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Literary Review
Amit and Amitav
SCHOLARLY studies demand method. Creativity hinges — it is mythlogised — upon madness. Can the two co-exist? Iris Murdoch wrote two works on philosophy. Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics. Closer home, Vikram Seth almost completed a Ph.D. and Amitav Ghosh actually completed one, though he never published it. Amit Chaudhuri, like Seth, thought of abandoning his Ph.D. as he youthfully thought "all writers should". In that period of indecision he wrote two novels, after which life changed.
However it did get completed eventually, and that dissertation, dating from the mid-1980s, is now being published by Clarendon Press as D.H. Lawrence and Difference: The Poetry of the Present. The Irish poet Tom Paulin is writing the preface.
Not content with a mere scholarly book, Amit Chaudhuri is edging further towards the groves of academe. He will soon share more with Amitav Ghosh than the first two syllables of his name. Columbia University, where Ghosh teaches, has invited Chaudhuri to come and teach for a term. Will two be company or a crowd?
ANURADHA ROY
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