Failing the litmus test

There is a question that Zachariah Thomas, the protagonist of David Davidar’s novel, Ithaca, asks in the beginning of the book. Sitting in a restaurant in Thimphu while on a holiday, which rather than being a pleasant vacation is his desperate attempt to get as far away from London as possible, Zachariah, or Zach, pulls out a manuscript sent in by a debut novelist. Ten pages are all he can take of it. His frustration is evident as he wonders, “Why on earth don’t they throw caution to the winds, give their work a great clawing distinctiveness, an irresistible force that will sweep the reader along from the very first page?”

Zach is a publisher. Like Davidar. Zach knows a promising novel when he sees one. Davidar, with his experience in the publishing industry, would too. Then how is it that the publisher-writer who is writing a story about a publisher and the publishing industry with which he is all too familiar did not ask himself the same question and give his “work a great clawing distinctiveness, an irresistible force”?

Ithaca, Davidar’s third novel after The House of Blue Mangoes and The Solitude of Emperors, begins with a grim Zach having morbid thoughts on a rather perilous flight to Bhutan. Zach is the publisher of Litmus, one of the top independent publishing houses in the UK which, like several other publishing houses, is now struggling to survive. Its bestselling author, Massimo Seppi, is dead. Zach had catapulted from the position of associate editor to publisher after he had spotted a winner in Seppi’s Angels Rising. But now his position is under threat, unless he can spin out a bestseller in the next two seasons. If he fails, Litmus faces a takeover from Globish Inc, the youngest and smallest, but also the fastest-growing multinational conglomerate. If his professional life is staring at a disaster, Zach’s personal life too is on the rocks. His wife, Julia, the only woman he hasn’t grown out of, is gone and any reconciliation appears unlikely. On top of this, he is stuck in a stifling relationship.

There is clearly a lot that Zach needs to fix in his life. And he can start by trying to lay his hands on Seppi’s unfinished work or unpublished stories. The desperate search takes him to Toronto. And from there to Frankfurt, New York and Sydney. Zach’s journey across continents and cities is also a journey into the world of books and writers, publishers and booksellers, book fairs and literary agents. It offers more than just a glimpse into the lives of and the pressures that confront people who enter the industry for the love of literature.

Davidar uses his experience to bring out the egos and eccentricities of people who make up this world. Through Zach and his situation, he speaks of the biggest threats to the industry that owes its existence to books. The biggest threats are not from the virtual world. Instead, they come very much from within, from the desperation to be on top in terms of numbers, from the excessive focus on commerce and on meeting sales targets. Caught in these wheels of commerce, where profit comes before everything else, what becomes of those who have chosen publishing because of a passion for books?

To his credit, Davidar does not mince words. He does not shy away from revealing the inside story or from saying that book launches have “the scale of a Bollywood premiere and the pomp of a Punjabi wedding”. He does not hesitate to bring out the murkiness that is part of book fairs. He also lets the reader into the childish squabbles that can break out at editorial meetings like the ones between his non-fiction editor, Yanara, and fiction editor, Rachel.

Ithaca has its gripping moments. The chapter titled Ithaca, in which a Slovenian man decides to swim the Amazon, a feat never attempted before, to save the rain forest, is one such section. But there are few such moments. The narrative is dull and the pace lacks vitality. And, there are portions that are poorly edited. For example, where he speaks of the time when Zack is feeling great about his life with Julia and at work, he writes, “As their relationship deepened and broadened, and his professional career seemed poised to skyrocket upwards…” Is there any other way to skyrocket? Or when a dying Seppi describes his favourite food from his childhood: “snails marinated in olive oil, parsley, and garlic, fried in a pan that hadn’t been cleaned for a few centuries”. It’s a sensitive moment and Davidar builds it elegantly, but then he kills it with a clichéd thought: “He fell silent, caught up in the sensuousness of his remembering eye, his best memories his last defence against dying.”

At the end of it, the book doesn’t draw one in. It’s like peering into a story through a glass window as an outsider with the narrative playing out in slow motion.

ITHACA
David Davidar
HarperCollins
x+278pages; Rs 499