Critics Coopted
Publishers and their authors seem to be learning a trick or two from politicos on how best to coopt criticism: just invite them all to a panel discussion for the book launch and watch your critics morph into courtiers speaking words of gingerly chosen praise. For the launch of Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods—The Strange Rise of Modern India, the panel had Karan Thapar, Rajeev Sardesai, Shekhar Gupta, Ajit Ninan and the former editor who seems to have found a second vocation representing the rightist point of view whenever required: Swapan Dasgupta.
Cal Quotient
Talking of how Calcuttans love to drop names of books, Pratap Bhanu Mehta recounted the time an old gent came up to him in Calcutta to discuss Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. "Did you just read it?" Mehta asked him. The reply: "I read it every year."
