#scurf175: 4 texts that made me write
links and books that made me write & links to what I wrote
A prompt on X today made me think briefly about the four texts that made me write. While there are so many more I could add to this list, these four titles sprang to mind immediately. Each of these have their own backstory and role to play in my writing, and extended, life which implied that this prompt warranted a more fleshed out substack post of its own on scurf.
https://twitter.com/anandi010/status/1782336027182453031
I’ve also shared the writing that immediately emerged from these books, usually directly related to their texts and authors. I feel so immensely inspired by each of these books even after years of having read them first, I still feel I can write a lot more about them or rather through them. In fact, a lot of my long-winded, discursive writing on this substack has been a meandering, offshoot of my reverence and love for these very books.
Through this post, I try to condense my thoughts about these books into a couple of sentences to give an all-encompassing, enriching review of them. They’ve have been instrumental in opening doors to their authors and their other writings and I will forever thrive under their tutelage.
Hope you enjoy reading!
Sumana Roy’s How I Became a Tree
How I arrived: I first read this collection in 2017, after freshly arriving in Delhi as a subeditor with Mint. More than Sumana’s writing, I had by then been familiar with her as a person. I’m an utterly quiet, reserved person and suffered a lot in my job posted in Coimbatore with The Hindu. Stationed there, aloof from the people, culture and language, I remember becoming gentle acquaintances with Sumana over Facebook. She had taught me how to cook for one person, how to take care of my health and to think of her whenever I felt alone. I had read some of her scholarship in mainstream media at that time. Her essays on nature and mostly trees sat beautifully well within the lonely mindscapes I was traversing in then. So it was only natural that when How I Became a Tree was published, I purchased a copy with my meagre salary. The essays in the book, as I’ve written elsewhere, gave me the courage to think of writing essays of my own. They capacitated me with the necessary intellectual and critical skills required to write or even think of essays. The essays seemed like they were a dialectic in the botanical but they served more as a purpose of their own, creating little oasis of thinking of and with trees from various lenses.
Where we go: I sorely wish for another volume of these essays and that I had stored a record of my facebook ramblings, posts and notes about and around the book from the time.
My essays:
Recent:
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
How I arrived: I read this at the fag end of my stay in Cardiff while completing my masters. I remember how the text had felt like opaque at first, I could just not worm my way into the book, its characters and mileu. I read it in starts and fits, dropping off each time the text refused entry, then starting anew, and so on. But then after numerous such flights of attempt, I remember reading through its second half with tears in my eyes. Song of Solomon was also one of those books that I read without really understanding much. I don’t remember much about the process of reading it except that this was a used, heavily annotated copy I had picked up from a used book store in Cardiff and so the act of reading took on a heavy, double meaning to it. After returning from Cardiff, I took my first job with Times in Pune and a few months later, nestled in my first ever rented apartment, sitting my the window, I leafed through the pages of this book again. Looking for a former self, searching for more meaning. The book gave me so much more the second time around.
Where we go: This is not so much a comment on the book as it is on my reading styles. Song of Solomon was my first ever Toni Morrison reading experience and I arrived at it at the age of 25. There’s a thought that occured to me then, and as wishful thinking I carry it with me till now — I wish I had come to Song of Solomon before. Even just 2-3 years before would’ve radically altered the course of my life, professional and personal. But better late than never.
Recent: On Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters
Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse
How I arrived: It was sometime during the covid lockdowns when I saw one of those very Lauren Elkin tweets pop-up on my timeline. I went down the rabbit hole of her TL and then read almost all of her essays published till then. She wrote about walking in global cities as a woman, she reviewed books, she wrote about how cities shaped her understanding of herself and that of literature. I was intrigued. Next thing I know, a copy of Flaneuse sat waiting at my doorstep. I read the book in a feverish fit, never having read anything like it before. I took notes, marked up pages, created annotations and scribbled in the margins. In it, Elkin wrote about walking sometimes with purpose and sometimes without in these cities and experiencing them through the art she had encountered on them. There was Agnes Varda, Jean Rhys, Leslie Kern and so many other artists in the book. I read, kept notes and later discovered all of them through Elkin’s writing. Since I read the book under the heavily ensconced Delhi covid lockdown, I wasn’t able to venture out much. Therefore, the essay that came out of the book was about my online flanerie.
Where we go: Elkin’s scholarship filled up the necessary gap in my reading — that of women writing about their experiences in the city. I had read Jane Jacobs just a few months before and after Flanuese I ended up reading more of Jacobs, Lucy Sante, and Jeremiah Moss. So, in a way I created my own personalised writing workshop and course on cities and walking. And none of it would’ve been possible without Elkin (who continues to inspire and move me with her nonfiction writing and now also her upcoming novel!!!)
My essays on and inspired by Flaneuse and Elkin’s work:
Recent: On remembering to touch base with yourself
Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words
Background: The year was 2015, the month was October, the city was Coimbatore (TN). I had freshly arrived to what would prove to be some of the most difficult months of my life (till then). I was renting a place with an acquaintance who read and reviewed books for a living. This was going to be my life too and I was unfazed. Head in clouds, I saw a hard bound copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words. Later that night as a stomach ache assailed my senses, I dragged my feet to the living room and picked up the book. The first few pages drew me in instantly and quite like nothing else. I kept the book away immediately, afraid of what it might stir in me and drank a cup of warm jeera water and went back to sleep. A couple years later, I would go on to purchase the book and read it cover to cover in the midst of a heavy deluge in Dalhousie while on vacation with a friend. Trapped indoors with a book and some beer was my mode of living those days and I got to read In Other Words in the pristine clarity of the Himalayas, seated at the balcony of my room, book in one hand, pencil in another. The essays pierced through me, Lahiri’s slow burn making me think of a myriad ways in which language can alter a person’s psyche. Little did I know, in the coming years I will be picking up a bunch of languages on my own (some for personal reasons, and some others), and that this book will serve as a talisman to all those journeys my mind will undertake.
Where we go from here: I admired everything about this essay collection. No notes. None at all!
Recent: The Art of Fiction No. 262
My essays on and inspired by Lahiri and In Other Words:
Learning Bengali and Comparing Notes with Jhumpa Lahiri’s “In Other Words”
‘Translating Myself and Others’ Looks at Unspoken Aspects of the Practice
Hope you enjoyed reading these!
Have you read any of these books? What are the four texts that made you write?
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