Restaurants are now suing newspapers for bad reviews claiming “defamation” and loss of business. But how should authors respond to bad reviews? Should they just be thankful for the publicity? Should they get into a slanging match with the reviewer and hope for the best?
Should they, as Shobhaa De, the author of “Superstar India” has done, get personal?
De’s latest book has got a poor review in India’s leading English magazines, India Today and Outlook. India Today‘s reviewer tore into the book calling it “the worst thing she has written” and said its subtitle “From Incredible to Unstoppable” made him wonder if it was commissioned by the ministry of tourism. Outlook‘s reviewer called it “quite mediocre” and said it read like a “teenager’s diary”. Etcetera.
But De, former editor of the film magazine Stardust (and the shortlived Celebrity), and the woman who has won titles such as Sultana of Scuttlebutt and “Maharani of Muck” with aplomb, goes below the belt in response.
In an interview with Arathi Menon of Deccan Herald today, De is asked of the unkind reviews that have greeted the book in India. Her response?
“The particular review you are referring to (in a leading magazine) is a personal attack on me. The person who wrote it is a wife-beater; a freeloader; a frustrated has-been and a menace to society. There are other ratings that have already put the book on the best-seller list. So do I really care about that interview?”
As the pioneer of bitchy page 3 journalism, Shobhaa De of course doesn’t name the reviewer or the publication, but if the reviewer/s had given a good review of the book, would De have been enlightening the world with such vengeance in public?
Is the reviewer’s past or present relevant to the debate at all? Or should she be answering the criticism of the reviewer?
Photograph: cortesy Newsline, Pakistan
Read the India Today review here: De turns into night
Read Shobhaa De’s interview here: 60 years young
Also read: Singer Sonu Nigam accuses reviewer Subhash K. Jha of “sexual assault”
This post is libelous.
Shobhaa De is a bit*h. Sorry to use that word, but I havent seen a person who so much trivialised the journalism, so much sexualised it. She has nothing but sex and sex and sex to write. She even describes her daughter in a bad light, which for her, is naturally good.
Bombay Nights and Bombay “De”s. If she wants her career sexed up a bit in her seventh decade, so be it.
She has sexed up Urban India in her book but what about 2/3 rural India giving a false picture of what real india is..India shining remember..anyone
Whenever I come across a piece from Shobe De, I skip it for i know it is a waste of time and I know what to expect for it is a permutation and combination of everythig reduced finally to the same that titilates and shocks
Shobha De nee Kilachand nee Rajadhyaksha knows everything about everybody in Bombay. Fluent in Marathi, Gujarati, and Sindhi, apart from English and Hindi, and with her phenomenal network on the Western Line and the Central Line, nothing that a movie star(let) or politician (or his pimp or his paramour) does is secret from her. A close relation of hers is gay, which gives her another channel into the plethora of secrets that lurk unknown. If Shobha says something it is more likely than not to be true or is going to be true shortly. Shobha in addition is an unabashed Indophile and a Hinduphile not in the rabid sense but in the artistic sense – as every creative artiste in India is – just as every Pandit or Ustad has a Sarasvati murti at home and makes it a point to visit Siddhi Vinayak on the way to Haji Ali. Remember a medicrity named Sashthi Brata? It’s OK if you don’t. There’s nothing of him left after Shobha kicked his sorry prissy Park Street wazoo back into obscurity.
Who is this Shoba De?!
Shobaaa, no matter how many ‘a’s you add is no Jumpa Lahiri or Anita Deasi.She can only write to front row ‘CT’ class of Naaz cinema.She is not even Bachhi Karkaria who can really write serious stuff if she wants to.
“a frustrated has-been and a menace to society”
Publicity-mongering people know how to do what for their self-aggrandisement. By hook or crook, they want to be in the limelight. They know how to market theselves. And there are any number of media hands to oblige them. All for a byline. At the end of the day, as the cliche goes, both sets of people are happy.
Janasamanya–
I hope Kaangeya will slake your curiosity by writing a biography of India’s most notable writer of pornography, unless, of course, his remarks are to be taken with a tonne of salt. If he is right, De can have a second career as a secret agent.
By the way, name calling as a way of drawing attention to oneself is an ancient game.
The sad part is that people buy her books. As for “India Today” calling her latest “the worst thing she has written”, umm.. isn’t comparing her books like trying to differentiate between shades of grey? (or shades of black? ;)
her secret of youth, is it genes or is it knives, spatulas or since they say pen is mightier than the sword, is it her pen ??
I have always viewed this old lady as one who tries to titillate through her writing and have fun for herself by watching the responses of her readers. Less said the better. There is no reason why this space should be wasted on her.