IMPLICIT OPTIMISM

Publishing is perhaps the first refuge of a lapsed acade¬mic. If you want to stick aro¬und books without either being able to write them or effectively teach them, the next best thing is probably to try and sniff them out and rewrite them for other people. T.S. Eliot’s notion that literary criticism sometimes satisfies suppressed creative desires in critics is even truer if applied to publi¬shers as creators of books: once the manuscript is with a publisher it becomes his baby, the child’s real mother being rendered very patient in the hands of a midwife quite often insensitive to the groaning parent. Of course it takes all sorts to make a publishing world. The recent World Book Fair as well as the galis between Delhi Gate and Jama Masjid have revealed too many books brought out by large numbers of peddlers, ill-dis-guised kabadis and book¬sellers – become – publishers-overnight who swindle authors, bribe librarians to buy their trash, rake in profits and bring disrepute to Indian publishing.