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ARE THRILLERS THE NEW AGE LITERARY FICTION?
When we were students both in college and university, it was mandatory for us to read the classics as literary texts. These were part and parcel of our syllabus. But since we were Literature students, we had always been encouraged to read outside texts as well. And that meant reading more and more storybooks. For myself, I had been ecstatic. The libraries were well stocked with books and if you were in good rapport with the librarian, then the chances were that the late fines usually were waived. But not always.
I had been a member of the British Council Library for quite a long time. It was there that I’d found some of the literary gems that have stayed with me till now. The books that I used to lend from there had a time limit of three weeks. I think the rule is unchanged still. Dostoyevsky, Anita Desai, Rohinton Mistry, Margaret Atwood (not necessarily in that order) had been duly read with extreme love and devotion by me. But what I can still recall is the fact I never saw the genre of thrillers on the racks of the BCL. Today when most readers, young and old alike, swear by this genre called ‘thrillers’, isn’t it amazing that the British Council Library has the least repository of these books? Or is it that they had been tucked away from prying eyes like mine?
What are thrillers in reality? These books promise to keep the attention of the readers riveted till their last pages. Now, everything changes with time and age. Fashion trends change along with the social attitude and behavioural patterns of people. Food habits change with the mingling of different cultures. So the term ‘fusion food’ is much in demand, now-a-days. We don’t want the staple food that we, as children, grew up on. We need permutations on them as well as possible deviations from them. So with book reading, perhaps. We grew up reading classics and at best, contemporary fiction which had been mainly on the serious levels. Parents scolded their children, if they spent a lot of money reading trash novels. But with time, the meaning and implication of the word –trash – has been redefined. No, no. You may kill me if I name some of the modern day thrillers, in contemporary Indian literature, as trash. But believe me, that seems to be trend world wide and our country can hardly be an exception to the general rule.
The genre of thrillers is much like the genre of pop music. Instant hit with the readers on the one hand, and depositing lump sums into the pockets of authors and publishers on the other. All of us enjoy reading thrillers. They provide instant satisfaction to our penchant for books. But have thrillers as a genre come here to stay for good? Not all of us as writers can pen down books like Dan Brown or Ken Follett. What is required to make a book (read a thriller) a success? A racy writing style, plenty of sexual innuendos thrown in and a subject matter which catches the readers’ attention by their throats, as it were, makes a thriller amply successful. What is most striking is that almost all thrillers pertain to detective fiction. There is the culprit who is chased and ultimately handcuffed by the hero/heroine of the novel. There has to be the victory of good versus evil. Now I ask you why should it be so?
I read a lot of detective novels in Bangla when I was very young, going to school that is. Satyajit Ray’s Feluda, aka Prodosh Mitter is a super sleuth who with the help of his cousin, Topshe (incidentally it’s the name of a very delectable variety of fish, consumed by most Bengalis with extreme delight) and Lalmohan Ganguli, another thriller writer. Saradindu Bandopadhay’s Byomkesh Bakshi is very popular. The latter’s novels have been translated and film adaptations have been made copiously. Byomkesh belongs to adult detective fiction whereas Feluda is primarily children’s or young adults’ fiction. I have read a lot of Dan Brown. Professor Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist, is seen racing around, gathering clues which ultimately help him to decipher whatever conundrum he had started with. What is striking in all Brown’s thriller novels is – the entire action of the plot happens within the course of a single day or within the span of twenty four hours. The readers are left gasping for breath.
The master of story telling genre, Lord Jeffrey Archer also pens thrillers. But his novels are so deftly crafted that they are faultless imitations of reality. If the celluloid offers a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, then literary fiction demands total empathy and identification with the characters described through their plots. Fast thrillers go with a fast paced lifestyle. Before, our lives were more laid back, with ample time and space for introspection. But if speed is what we all swear by today, then there’s every possibility that this particular genre of literary fiction may just disappear with an equal and earth-shattering speed with which it had appeared in the literary firmament in the first place, probably in the latter half of the last century.
