled was an experiment with modern fables and Solo had its roots in some pretty dark chapters of twentieth century history. But, even so, there are things like Your Occasional Usage of Capital Letters that I really can't see you ever doing again.
Nor am I suggesting that you should.
You should write however you want to.
It's just that it makes me wonder what you were writing before you were writing books like Tokyo Cancelled and Solo. And, considering the growth that accrued between these books - and with a heavy-handed and redundant declaration that I really liked them - it kind of makes me wonder whether those stories were any good.
I like to imagine that they weren't.
And I don't mean that as an affront to you. I like you. But I, as a reader, feel entitled to form such thoughts about you, the author. I mean, I buy your books and spend my time reading them. In exchange for these investments, I take from them whatsoever makes me feel better about the world, myself, and stories in general.
And sometimes I worry about the things I've done to my plot. I've consistently ignored my actual talents and instead taken interest in things I'm not good at. Until recently, I was quietly quite pleased with myself for doing this. Lately, however, it strikes me as having been extraordinarily dumb.
In high school, I excelled in the sciences and very nearly failed English (largely as a result of being kicked out of class, neglecting to do anything that had been assigned to me as 'self study', and having only the haziest notion of how to structure an essay when required to do so by provincial exams). In University I henceforth decided to study literature. By then well-acquainted with how to write essays, I worked hardest to not fail Japanese and lost interest in my supposed major. So from there, I went to Japan in search of adventures and revenge upon their syllabetry.
In love too, I've only ever been interested in what wasn't easy.
And I treasure my successes all the more for feeling as though I truly have earned them. (Here I imagine myself, upturned stool and whip in hand, taming them like wild beasts.) But still, more and more, I get the terrible feeling that the potential lives of my former selves would've held a lot more successes, and that I've cheated them out of that by being contrary.
And so it is that, after reading your books, I choose to believe that you were not an especially good writer until you very stubbornly decided to make yourself one. That your natural talents did not lie here, but that you tamed the wild ones instead.
To which I say, Good For You Rana Dasgupta. And thanks for making the obstinate seem like a good idea.
