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.
centre family given indian lives political politics writer
To be an Indian writer is to write, necessarily and inevitably, about politics, so it was a given that the story of the Ghoshes, the family at the centre of 'The Lives of Others,' should have a political soul.
elsewhere lives movement provides strand
The Naxalite revolution - an ultra-left Maoist movement - in Bengal, and elsewhere in India, in the late 1960s provides one strand of 'The Lives of Others.'
bestseller both copies frequency indicator money public relentless sure
The bestseller charts, a sure indicator of public taste, tell us with relentless frequency that Marian Keyes or Jeffrey Archer is a better author, by some dizzying six-figure sum, both in numbers of copies and money, than, say, J. M. Coetzee or Patrick White. Are they right?
good writers
It's always good to get good reviews. I read my reviews. There are a lot of writers who don't read their reviews at all. I read them; then I put them away because it's not good to engage with them too much.
revisit
Innocence is a pretty dangerous thing, you know. Revisit Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' or, for that matter, Greene's 'The Quiet American' to find out how destructive it can be.
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.
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.
work
Work defines our lives and our place in the world.
When a book is going well, it tells you where to go.
One writes what one can, or has to, write.
I'm much more attracted to the miscegenation of cultures than to harmony.
book call
I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer.
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.