Battle for survival
Review of ‘Bestseller’ by Ahmed Faiyaz
No, this review isn’t about battles fought on the borders of a country but an interesting, fictional and a somewhat factually cursory glance of ways in which authors, publishers, editors, celebrities, journalists, and those in PR are invariably pulled together to define success. Publishing isn’t just another ‘dog and pony show’ and the book that I have just finished reading is a hilarious account of ‘the battle of twits’ to quote the author. I must admit that this is one those few books that I’ve read in a single sitting because there was no way I could be pulled away from the crafty twists and turns conceptualized in ‘Bestseller’, a novel by Ahmed Faiyaz.
Akshay Mathur, who ends up being ‘the poster boy of new-age Indian publishing’ by the time one reaches the final page, begins his life as the protagonist who is a writer ‘of a book that’s gathering cobwebs!’ Akshay, who has come from London to Mumbai to turn around Kalim, an ailing Indian publishing house is ‘not a fan of the drivel that’s written in the name of literature today’ and somewhat correctly believes that ‘some of the writers can’t spell Wordsworth or Hemingway. Bloody buffoons!’ Soon enough we, the readers, are experiencing the sort of existential dilemmas that a conscientious editor must deal with while trying to find sanity in the mushy garbage that goes under the name of writing that must somehow fight its way to bestseller lists. The interactions and conversations that writers have with the publishing world are charmingly prickly and we know this is true when we come across people like Roshan Khan, the superstar from Bollywood who the protagonist thinks is ‘the jackass of Juhu’, or Suryakant Joshi, the politician, whose only reason to get his story out is ‘not to talk about his brief stint as a minister and his journey into politics – nobody really cared about that. He had scores to settle’ or Aanya Malik, who believes that what she has written is ‘a departure from the pretentious bullshit I’ve written in the past. When I read it now, it makes me squirm.’ The book also has an ephemeral version of a villain in Jaidev Roy, another publisher who was earlier employed by Kalim and is ‘an evil-looking man with yellow teeth, the shifty gaze of a lowlife thug and hair on the sides combed over to cover his bald patch at the centre’. This fictional tale takes us merrily right into the core of what defines success or failure in the publishing world today.
The tale gets interestingly hilarious as it hops from what goes on within the publishing house and straight into the big bad world of those who assume that having a bestseller tagged to their lives can save their bloated egos from vanishing into the dustbin of eternity. The transformation of Kalim isn’t going to be easy, as Akshay realizes soon enough… at least not with people like Tarun ‘a thinking hottie’ and a ‘schmuck in a cheap suit’ who has migrated from selling energy drinks to pushing books to wizened book-sellers. This story obviously couldn’t have been as engrossing without the ebullient entry of Zorah as the one taking care of media relations for Kalim.
The insights into the functioning of a publishing house are done masterfully in the form of a tale that moves in and out of one intriguing incident after another. This isn’t a dull and dry academic paper but a vibrant story that has enthralling machinations of fame seekers hobnobbing cleverly with the will of Akshay and Zorah to make things work. Yes, they do fall in love and so we also have some sort of a love story zooming into view between ‘smart swap deals among the various authors’, ‘vulgar Bollywood fellows who have no trouble finding publishers’, and the realization that their biggest test is to launch ‘an unknown author without marketing muscle or PR machinery behind him’. You must have realized by now that this book has pace built into it that will not let you put it aside to even get up and switch on the television for the daily news dose.
This is one of those books where you don’t read only what the protagonist says because we constantly get in insider’s view of what he thinks as he says what he says. This is interesting because we all do know that many times we do speak words that are not those that are reverberating in our minds. This makes it easier for a reader to conceptualize the protagonist for what he really is. Another little feature that I liked is that we are never at a loss about the time frame involved because, after all, Akshay has just an year to prove his credentials and must, therefore, ‘find those five books, get some quick wins and get the hell out of here’. And anyway, knowing that the story starts from day one and ends on day 367 makes everything so much easier for the mind to assimilate doesn’t it?
‘Bestseller’ is a story that bridges attitudes in an industry where the single most coveted thought of all concerned is ‘me getting ahead in life!’ What the author is attempting to say is that publishing is not meant to ‘put down what is popular with the masses and praise things that no one’s heard about, pretending to be intelligent and show that he has taste and intellect’, nor must it be about ‘putting in phenomenal effort on publicity and had lined up a spate of interviews with newspapers and TV channels for some of the authors…’ Frankly, I have loved almost everything that the author has attempted to show and he has done it well. I know now that old Kalim indeed ‘knew an interesting set of people’ and that the world of publishing that glides ‘from partying with junkies to sipping wine with snooty arty types’ has a tinge of realism to it. To me, reading this book was ‘quite a fucking journey!’
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Book details:
Title: Bestseller
Author: Ahmed Faiyaz
Publisher: Rupa Publications
ISBN: 978-93-5333-264-8
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Arvind Passey
15 March 2019
