I have been following the post-mortem on the literary festivals going on in India. There was the podcast interview on: Why do writers write? and How to get a book published? In that dialog we got insights into Why and How books are published in India and likely elsewhere? As is clear, most writers do not write to enrich themselves, or even make a living, but mainly as a passion to sooth their own intellect and ego. Somewhere deep it is likely that authors and publishers and those involved in book selling desire to leave a legacy of informed readers in the next generation. As I see in the presentations of the material being highlighted, most of the works are fiction and poetry, with little non-fiction prose like "Snakes of Goa." And I ask myself: Is India's literature genre becoming like America's literature genre and creating a generation and an era of highly articulate readers who are poorly informed individuals and society they live in? Sometime ago, there was much discussion on the need for non-fiction works to publish references. (Very good and important). But there was little discussion of analyzing the references and their accuracy at the time they were written or now with hindsight knowledge. Writings about colonial history or Goa's Inquisition smacks of authors that are Indophile, Islamophile, Lusophile or Anglophile written for a targeted audience aimed to meet an immediate social/ political need. Can writers, publishers, and book sellers and promoters in the 2024 overcome those biases and learn from those pitfalls?Regards, GL
