The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

Posted: 16 Oct 2012 05:06 PM PDT

THE description "two good-looking brothers on a quest to keep the world safe from supernatural forces" sounds like a winning premise for a television show from the get-go. Indeed, Supernatural (season six currently airs on TV3 on Tuesdays, 11.05pm) has proven to be a runaway success and a long-running hit series worldwide, thanks in no small part to the lead actors' charisma, stellar writing and bone-chilling stories.

The series out-lived its initial five-season run (which it was originally slated for) and is now in its eighth season in the United States. It doesn't look like the show will be going out of ideas anytime soon, although the creative minds behind the show already have a rough plan in place on how the show would end.

"We have a general shape of an end but it can float forward and you can put more stuff in front of it," explained executive producer Ben Edlund in an interview. Plus, there's the engaging dynamic between siblings Sam and Dean, played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, respectively.

For the two actors, playing on-screen brothers is still fun. "I think the brother bickering has always been part of the show that (Jared) and I have just done pretty easily," Ackles revealed. "We don't have trouble bickering."

Edlund, Ackles and Padalecki discuss the inner workings and future of Supernatural in more detail in the Oct 17-31 issue of Galaxie magazine, out on newsstands this week. Also in the latest issue, British band The Wanted divulge on the progress of its upcoming third album and teased about the kind of music fans can expect.

"Some of (the songs are) very personal because some of us personally had a rough year," Jay McGuinness disclosed.

Actress Torrey Devitto talked to Galaxie exclusively about landing parts on not one but two hit TV shows – Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries. And, with Halloween around the corner, the magazine takes a closer look at five of the scariest places to live on the small screen – you seriously don't want to put down roots in these towns!

Poster collectors will want to grab the new issue as it features lovely photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Pink, Jennifer Lopez and the cast of The Vampire Diaries. Plus, readers stand a chance of winning cool merchandise, like exclusive Supernatural T-shirts, Paranormal Activity 4 iPhone 4/4S covers and The Script's latest album, #3.

The latest in music, movies, TV and celebrity goings-on, Galaxie has it all and more. Galaxie, which is owned by Star Publications (M) Bhd and voted Entertainment Magazine Of The Year for two years straight, also has a presence online at galaxieblog.com.my.

Visit Galaxie blog now for a chance to win one of 10 pairs of passes to Hot Chelle Rae's upcoming showcase in Kuala Lumpur next month.

For updates on the magazine and the entertainment world, follow Galaxie on Twitter (@galaxiemag) and visit its Facebook page (facebook.com/GalaxieMagazine).

Jeet Thayil on Booker Prize Literature shortlist

Posted: 15 Oct 2012 04:17 PM PDT

Jeet Thayil's name on the Booker Prize for Literature shortlist, together with that of Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng, has been hailed as a triumph for Asian literature.

WHEN Jeet Thayil's debut novel Narcopolis was released in India last year, the Indian critics were scathing in their reviews.

Several of them panned the book, set in the dangerous world of Mumbai's drug dens in the 1970s and 1980s as the opium trade gave way to cheap heroin. The newspaper DNA called it "one of the worst novels written in the English language anywhere", and Tehelka magazine said reading the book was "like waiting for a really long goods-train to trundle by".

In an ironic twist, the poet-musician-author's book is now on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The winner, to be announced today in London, picks up £50,000 (RM245,849)– not to mention the increased sales from the media hoopla surrounding the annual prize, now in its 44th year.

Internationally, Narcopolis has won much acclaim with Britain's The Guardian newspaper calling it a "blistering debut" (it was also reviewed positively in these pages on Sept 7). His name on the shortlist, together with that of Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng for The Garden Of Evening Mists, has also been hailed as a triumph for Asian literature.

In a recent e-mail interview, Thayil, 53, observes of those early reviews: "The initial Indian reviews were notable mainly for their incomprehension, which, to be honest, I was expecting. What I was not expecting was the savagery and the extent of it. It felt like a confederacy of dunces.

"People who had not read the book, who had no experience of reviewing literary fiction, rushed to judgment. It was devastating in some ways, because the book was released first in India. And when the reviews started to come in, I thought, 'That's it, I'm done.'"

The narrative, about gangsters, eunuchs and poets in an opium-riddled Mumbai, has an interesting structure, which a lot of reviewers could not get their heads around. The reader encounters an all-knowing "I", and then another character named Dom Ullis. Thayil says he chose this style because he knew he wanted to write something that would "reveal its secrets and its structure slowly".

"I wanted to write a book that would reward second and third readings. Dom Ullis is the 'I' of the book, or one of the 'Is', but for the bulk of the novel he disappears and the third person takes over. Who is to say that is against the rules of fiction? The point of the novel is that it is a capacious, inclusive form and it can be reinvented all the time."

The son of journalist T.J.S. George, the founding editor of the now defunct Asiaweek magazine, Thayil grew up in Hong Kong, Mumbai and New York. He returned to Mumbai at the age of 18 to read for a bachelor's degree in English Literature. Soon after college, he started working as a journalist.

It was as a student in Mumbai that a friend, who was visiting the city, took him to an opium den. "At the time, I was reading the French Romantics and I was immediately attracted to a world conducted entirely on floor level, lit by oil lamps and perfumed with opium smoke. I think I was addicted before I even tried a pipe. I found it romantic, poetic, seductive," he recalls.

Unfortunately, it led to about 20 years of addiction. For most of that time, he pursued a career in journalism, because he needed to finance the drug addiction. "I tried at least two dozen times to quit, with detox and cure attempts of varying intensity, but they all failed. Then in 2002, I joined a methadone programme in New York. I have been clean for about 10 years," he adds.

He went to the United States in 1998 to read for a master's of fine arts in poetry, which he received from Sarah Lawrence College in 2000, then worked as a journalist in New York City. He moved back to India in 2004 to become a full-time writer and settled in Mumbai again from 2008 to 2011. He now lives in New Delhi.

Those years in Mumbai, he recalls, were spent sitting in bars, "getting very drunk, talking about writers and writing. And never writing. It was a colossal waste".

But his time in bars and his addiction did shape the book. One of the key characters, a hijra (eunuch) named Dimple/

Zeenat, is based on a charismatic and elegant character he saw in an opium den once in the early 1980s.

"She was there for a brief period and then she disappeared, as people in that world tended to do. I never forgot her. When I came to write Narcopolis, she pushed her way into the novel and took centre stage. In many ways, a character that is both man and woman is a tremendously useful literary device. She is able to see and say things that are denied to those of us who inhabit just one gender."

Another person who influenced his writing was his late wife Shakti Bhatt. She was a book editor and writer, and she died of a sudden and brief illness in 2007 at the age of 27. They did not have children.

"Shakti is a presence throughout the book, or it would be more accurate to say she is an absence. The book is full of ghosts and dreams of ghosts, of people who die and return because they are unwilling to leave the people they knew. Death is a constant in the book. Shakti has everything to do with the way Narcopolis turned out," says the author.

Narcopolis was "a very tough book to write". "After I was done, I could not do anything for about a year. I was depleted and exhausted. Ending it felt like grief." To be a writer, he feels, "you have to be damaged in some way" – "There are far better ways of spending one's time than sitting alone in a room, staring at a screen."

It took him more than five years, from 2005 till last year, to finish the novel, though he was also writing other things during that time, including a book of poems and a libretto. He also released a CD with his band Sridhar/Thayil. Thayil has written four poetry collections: Gemini (1992), Apocalypso (1997), English (2004) and These Errors Are Correct (2008) and edited The Bloodaxe Book Of Contemporary Indian Poetry (2008).

When asked which was easier, writing poems or a novel, he picks poetry. "Without question, poetry is easier. It takes less out of you, and, essentially, the writing of a poem is a joyful activity, however miserable the poem might be," he replies.

"A novel is different. It is about neurosis and stamina. It is hard work, a nine-to-five job. There is little possibility of joy."

Despite there being little joy, he is "almost there" with his second book, of which he will reveal only the title: The Book Of Chocolate Saints.

"I do not want to jinx it," he explains.

It has taken him several years to find literary success. Which is why, to aspiring writers, all he has to say is this: "Good luck. You are going to need it." – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network

Jeet Thayil will read from Narcopolis and speak at the Singapore Writers Festival, which runs from Nov 2 to 11. Go to singaporewritersfestival.com for more information.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Khamis, 18 Oktober 2012

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

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