Volume 46, Number 12 · July 15, 1999
Sentimental Education
By Tim Parks
An Equal Music
by Vikram Seth
Broadway Books, 381 pp., $25.00
Salman Rushdie's novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet is to be 'supported,' we hear, by a new release from the rock band U2. As if in coy echo, the promotional blurb to Vikram Seth's An Equal Music tells us that 'bookstores have invited string quartets to perform during his readings.' Simultaneously? While the phenomenon of celebrity publishing has accustomed us to the idea that the book itself may be the least exciting part of an overall package, it is disturbing to find two authors with such literary ambitions allowing our eyes, or indeed ears, to be distracted from the pleasures of the text. The multimedia experience may be fashionable, but in literature distinction and discrimination are of the essence. One reads, for preference, in a quiet place.
Review, 5081 words
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