Random Notes

Longest playing romance

MILLS & Boon is one of the most enduring success stories in world publishing. The fluffy M & B romance, with its emotionally "hyper" heroines and lachrymose plots, has survived the sexual revolution, women's lib. and the general loss of innocence which has made the modern Ms so much more demanding and difficult to please than when Gerald Mills and Charles Boon set up shop nearly 70 years ago.

Yet, we are told, that when it comes to M & B, the liberated MTV generation is as vulnerable to its charms as their grandmothers were. In 1998, M & B novels sold more than 200 million copies, and in Britain every four out of 10 women passed the "loyalty" test. What is interesting is the profile of a typical M & B loyalist who is not, as is commonly believed, unambitious, bored and working class. On the contrary, she is urbane, on-the-make and "sophisticated", according to a survey quoted in the Times Literary Supplement.

The Indian Miss is very much a member of the M & B fan club and apparently teenaged adolescents are not the only ones who are queueing up for the latest title. Some of the original "sinners" though complain that M & B titles are no longer as innocent as they used to be, and that more than a hint of naughtiness is beginning to creep in - presumably a response to the changing times.

In a sense, M & B was the first brand name in literature. Its novels came off the assembly line "run" by little known and underpaid writers, some of whom wrote nearly half a dozen novels a year for years together according to a politically correct formula that frowned upon pre-marital and extra-marital sex and politics . "Superstars aren't grateful," Alan Boon is quoted as saying in Passion's Fortune: The Story Of Mills & Boon (Oxford University Press), a book just out on the M & B phenomenon.

The book, by Joseph MacAleer known for his studies on Britain's cultural history, traces the origins of the M & B story to 1908 when Gerald Mills and Charles Boon left Methuen to start on their own though it was not until the 1930s that the M & B brand came on its own. The decision to have a safe formula which would appeal to readers across geographical boundaries - no controversies, no overt sex and happy endings - was prompted by the company's uncertain future; and it worked. And, more than half a century later, is still working.

* * *

Fluff and more fluff

ACOMMISSIONING editor of a multinational publishing house, which has come out with a new line of titles for the Indian market, confesses that she is not terribly interested in "very serious stuff" because there is no demand for it. She only confirms the distressing reality that fluff sells and therefore fluff is what is being produced, particularly by the more commercial-minded publishing houses.

So, we have superficial biographies of celebrities, particularly film stars; quickies on major news events (Kargil, the nuclear debate, and Indo-Pakistan relations, with each claiming to be more authoritative than others); cookery books; coffee table volumes on travel, wildlife and that old chestnut, the "maharajas" and their "maharanis". One Delhi publisher used to specialise in first novels by women, until he ran out of them and has now settled down to a less heady routine.

On the face of it, the argument that publishers produce what people demand makes a lot of sense - a classic case of demand and supply - but didn't the commercial Hindi film-makers use the same argument for years and made bad cinematic taste a national pastime until the parallel cinema arrived and showed that there was another side to the story? The parallel cinema itself may not have been a huge success - in fact much of it flopped - but it did have a trickle-down effect and apart from creating an enormously successful "middle" cinema it raised the level of expectations for even commercial films. The formula does not sell easily anymore.

Hopefully, "formula" publishing too will find its level, but until then there is no escape from dubious quickies and hyped-up biographies, not to mention the cookery books and hardy "maharajas".

* * *

Old ghosts again

RETURNING to the Delhi international film festival after many years, one was struck by how much it has NOT changed. The debate on art and commercial cinema, which one thought had long been settled, continued to rage with everyone repeating familiar lines. Om Puri though tied himself in knots while trying to ingratiate himself with his new patrons and, in the process, disowning the cinema which first gave him a place in the sun. But that is what class-climbing is all about; you discard the ladder when you reach the top.

Other ghosts from the past which haunted the festival included chaotic screening schedules (the best films shown at the worst of times and in the smallest of theatres); grumbling film-makers and critics; "sarkari" hangers-on; and a scramble for popular Hindi films. And then, of course, there was that festival "constant", Derek Malcolm of The Guardian with his very cautious and diplomatic reaction to the goings-on. Some things, and some people, never change.

* * *

Orwell-ian puzzle

THE theory that the title of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four was nothing but a play on 1948, the year closest to its publication, has taken a knock with the discovery that it could have been actually influenced by his first wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy's poem "End Of The Century, 1984", which she wrote in 1934.

Why he chose Nineteen Eighty Four as the title however remains a mystery and as Sally Coniam, writing in TLS (December 31, 1999) wonders:"We know exactly why Eileen O'Shaughnessy chose '1984' as part of the title for her 1934 poem but it is less obvious why Orwell should have chosen it for the title of his novel. There are several theories - such as the reversal of numbers in 1948 or the influence of Jack London's novels, especially The Iron Heel. Orwell told his publisher F. J. Warburg, in a letter in 1948, that he first had the idea for Nineteen Eighty Four in 1943 (two years before Eileen's death) but surely nothing before has so directly suggested the influence of his clever first wife as this poem."

Another case of a woman lurking behind a man's secret.

Recommended: Granta (68), distributed by Penguin, on aspects of love, its ecstasies and pain.

Those with an eye on tomorrow might like to browse through Scanning The Future: Twenty Eminent Thinkers On The World Of Tomorrow, edited by Yorick Blumenfeld (Thames and Hudson). Blumenfeld has picked up extracts from works of 20 leading academics and professionals to give a kaleidoscopic view of

the future; and those who claim to have "seen" the future include economists, historians, sociologists and scientists. Francis Fukuyama of the End Of History fame and Nelson Mandela are among the marquee names.

HASAN SUROOR

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : The shades of silence
Next     : Politics, language and truth