Coelho is a shitty writer...his style of writing doesn't have any shades...as the writer of this article says - get out of your comfort zone..and explore better writers...and Don Brown! gosh! he is just a passing fad guys...pllleeeaaassseeee........
When Sonu Nigam would have come he could have thought that he would be bigger singer than say Shabbir Kumar, but I am sure he would not have said that the latter sings rubbish!
When you are new to a field you have a lot to learn and should respect seniors who have been there done it.
All said and done Paulo Coelho is a best selling writer...first this guy to try and sell his first 100 copies and then talk trash about an established writer with a global audience.
Re: Respect for seniors....
by JustAnotherIndianGuy on Jul 08, 2009 12:46 AM
Yeah right. Respect for seniors indeed. So you mean if I absolutely hate what Dickens or Shakespeare wrote, I have no right to criticise their work just because I'm not an author, or even if I am, I'm not as well-established as them?
Tell me, I'm sure you must have watched cricket matches where India lost and said something to the effect that so-and-so player is useless and can't bat/bowl/field etc. Yes or no? I know I have. Well, going by your logic, you and I have no right to voice our opinion because we're not cricketers or not cricketers of equal/greater repute.
Everyone loves to criticise, it's in our DNA. So don't give me this crap that you always need to respect the work of your seniors or someone well-established. No, you don't like their work, so what?
Note that I did not say you shouldn't necessarily respect your seniors, I said you shouldn't necessarily have to like your seniors' *work*. There's nothing there to say that Mr. Choudhury doesn't appreciate what Mr. Coelho has achieved in his professional life. I'm sure he'd love to be in Mr. Coelho's shoes right now, i.e. be an internationally reknowned author whom so many people (inexplicably) love. But that doesn't mean he has to like what Mr. Coelho writes, or worse still, be a hypocrite and say that he loves it when he obviously doesn't.
Re: Re: Respect for seniors....
by EEEEEEE on Jul 08, 2009 02:14 AM
I agree with you...But still there is a way to tell it instead of saying "Coelho is a rubbish writer". Maybe something like "I don't like books such as AlChemist" or "The writing style of Paulo doesn't particularly appeal to me".
Re: Re: Re: Respect for seniors....
by Vimalan K on Jul 09, 2009 08:53 AM
but it is sure that he would definitely sell more than a 100 copies .. thanks to this undue negative exposure he has achieved out of belittling Paulo Coelho .. maybe it's a little publicity stunt
... someone agrees with my personal opinion of the 'great' Mr. Coelho, that he writes utter trash! I finally read The Alchemist some time back just to see what exactly my friends were going crazy over, and frankly, from the very first page it sounded like pseudo-spiritual self-improvement bull-crap. I tried hard to like the book, believe me, but it just didn't do anything for me. Far from it, in fact. I know some people here may take deep offence to my comments here, even though they're purely my personal opinion, because they cannot digest someone calling their favourite celebrity an idiot. It's as if by proxy I'm supposedly calling *them* idiots as well, because they happen to like that particular celebrity. Well guess what, I simply don't care if you happen to like person A or B or C for that matter, and if you take offence at me not liking someone's writing, then clearly you have too much free time on your hands and not enough brains to understand what objective criticism means.
Same goes for all those calling the writer above a moron. Why? He's just giving his personal opinion, and his locus standi as an upcoming author doesn't mean he now has to muzzle his opinions for life. I find him refreshingly frank, and I'm pretty sure he won't care either if Mr. Coelho in turn calls him a useless writer as well. In the end, let the individual reader decide. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes, and he just made his known.
Re: Finally...
by JustAnotherIndianGuy on Jul 08, 2009 12:28 AM
(Contd.) If on the basis of his criticism you were to stay away from critically reading his book, or conversely if you were to blindly go with his opinion and stop reading Mr. Coelho's books, then all that proves is that you are a sheep without any power of independent thought. His opinion is just that, his, and he has every right to air it in India at least. So have you, but if you're gonna criticise, at least criticise his book and not his opinions.
For me, your comments look like a child saying that people should not see B.R.Copra's classics in order to see good movies and they rather see Manmohan Desai movies (which might be equally good or even better but for some select audiences).
Why don't you just say that it is you, a critic, who does not like so and so author. A critic always gives his/her opinions and not facts or some reality/truth out there. So let people choose Paulo Coelho or any other writer and you simply keep writing or promoting your own point of view about other authors.
At some point in your interview, you say that you avoid being social. I suggest you start reading Paulo Coelho and other authors to realize what wisdom is and what it takes to live fully like a human being.
Chill guys, Chandrahas si just being smart...he knows making nasty remarks about celebrities like Coelho and Dan brown will get a reaction. See how many of you commented on just that part of his interview? Dont forget he was a journalist - he knows hw to catch attention with words.
Re: publicity stunt
by EEEEEEE on Jul 08, 2009 02:27 AM
Yeah...that's true..But if this is the way he projects himself, then I will make sure that I don't read his book and also criticise his attitude and pass on a negative image of him to others. He has every right to make an opinion, but then we also have every right to judge him. I would say that he is either acting too smart in order to gain attention or he is naive enough in the way he gives out his opinion. If he was really a smart author, he would have diplomatically projected his opinion of Paulo Coelho without being muzzling his thoughts to himself. He could have said it in another way..something like "I don't like books such as AlChemist". This I would call as a person who is frank at the same time polished when talking about great people. PS: I like Paulo Coelho for the great person he is, but his writing does not particulary appeal to me..I think there are a lot more beautifully written books by many other authors.
well...thts pretty idiotic way of commenting onto the great writers...looking 4 some cheap publicity i guess...like myself came to read your crap...just by seeing the headline..
good tht u wanna remain out of ur comfort zone...so another masaala writer in the making..with stories abt poor & old aged india, where sex, religion, violence, crime, prostitution all intertwined togather....
you go with your crap...but don't ever mention others' work in distaste & poor light...
Indian authors want to be famous and rich overnight.They are zooming in with a black agenda with publishers.A Genuine writer is expected to write for the love of the art and goes on writing till he eventually matures to give a masterpiee .From here the reader traces the chain of events and writings which made the writer achieve the status.It is a forward process without an agenda.The interview is motivated and hence malafide.Maybe there is an agenda to promote Paulo and equate him with a novice so thet both are read with the same zeal.Interesting but unethical.
Yeah I also agree with him. I have recently read Paulo Coelho and found his book quiet monotonous. I don't understand how he became so famous with same type of writing.
Re: Paulo Coelho
by Amit Manwade on Jul 08, 2009 12:12 AM
To understand him, it requires good amount of maturity, and higher level of coscience. you might need to work on that.
Insiyah Vahanvaty, the interviewer, has asked very general questions. How can someone interview an author without asking a single in-depth question on the book itself? The single question on the book was based on the title! I will read the book - Chandrahaas' comments are intelligent. But this interview is obviously a promotional. Why are Indian magazines, online and offline, violating journalistic standards continuously by projecting promotional material in the middle of a news portal? I agree with his comments on Paulo Coelho. Coelho is a really annoying writer. But I doubt if there are many aspiring writers in India reading Coelho. He is right about regional languages content - the best literary output in India comes from regional languages, and this should not come as a surprise. Ultimately writers who write in English in India are from a different social class and therefore have to struggle to write something close to the Earth (for want of a better term). But I think Chandrahaas shoould also distinguish between literary writing and books that are mainly addressed at popularity. This is a big debate, but the gap does exist everywhere in the world. Even in England, a writer like Ian McEwan is not the most popular author. In fact he may not even make the list of top ten selling authors. Is Chandrahaas' book a literary classic? Does he think it belongs to the genre of literary writing? That is the question Insiyah should have asked.
