Coetzee enthralls on Day 3

Day three of the Jaipur Literature Festival was reserved for topics that are veritable tinderboxes, like ‘AfPak’ and ‘The Crisis of American Fiction’.

The former topic, moderated by Barkha Dutt, had people representing different aspects of what is probably the most important political question of the year: “Will Obama pull out of Afghanistan?”

Indian diplomat Jayant Prasad quoted Henry Kissinger, “In exit strategy, there’s only an exit and no strategy”. This was more or less the consensus among the other panel members — Ahmed Rashid, Atiq Rahimi, Jon Lee Anderson, Rory Stewart and festival director William Dalrymple.

What followed was a discussion on a question plagueing the global literary establishment, ‘Is the American novel dying?’ With Martin Amis at the helm of affairs, the speakers — Junot Diaz, Jay MacInerney and Richard Ford — came to an obvious-but-elusive collective nod that the only crisis “on the page is when you are writing the novel”.

Amis said the influx of non-Western writers into the realm of American writing had added ‘colour’ to the American writers. He said so without a hint of irony in his imposing baritone.

In the morning, there was a little gem of a session, where writer Rachel Polonsky spoke about her book on the disgraced Soviet ex-foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. Through access to his books, Polonsky weaves a superbly layered portrait of a man and, consequently, of Soviet Russia.

After lunch, the sessions resumed with readings by J M Coetzee. For three-quarters of an hour, the 2003 Nobel Laureate held the audience in awe by reading his favourite passages from his books.

A C Grayling took off from where Coetzee left and posed questions to the audience like, “How should we live?” Grayling said, “There is no hegemonic structure that explains the right way to live." He implored everyone present to look into the mirror and ask philosophical questions both to themselves and to others. He ended his talk by saying, “Confusion is the beginning of wisdom”.

The evening ended on an introspective note with William Fiennes, Namita Devidayal, Kai Bird and Martin Amis speaking about the memoirs they'd penned. Amis said it is far tougher to write a memoir than a novel because the writer cannot insulate himself or herself from the veil of ‘fiction’.