Less, with all its stream of consciousness rambling, exquisite use of language, psychoanalytical text, is ultimately a novel about love. Love lost, love gained, love showered on someone, love made and love wasted. It traces the journey of Arthur Less, a gay author who is turning 50 and whose lover has left him to marry someone else.
Less is sad but does not want to accept it. He does not want to attend the marriage as well. Instead, he takes a tour around the world accepting invitations to events that he would not have attended normally. They include an interview with an arrogant author, a writing class, an award function, a writing retreat and a food review assignment.
His mind is still going on thinking about his life, his 50 year long life, living in the shadow of more famous partners, more handsome partners. Living on the fringe, not being known, a life of humiliation as he sees it. Or is it? Less is a journey in exploring the midlife anxiety where everyone starts thinking about the life they lived for a long time. Has he made any difference? Has he lived a good life at least for himself? The language reflects the anxieties of Less, it mocks the literary culture, its own narcissistic agenda and bloated sense of self-importance. It rambles like Joyce and is recursive in the vein of Borges. It gets boring, becomes interesting again and then gets trivial and important alternatively. I
s it worth reading? For the plot, no! A big no! Some people may feel its an ego trip, a book written by a writer for other writers. For the love story? Yes, the language is subtly romantic, the love that exists in subtle glances, the bored mundanities of having a coffee together, tired love, decadal love rather than glorified love-at-first-sight. The self pity, the self doubt, midlife anxieties and heartbreak is dressed in a humorous, self-mocking language that becomes very slow at times. Slow enough for you to feel like flipping a few pages. But the toil is worth it, much like the incident of the protagonist reading Proust’s masterpiece. It deserves the accolades but makes you work hard for the same.
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I published “Whiskey and Suicide” on 8th October, 2020 amidst the pandemic. It was a very emotional book that tackled a number of issues facing the middle class in India. I knew it was an intense book and has limited appeal to the thrill seeking, impatient reader stereotype that we have today. In fact the first reviewer for the book warned me that the book will not appeal to the millennial population. Three month down the line, the sales of the book have exceeded my expectations, many people have reviewed the book and it has reached the Amazon bestseller list in the short stories category.
More importantly, the book has made writing a part of my life. I am on my second draft of the next novel, scheduled to be launched this quarter. As a token of gratitude, I am planning to give the book free for a day this Sunday(10th Jan, 2021). The hope is to have more people discover my writing. Please share this with your groups, your contacts and any online forums you belong to. Please do not forget to download it yourself and leave an honest review.
Whiskey and Suicide paints a kaleidoscope of myriad emotions of the Indian middle class families. In a very informal storytelling style, it narrates the dilemmas of the urban families in dealing with the conflicting emotions arising due to contradictory desires. It is the bonds of family and friendship that allow the protagonists to deal with these crises which are depicted by Manik Bal in a detached but empathetic narrative style reminiscent of the great “slice of life” storytellers of the east and the west.
Now a bestseller with rave reviews :
— This book is raw and real and these people can be anyone truly. It is remarkably heartfelt, endearing, it claws at you at times with its depth and emotion. Hard to put down. One of those books you hand to a best friend and say “Read this!”
— The stories are all very good but out of all my favourite of all these is Her Father’s Killer such an interesting, emotional and unpredictable short story and it really touched my heart.
— Variety of intricate topics and unusual metaphorical contrast become an accustomed feat of the author.
— I loved the author’s style of narrating the incidents. Minimal yet precise.
— Bapu and Her Father’s killer plots are weaved around two completely opposite emotions.
— The heart or the author is easily felt with every line, as the lives of the characters seep in, and it is impossible not to get carried by their wave.
— It’s a fascinating inside glimpse at dysfunctional family life in modern India in real-world times, subtlety told with enough detail to make your hair curl.
— Whether it is the alcoholic father who takes the wrong path after his wife’s death or the sensitive couple in “Subtlety”, most characters are sketched in details.
Modern India is a complex place with the variety of demographics ranging from the multi billionaires to people who are not able to get a day’s meal. The financial liberalization and the IT revolution has created a middle class that is ambitious both in economic aims and spiritual aims. Whiskey and Suicide is empathetic without being condescending.
Got my first interview opportunity(Oops, “Writers Leak”) today, thanks to “The Wordicle”. Please read to find out more about me and my book.
An excerpt “The book is shaped by some real life events including the suicide of one of my close friends that impacted me a great deal. It talks about the “Third Thing”, a concept the great poet Donald Hall introduced while writing about his wife and another great poet Jane Kenyon. There are stories about people in forties coping up with career frustrations, spiritual ambitions and increasing complexity and stress in modern life. It gives the readers a feel about the life in modern India and takes them on a tour of an inside of an Indian home. It is intimate, friendly and informal and has a conversational tone.”
Does it make sense To own one’s desires And hold you in My arms, closed and Warm like a phosphene Memorised, drunk and dead Looking in your eyes, Trying to make sense Of the patterns of Life with what you Have to judge and classify Sensual emotions, letting Go the anarchic impulses And try to make sense Of one’s own desires Holding my arms in Closed, memorised emotions In encrypted phosphenes
As many people here said, fiction writing can be therapeutic. The process is painful and takes you through a journey that you can not imagine at the beginning. You start with the intention of designing a world, designing characters and a plot but eventually find that you are a vehicle for the characters to come alive. The characters surprise you with what they want to become. The world surprises you with the intention to manifest in a certain way. In a way, you are a reader to your writing. This is the most obvious when you read your first draft after keeping it aside for 2–3 weeks, as I usually do.
When I was writing my first book, Whiskey And Suicide: And other stories, I started with some intention with each story but the stories just took their own life. There was something of me indeed in each story but there was something absolutely novel that I had not seen before. I write for that experience and that experience alone.
(Written as an answer to a quora question : (https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-get-out-of-writing-fiction/answer/Manik-Bal-3)
Shifting Focus disappointed that no one looks at him the performer started to look at himself and enjoying what he did forgot the faint signs disappointment lost in his own world intimately interconnected and when he was drawn to the beauty of silence and visualised the million possibilities he realised the crowd around him had been hypnotised
Vocabulary is the core tool and you build it by reading. Do not search for words just to use them in your writing. You will feel fake. Use the word that comes to your mind.
Grammar is the second most important after vocabulary. He recommends Warriner’s English Grammar and composition. He recommends using short sentences, no passive voice, no adverbs and no unnecessary complexity.
The third one is paragraph. Good writer write in short paragraphs. Books with big paragraphs are about complex topics and concepts. Paragraphs should come naturally, they are like the beat of the book. You would get it after a lot of practice.
Writing Rhythm and process
He writes primarily in the morning, every day. When he is writing a book, he never takes a break. He takes a nap, does small stuff in the noon. Watches TV, does important rewriting, interacts with family etc in the evening. He aims to write 15-20 pages which is about 2000 words every day. That becomes 1,80,000 words in three months which is the right length for a novel. That is the timeline he gives for the first draft. He recommends that the writer should aim at 1000 words every day in the beginning to make sure that the motivation remains.
The place of writing is important too. It should be a place that you can lock from inside to tell other people that you are working. You can have a desk and a chair that makes you comfortable and helps you get in the flow(my words). He listens to music while writing, again with the purpose of tuning out the external world. That way you can writer anywhere without the distraction and the sounds of the external world. He avoids having phone in the room.
Importance of Reading
Reading is extremely important for writing. Anyone who says he wants to write but does not read is going to be a bad writer. Reading tells you how other writers sketch their characters, build the plot, use the language and make the story interesting. He reads approximately 70-80 books every year which is 6 books a month.
Plot and situation
Plotting is unnecessary. The situation is the primary thing. The secondary thing is the characters and the plot emerges after you start putting the characters in a situation and seeing them come out of it using their own ingeniousness. In “Misery” he came out with the situation of an author being put in captivity by a senile woman and wrote it on a piece of paper. The idea was so strong that he reached the hotel and wrote 16 pages. The concept of the vamp asking the author to write the sequel of misery just for her came much later. In the process, he also discovered that the author was much more resourceful and the vamp much crueler than he initially thought. These things will come as you start writing and treat yourself as the first reader. You should also practice “Show, don’t tell” for the characterization and let the character express themselves in dialog, situations or scenes rather thank giving the information about them directly to the reader.
Too much detail about character or locations is not that important. Details like “he had a sharp nose and big eyebrows” is not required since the reader likes to fill in the details with her own imagination. That is in fact the advantage books have over movies. Movies have to give too much detail just by the visuals. You do not have to describe the place also in too much detail. You should describe it the way you remember it after some time not as if you are describing it as you are seeing it. The reader does not want to read a brochure of a realtor. He is primarily interested in the story and where the place leads the characters and the interaction between them that drives the story forward.
Symbolism
It is important to use all the tools at your disposal for carrying the story. Anything that takes the story forward and makes it stronger can be used. Symbolism definitely can take the story forward. He gives the example of “Carrie”, where blood is used as a device for symbolism. It is shown in all the important events in the book. But he also warns that most of the times symbolism actually works against the story and hence you should be careful before using it. A similar phenomenon works for most of the literary tools like alliteration, metaphor etc. They should not be used only for ornamental purposes. If it takes away the life of the story, they are just not worth it. You should not use them for showing your command on the subject.
Drafts and revision
The first draft should be the “Closed door draft”. In this draft, you should write whatever comes to your mind without inviting any external opinions or criticisms. The only thing he allows is to look at the backstories of the characters, basically anything that is absolutely needed for the coherence of the story. After the first draft is finished, you should just keep it away for six week minimum. When you come back to it, you will see this as a familiar yet unfamiliar story. Something that seems to be written by you but has the flavor of being someone else’s story. Obvious holes in the story would be visible to you. You write the second draft and remove those holes, add scenes that improve the core message of the story and remove the ones that drains the core message. He shares that second draft with 6-8 people he trusts. He thinks that two drafts are enough. Some other people like Vonnegut write each page perfectly, rewriting it many times, so that when they put those pages together, it is the finished product. You can have your own style of writing and rewriting till you feel good about it.
Manik Bal’s short story collection, “Her Revenge” is available now. With this diverse collection of short stories, Manik Bal continues to explore the, and the mundane in the bizarre.
