A long drawn-out, pointless rave that seems like it’s leading nowhere, but finally does. I think…

Staying in Hyderabad has major advantages, let me tell you. I have been coming here on and off the past five years. And ever since that lucky day I was hanging around with the guys from Nepal and chanced upon Best Book Stall, my worries, as far as books are concerned, were over. Ahmed Sir, who runs the stall, is one of the nicest people I have ever met. And best of all, he remembers names of books. That of course has a two-way effect – books and writers I tell him about, he keeps them aside for me. But he also prices them (ahem) competitively. I don’t mind. That’s marketmanship for you. And sometimes he flubs. He let a first edition HARDCOVER of “The Silence of the Lambs” go by for a paltry eighty rupees. Even the book-jacket was intact. Heh heh heh.

Then there’s MR Book Stall, and the one opposite Nampally station. Slightly higher priced, but their stocks keep changing all the same. Much better than, say, Crossword or Walden’s or Odyssey, where I see the same books for years and years. Bah!

And Hyderabad still holds its surprises. There was a shop near the Rathifile Bus Station that Rishi and I stumbled upon three months ago when we had gone to buy shoes. The shoe-buying got postponed, and blew the money on some beautiful stuff – a hardcover of “Winnie The Pooh” and an old copy of Ukrainian folk tales. Seems the shopkeeper knew me from Abids, but I didn’t know him! Weird!!!

How the heck do I go about trying a book? My friend psasidhar and I have this nice agreement about books he buys, and the ones I buy. He elects to go for the ones he has read about, or heard about from secondary sources. Occasionally I would put in my own two cents about some book in my “read-already” list, and the next day I find he has already bought it. He does not pause to think about the economics of book-buying. Wish I had that quality. But no, the price of a book does matter to me. I very rarely frequent proper book-shops. It’s the second-hand ones I haunt. Part of the thrill in buying a book, for me, comes from getting it cheap. It’s not just the (cliched) chill running down my spine that matters, when I see, say, Nikos Katzantzakis’ “The Last Temptation Of Christ” in a godforsaken corner of a dark shop , it’s that weak-kneed feeling I have when the salesman says “Twenty rupees” that gives me the real high. I have not cheated anybody. The shopkeeper must have got it for a cheaper rate than what he was selling it for. Of course, I might tell him after I buy it, that he should have priced it slightly more. Next time I go to the same shop, the prices might have gotten slightly higher. But still, far less than the normal market price.

One of the best things I do is to occasionally give unknown writers a try. And really, that has done me a world of good. I wouldn’t have found out about so many good writers if not for this somewhat-stupid viewpoint of mine. Best-sellers are fine, someone or the other buys them, and I read them for free. But I don’t go all out to read them.And I have this chip on my shoulder about reading “critically-acclaimed” books. Most of the time, I have found, these books are more about style and literary finesse than about story-telling. Make no bones about it, I am all for style. But what about the story, goddamnit? And anyway, “award-winning”, “critically-acclaimed” books are going to be around for a long, long time. People read them, people read about them, and they keep selling, and they stay in print. What about books critics don’t like? Or hold in utter disdain? What about books that have a low-key release? Some book that gets overlooked because Sidney Sheldon or Ayn Rand or whoever decided to release their latest offering in the same week. These are the books that have a low initial print run; they sometimes go on to become “cult” best-sellers. As in, a section of the populace end up liking the book so much, that they convince everyone else they to give it a try, and so on – kind of like a ghost-to-ghost hookup. Voila, insta-bestseller. Part of the “word-of-mouth” syndrome holds good here too. My seniors introduced me to a lot of good stuff, so did my juniors and batchmates.

But oftentimes I might not be lucky enough to be part of this messaging service called “word-of-mouth”. Not you either. And we remain blissfully ignorant of the very existence of a book that deserves to be read. This is where the Machine called “Hollywood” comes into the picture. Someday a copy some book lands on the desk of some guy in Hollywood, who sees immense movie-making potential in the tome. Two years later, the movie releases. Renewed interest in the book forces the publishers to come up with additional print-runs, often with the cover bearing stills from the movie. More copies get sold. Maybe the cult classic goes on to become a universal best-seller. If the movie bombs, they end up in discount sales where you can get them for 1/4th their market price. Aaaaah, the power of the Machine….the movie might be lousy, but the book sure wasn’t. Robert Bloch’s “Psycho”. Thomas Harris. Michael Crichton. Alex Garland. Elmore Leonard. Even Stephen King, for that matter. Would I have read them, or thought of buying them, if not for The Great Hollywoodic idyll of bibliotic (I thought about using “biblical” here, but that didn’t fit) rebirth?

Most of the books in my wishlist also come from references by writers I know. Stephen King introduced me to people like Richard Matheson, Richard Stark, Donald Westlake and Shirley Jackson. Frank Miller got me Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Pat Mills, Clive Barker, Grant Morrison and a host of other comic-book writers I have come to know and love. Comics also brought this whole new world of writers like Andrew Vachss, Marc Laidlaw, Robert Shea into my life. Gaiman gave me Kim Robinson, Anne Rice, Pratchett and Douglas Adams. and so on. (Hums the circle of life)

But sometimes, and very rarely at that, a book seems to call to you from the shelf. You might have never read about the author, or about the book. But your hand magically strays to that precise book on the shelf. You like the cover. You read the plot-summary in the back-cover. Even the first few pages seem nice. And you realise you’ve made up your mind to buy that book. You do. And you love yourself for it. Cases like this have happened to me, too. Carl Hiassen, for one. Amazing guy. Writes crime novels that make me ROTFL. (yeah, right, that’s too general a statement, it’s like saying Tom Clancy writes military thrillers. whatever.) I bought Lucky You a long time back. Read it. Loved it. Bought Striptease a month ago. Finished it off last night. My insides still ache.

Striptease is the same movie which starred Demi Moore, and came out with another dud called Showgirls. Till date I would get confused between which is the Vanhoeven movie and which is the Demi one. Haven’t seen either. Don’t want to. The book is waaay too good. Probably the weirdest bunch of characters and locations you’d ever find in any novel.

The centerpiece of the action is The Eager Beaver. That’s the name of the striptease joint where Erin, works. Erin, needless to say is the protagonist of this book, who takes up strip-dancing in order to pay attorney fees to gain custody of her daughter, because that was the “safest way”.It gets changed halfway through the book to Tickled Pink, because Eager Beaver happens to be the licensed trademark of a Chainsaw manufacturing company who sues the management of the strip joint for “hurting their corporate image”. “How can you slander a f***ing garden tool?” is what the manager, Mr Orly has to say about the change happening. “Anyway, my asshole lawyers talked to their asshole lawyers and yeah, the upshot is, it’s easier to change the f***ong sign than to go to court.” The Eager Beaver is offered stiff competition (no pun intended!) by the nearest joint called (very tactfully) The Flesh Farm, which happens to be run by “them f***ing Lings”.

The book kicks off with a visiting politician at the Eager Beaver assaulting a guest at the Eager Beaver who was trying to get fresh with Erin, the star attraction. Save your sympathies for the politician, because David Dilbeck is extremely corrupt, a moral wreck, and a nutzo. Somewhere down the book, he decides that he’s in love with Erin and copulates with lint from the washing machine where she had washed her clothes. And at the same time, Malcolm J Moldowski or Moldy for short, cologne-drenched, impeccably dressed “problem fixer” for the Rojos, Florida’s sugar barons, is busy “fixing” the problems Dilbeck’s love-life is creating. And trust me, he’s got one heckuva job in his hands.
Shad, the bouncer at the Eager Beaver, who hates rap and chews up cds when the DJ starts playing rap in the club, is planning to sue some big food company by claiming to be traumatized when he discovered a roach in the bowl of yoghurt he had bought. He did have to go through a lot of trouble to insert the roach in the first place, though. His lawyer’s assistant eats up the bowl of yoghurt ( the unfortunate roach included), but that’s just the first 30 pages of the book..
Al Garcia, homicide detective, who spends his weekends in a car trying to find the body parts of a drug dealer who’s been dismembered by his “benefactors” joins the fun. So does Darrell Grant, Erin’s druggie and stool-pigeon (not to mention estranged) husband, who incidentally steals wheelchairs from cripples for a living. Tagging along is Erin’s 6-year old daughter, Angela.

So now that brings us to the point of what I have been trying to say all along.
Carl Hiassen, I love you.