(City of Words by Vito Acconci, 1999)

Here is a little excerpt from an interview in The Hindu, where I answer the questions asked by Ziya Us Salam:

I read somewhere that the biggest challenge for you is the task of putting words to page! Isn’t that surprising for somebody whose level of engagement with his craft is worthy of emulation?

You are very kind, but I have to say: it is very difficult to find and then put down words in the right order. Not just the words that describe the people coming out of a train at a crowded station, but the struggle of the self that attempts to place its own ambitions among them. The struggle for the right words is also, then, in a serious sense, the search for an attitude.

Also, the reviews of my book have begun to appear in the Indian press. The Times of India calls the book “a must-read.” The reviewer in OPEN magazine has a few reservations but also calls it “a must-read” and adds that the book “reminds one of the writings of that great chronicler of war, Ryszard Kapuscinski.” Best of all is this dismissal from the Indian Express where the reviewer hasn’t bothered to read more than the first few pages–I don’t simply mean that all his examples and quotes are from the Prologue or the Introduction, although that too is true, but that each claim of his is contradicted by what appears in the rest of my book.

P.S. At the Jaipur Literature Festival, I was involved in several conversations about reviewing. A lot of the discussion focused on malice but I think some plain statements can be made about sheer incompetence and bad faith. For example, the Indian Express reviewer of my book departs from his practice of sticking to the first 20-30 pages and actually cites at the end something from my conclusion. He mentions my claim that the war on terror screens from our view the real crime. This happens to be the last line of the book. His charge is that I don’t disclose what the real crime is. What a bummer! Especially if you only read the last line and nothing else in that chapter. Every line that precedes that line in that section is a description of the war in Iraq, which, I argue, is being kept hidden from us because our newspapers are busy presenting to us the break-up of yet another terror cell in this country.

Nilanjana S. Roy joins the debate here with a report on the state of criticism.

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