13 - Here, There and Everywhere: Vikram Seth's Multiple Literary Constituencies

Summary

Vikram Seth is unique among contemporary Indian writers in English in that he has successfully defied the attempts of academicians to fix his body of work within a singular category of literary production. An Indian by birth, Seth has experienced a considerable degree of global migrancy in the course of his literary career, spanning three decades. He has lived in three continents and has written in a variety of genres. The first part of this paper offers a literary biographical overview to correlate Seth's mobility to the creative milieu of his work and reception therein. Seth, for instance, moves with ease from San Francisco ‘yuppiedom’ in The Golden Gate (1986) to medieval Chinese poetry in Three Chinese Poets (1992), and from the Hindi belt in immediate postindependence North India in A Suitable Boy (1993) to the world of classical music of Bach and Beethoven in Britain, Italy and Austria in An Equal Music (1999). Two Lives (2005) encompasses the geographical and temporal span of pre–World War II Germany and postwar Britain.

Critics are unanimous about Seth's mastery over his craft, in both prose and verse. There are, however, varied opinions on Seth's ‘belongingness’ in terms of geocultural location, central to considerations of the politics of publication and reception. Seth's writing has been considered from within various theoretical brackets including the ‘postcolonial’, ‘transnational’, ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘diasporic’.