Publish and Be Damned

Most readers share a precious, yet complex, relationship with books, marked by joy, guilt, discovery, and so much more. Dear Troubled Reader, written by Suresh Menon, is an advice column on all things literature and language. It addresses questions that readers have, from the simple to the profound, treating every question with equal seriousness. You might ask: How do I begin reading? Or is writing a mirror into the writer's world? Expect recommendations from the columnist, remedies for ‘bad’ reading habits, advice on navigating the inevitable reading slump, and much more.

We hope this column becomes a space of hope and companionship for you, the reader. A place that brings you back to your bookshelves with renewed love for reading, greater curiosity about languages, and the desire to discover new voices and fresh literature.

Send your questions via email to editor@the-hyphen.in, or leave a comment below.

We often read a book and fall in love with its author, only to discover that the writer’s own values bear little resemblance to those of the characters they create. It can be deeply disappointing. If art has the power to change us, shouldn’t it change the artist too? 

- Chockalingam Samy  

Some art has the power to change some people; it does not follow that all art has the power to change all people. It’s a hasty generalisation along the lines of “I met two people in Indiranagar who were rude; Indiranagar is full of rude people.” As for creating characters, there are two aspects here. One, authors are not their characters. And for another, some of the greatest characters in fiction have been created by alcoholics (there’s a long list either side of F Scott Fitzgerald and Saadat Hasan Manto), wife-beaters (Norman Mailer), paedophiles (possibly Lewis Carroll), thieves (Jean Genet). Readers might separate the art from the artist, but it is understandable if you find it deeply disappointing. Would you read any of the writers mentioned above knowing what they did – or in the case of Nobel laureate Alice Munro – didn’t do? After Munro died in 2024, her daughter revealed that the writer continued to live with the man who had abused the daughter as a child.  

If publishers disagree over a book, is it censorship or just a matter of editorial choice? And what responsibilities do publishers and booksellers have when a book becomes “controversial”? 

- Madhavi 

Publishers love controversial books for the obvious reason – they guarantee sales. If a decision is taken not to publish (presumably you are thinking here of Sonia Gandhi’s autobiography), the reason is usually political. This assumes, of course, that other issues are clear – it is well written, honest, has something new to say or throws fresh light on an old issue and so on. When  a mistress of the Duke of Wellington threatened to reveal salacious details of their affair in a memoir, he is reported to have said, “Publish and be damned!” This is usually a good maxim for publishers. In the case of Mrs. Gandhi’s book, the publishers are discovering the truth of the reverse: “Don’t publish,  and be damned!” Indian publishers tend to be overcautious. It took 36 years for a book banned by the government, Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” to be published in India. Censorship is abhorrent. It kills choice. If you don’t like a book, don’t read it; or write one countering its arguments. No authority should have the power to decide what we read or eat, whom we marry or worship, what we wear or watch. Editorial choice should be restricted to protecting children and the vulnerable.  

I get overwhelmed with the number of books I want to read and read many at once. But I struggle to finish all of them and end up taking longer to read them together than I would if I had just read them one after the other. How do I get into a reading habit that actually works for me? 

- Priyanka Rao 

Well, if it’s any consolation, I too read many books simultaneously. And it works for me. What works for you is for you to discover. Some books insist you read them in one sitting or two. Others don’t complain if you take a week or a month and have to go back a few pages each time to pick up the thread again. Some, of course, you can keep aside after the first ten pages and not go back to. I imagine reading three books by the same author might be confusing, but it’s unlikely you will mix up a combination of, say, Wodehouse, the biography of Stephen Hawking, an Agatha Christie, and a manual on solving problems in architecture if you were reading all of them at the same time.