Serious Popular Fiction

by Anuradha Marwah

For years in the West people made a distinction between high and low art: serious literary fiction and popular novels. Serious used to be worthy or ‘great’ literature, usually realistic and message driven, prescribed to the impressionable for the elevation of their souls; whereas the popular was allied with the forbidden pleasure say of a romance that allowed escape into fantasy. It is argued that in India with her oral culture, at least traditionally, there was no such water-tight compartmentalization of the arts. The performance of Ramleela, for instance, would be instructive and entertaining; widely popular while based on a canonical text.

In the twentieth century things changed rather radically in the West with the development of culture studies as a discipline and, to cut a long and complex history short, serious-popular is no longer an oxymoron in the realm of arts and literature. However, to my mind, in contemporary Indian fiction in English the outdated dichotomy is being re-affirmed in the sudden burst of novels of a particular kind. It seems to be the consensus that popular novels should only entertain and to that end steer clear of political or intellectual pretensions. So, publishers in India seem to be exercising judgement in distinguishing between high-minded literary fiction that few would savour and ‘light’ books that target a new and increasingly younger and multitudinous readership. Popular Indian writing that is flooding the home market is thus mainly about young women looking for steady boyfriends or young men in elite institutions and jobs – and is slotted in genres like chick lit or campus novels.

I am not sure whether that is all there is to popular fiction or that it adequately meets the demands of the emerging market. I, for instance, passionately consume novels and am ready to go to outrageous lengths to get my hands on a thumping good read. But I also expect novels to change my world. I think the world in general can do with a makeover. And who else but writers who practice the exhilarating art of novel writing would be audacious enough, fool enough to try their hands at it! I find many gems in international lists – as I suspect do a large number of other Indian readers – but the distinction between ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ literature has become so ingrained at home that the minute a readable novel starts to get serious by way of theme the critics and reviewers scream murder. An interesting example is The White Tiger, the controversial Booker winner. Reviewer after reviewer commented on its lack of literary merit as though that is to be exclusively found in turn of phrase or lush imagery and the sheer readability of a work is of no account. It was unfairly contrasted with The Sea of Poppies, a very different kind of novel that depends on historical veracity and nuanced information that it provides to the reader for its effect and certainly not on sustaining creative tension through its immense mass. But Amitav Ghosh with his evident erudition is the epitome of a serious writer and Adiga, the youthful journalist, powered by the Booker, was allegedly blundering into the hallowed territory of social criticism.

So, it was Adiga’s novel that seethed with unexpected anger at feudal India and got a large number of unfavourable reviews at home that set me thinking about the need to make market space for what might be called ‘serious popular fiction’. Of course, ideally there should be no distinctions and no labels but the long history of publishing, reviewing and reading has proved that the slotting of a novel cannot be avoided altogether. Readers need pointers as do the reviewers regarding what to expect from a book. It isn’t as though The White Tiger is the first or only example of the kind of writing that strains against usual expectations from a successful Indian novel. There was Rupa Bajwa’s The Sari Shop that was shortlisted for the Orange and won the Sahitya Akademi. It was a slim and riveting novel bringing to light grave class injustice in a small town. There is also Vikas Swarup’s Q and A, the brilliant idea of which spawned the much reviled yet legendary Slumdog Millionaire. The irony is at least two of the aforementioned were criticised a great deal in the mother country as poverty-porn. I wonder whether the charge would have been levelled had they been more ‘literary’ or sociological and less ‘plot-driven’.

The Indian art establishment seems to favour abstractions and endless descriptions even though the locale is teeming with those facts that are stranger than fiction and are grist to the mill of the popular. I’m not only thinking of the slums or the underworld but also of small towns and the minutiae of lower middle class life, so different from each other depending on where they are located, the daily and comic collisions between tradition and modernity or the mysteries of the still isolated wilds. Years ago I read Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case of Billy Biswas that enchanted me with the magic it could invoke due to its theme but perhaps to date it remains the only novel that told a great story using tribal India. I can’t understand why both the novel and its author are buried in oblivion today.

I believe there are a lot of other lesser-known and unpublished novels that eschew ornamentation and explanation but tell fast paced stories that have a deep resonance. More readers could find them if the publishers and reviewers loosen up a little and stop being prescriptive about what a novel or literature in general should or shouldn’t do. Also, all our serious fiction need not be about representing India to the world; at least some of it could be just for Indians in India to read, enjoy and benefit from.

Anuradha Marwah is a writer, lecturer, and social activist. Her latest novel Dirty Picture has just been added to the FriendsOfBooks catalogue.