HT Picks; New Reads - Hindustan Times
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HT Picks; New Reads

ByHT Team
Feb 24, 2023 08:07 PM IST

On the reading list this week is a book that traces the evolution of photography in the subcontinent from the nineteenth century to the present, a tome that attempts to answer the question of whether Hindutva is different from Hinduism, and a biography of one of Twentieth century America’s most dynamic novelists

Discovering image practices in South Asia

This week’s pick of interesting reads includes a volume on subcontinental photography, another that look at Hindutva and Hinduism, and a biography of a prominent American novelist (HT Team)
This week’s pick of interesting reads includes a volume on subcontinental photography, another that look at Hindutva and Hinduism, and a biography of a prominent American novelist (HT Team)

672pp, ₹1999; HarperCollins (Tracing the evolution of photography in the subcontinent from the nineteenth century to the present)
672pp, ₹1999; HarperCollins (Tracing the evolution of photography in the subcontinent from the nineteenth century to the present)

This volume presents some of the complex dimensions of South Asia-oriented lens-based media, specifically tracing the evolution of photography in the subcontinent from the nineteenth century to the present. Through intersecting trajectories, 31 texts, arranged in five distinct yet interdependent sections, examine the general history/particular meta-histories of the medium in our region, reflecting the depth of image practices in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar.

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Drawing upon the broader arc of South Asian visual cultures, this collection/reader analyzes emergent themes, testimonies and sociocultural shifts through key discussions around the invention, application and consequent proliferation of lens-based work. Seminal analyses revised for this volume, as well as new commissioned essays and a set of interviews with practitioners/curators collectively explore the subtle entanglements of memory and space; notions of selfhood; the blurring of geographic taxonomies; the edicts of the gaze; the rupture of identity; varied dimensions of mirroring/othering; and the unstable politics of etching moments in time.

Unframed thereby turns a critical eye upon lyrical and evidentiary frameworks, challenging the obduracy of our narrative positions and the conditioned habits of viewing that reinforce our intractable claims to know “who” and “where” we are. These pages offer fresh insights into how our analogue, digital and other hybrid technologies compel us to confront any monolithic history of photography by working through the multiplicity of facts and the singularity of truth.*

The life of Norman Mailer

304pp, ₹1199; Bloomsbury Publishing (A convincing perspective of Mailer’s ferocious personality and writings)
304pp, ₹1199; Bloomsbury Publishing (A convincing perspective of Mailer’s ferocious personality and writings)

The first biography to examine Mailer’s life as a twisted lens, this volume offers a unique insight into the history of America from the end of World War II to the election of Barack Obama. Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, first in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner’s Song, Norman Mailer’s life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive.

The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction – Catch 22 and M*A*S*H* would not exist without it. Richard Bradford combs through Mailer’s personal letters to lovers and editors, diary entries, journal extracts and newspaper columns to study this controversial figure. From friendships with contemporaries such as James Baldwin, failed correspondences with Hemingway and the Kennedys, to terrible – but justified – criticism of his work by William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, this book gives a unique, snappy and convincing perspective of Mailer’s ferocious personality and writings.*

Origin, evolution and future

816pp, ₹995; BluOne Ink (Attempting to answer the question: Is Hindutva different from, and perhaps even opposed to, Hinduism?)
816pp, ₹995; BluOne Ink (Attempting to answer the question: Is Hindutva different from, and perhaps even opposed to, Hinduism?)

Historian Vikram Sampath, who believes this book is “a majesterial work”, adds that it is different from other volumes on the subject because “it (correctly) takes a step back and identifies that our current situation is part of a global bio-psycho-sociological churn, something playing out over millennia, far beyond the lifespans of any one individual or organization or state”. Built on the foundation that Hindutva is not an ideology but a historical-civilisational process and does not fit the expectations of any ideological framework, this work attempts to answer the question: Is Hindutva different from, and perhaps even opposed to, Hinduism? Written by a contributing editor of Swarajya, the book, which has chapters on the RSS, the idea of Akhand Bharat, cow worship and social emancipation, approaches the much-studied and debated topic of Hindutva from a right-wing perspective.*

*Matter from publicity material.

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