Neel Mukherjee
Neel Mukherjee
cook germ good head sit state suddenly writers
To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.
alight atavistic dinner dishes failure meat moral party please view
In any restaurant, my eyes alight first, as if by an atavistic pull, on the meat dishes on the menu. In any dinner party I throw, I think of the non-vegetarian dish as central. I view this as a combination of weakness, greed and moral failure. Someone please help.
book call
I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer.
bad experience gave outside publish reject understood
I have one very bad experience with a U.K. publisher, who gave it out to be understood that she wanted to publish my book and made me do a lot of changes, all outside a contract, only to reject it in the end.
clean either glass pane reflecting
Fiction can either be a mirror reflecting you back to yourself or it can be a clean pane of glass looking on the outside.
allow
I don't read my books, so I don't allow myself the dangerous luxury of toying with the idea of doing things differently.
I'm much more attracted to the miscegenation of cultures than to harmony.
One writes what one can, or has to, write.
cause seems
Remember that what seems zeitgeisty today is the cause of tomorrow's bafflement or, worse, ridicule.
When a book is going well, it tells you where to go.
work
Work defines our lives and our place in the world.
business defines given itself lives odd rest talk wealth work written
Given that all our lives rest on work that defines us, the business of labor, the wealth that work manifests itself to, I find it odd that not much is written about it. We talk about relationships, damage, adultery, revolution, but we don't talk about work.
ate grew meat rare
I grew up in financially straitened circumstances and meat, which was expensive, was a rare thing at mealtimes. We ate meat about once a month, if that.
novels people rather sit theory
I start with theory rather than people. I don't like novels which have no theoretical or philosophical underpinning. I hate the contemporary novel where people just sit and talk to each other about their relationships.