Critical Book Review: The Journey of the Unknown Path

The Journey of the Unknown Path by young talented author Manhardeep Singh Ahluwalia makes no pretence to follow Robin Sharma’s style of writing. Even though you can’t help but sense the similarities, it’d be a mistake to compare the two. The book is intended to be taken as a parable, with consistent, and, sometimes annoying, presence of prescriptive subtext.

Who is the reader? You , or, the person who buys your book and reads, or, a literary critic?

The Reader: Img Courtesy: www.SXC.HU

(Guest Post by Ram Ramkrishnan)

There would have been many an occasion when each of us would have wondered whether there were more of us in ourselves than the entity we generally regarded as ourselves. The prevailing norms of wisdom would have negated and thwarted any further reflection on this question. A heated yet un-acrimonious discussion, not very long ago, between my daughter and son who are pursuing different levels of medical education about patients suffering from a particular type of brain damage called Capgras syndrome, in which I was an essentially silent yet deeply involved participant, unshackled the imaginative process from its earlier constraint of restrictive prudence on this mysterious matter of possible multiple personalities.

New Author Woes: The Anxiety of Influence

“Imitated By Ancestors”

No, this is not a literary essay meant to scare you. This is one of the best ways I have found to break ice with new authors-  The Anxiety of Influence theory. ( of course it allows me to show off a bit)

Harold Bloom proposed in 1973 that poets ( I normally ascribe this with most artists)  are hindered in their creative processes by ambiguous relationships ( no not those) they maintained with their precursor poets.  He believed that these ‘influences’ produce work that are at best derivatives of existing work, and, therefore, weak.

Simply saying- every new author/poet faces this ‘anxiety of influence’. Sitting back to weave your first story and you soon realise that every plot has already been covered by the masters. There is nothing left to write.