Re: Anybody can have 15 minutes of fame!
by Jaydeep Deshpande on Jul 17, 2009 01:59 PM
Totally agree with Chandrahas's Paulo Cohelo view... he is an over rated author, fuelled mostly by the wannabe MBA brigade, who probably read it just to "belong" to the pseudo intellectual discussions. and then make statements like "life changing" book n all. no book can have that power over you. it may shape your thinking or understanding of the world, but not change your life...
I would have never read this article if the title had said "new book by chandrahas". But now I have read it, word by word, because the great rediff has choosen to drop in the name of Paulo Coelho, my favorite. What a false hype and what a waste of time.
Re: Re: hyped using big names
by Lubna Patel on Jul 12, 2009 05:19 PM
same here .. i read the piece only because the title mentions coelho and i was intrigued .. nothn but a gimmick to draw attention to someone who is otherwise unheard of .. agreed, pple can have their own personal views but some views are best left to themselves and not used this way ....
Paulo coelho just plainly sold fantasies. his writings always lacked depth. he never took into the opposite perspective when analysing anything. worse, he puts up his own pearls of whisdom as "wisdom from the desert" "omen" etc, utter crap. the alchemist was just a fiction/fantasy aimed at the teenage audience. his other novels like "veronica decides to die" were even crappier (easily the worst book i have ever read, and i have read almost 60-70, decent enough for a indian non literary professional)
dan brown is definitely good in those themes he choses to write, the author agrees with that and hence, even though he asks the aspiring writers to come out of their comfort zones, he doesnt call Dan's writing as "crap". i agree with him on this regard too.
Firstly Chandrahas, whether you believe in Paulo or not, as a fellow writer, polish your manners enough to respect your senior. Secondly I am sure you have never seen air. But still you breathe it. So just because you refuse to accept the miracles of nature does not mean it ceases to exist. Just one (unknown)book old and this attitude? Wonder to which underground shall your writing lead! Grow up!! Get a life. - A fellow writer --
Mr. Chandrahas Choudhury, you may have read many books and may have been a blogger but you lack something called 'Pain'. You say that you tried to see the world through the peoples perspective then why don't you see the world through the perspective of the people like Paulo Coelho or Dan Brown.
I have experienced 'if you want something bad enough, the universe will conspire to give it to you' in my life. And that too way before I read 'The Alchemist' and that time I didn't even know who Paulo Coelho was.
Your criticism may be ok because you are seeing through your own eyes and I think you never had gone through pain.
To say 'So that got me thinking about what the world must look like from his perspective' and write a book on that is now seems easy for you because you are not realising the pain the people go through, you only see to it. Otherwise you must have gave a second thought before saying 'RUBBISH'.
