Bibliofile

Editorial Labyrinths

It’s a marriage that’ll send shivers down the spine of all publishing houses: former Penguin wiz David Davidar is joining hands with Rupa, well-known for its deep pockets, great distribution and poor editing. Rupa has failed to get rid of its lowbrow, tacky tag, despite offering bigger advances and better sales and promotion than its rivals. Getting Davidar with his formidable track record on board is likely to remove its ‘untouchable’ tag. But Davidar’s aim seems more complicated: keeping his distance from the house with one hand while accepting financial and distribution help with the other. The product of this unusual alliance is carefully highbrow: to be called Aleph (after Jorge Luis Borges’s short story, among other allusions), and with an avowed aim of publishing only works of “original, distinctive and of outstanding literary quality”. Presumably, this means all of Rupa’s and three-fourths of Penguin’s authors need not bother applying.

Blue-Blood Pencil

A favourite party game these days in our literary circles —(ok, that’s a grand way to refer to the two dozen writers and critics one bumps into at every book launch)—is to guess who will get the job as Penguin editor-in-chief. Since an in-house promotion to the top job has been ruled out, the guessing game includes journalists who have one foot in publishing and the other in journalism. Manu Joseph, editor of Open magazine and author of an award-winning novel, was asked outright if he’s been offered the job. Let me float one more balloon—how about Tarun Tejpal? The editor of Tehelka is not only a favourite at litfests, but has the heft to run a publishing house with some of the best and most experienced editors in India.