The Printed World

Updated on: Wednesday, November 09, 2011

“It really is a microcosm of what is going on in the world,” said, André Schiffrin on the evolution of publishing and its metamorphosis into a gargantuan industry in the present age.

The occasion was the first Ravi Dayal Memorial Lecture, organised by the School of Cultural Texts and Records (SCTR), Jadavpur University at its premises entitled ‘The Marketplace of Ideas’ and delivered by André Schiffrin.

The lecture which proposed to ‘give an insight into the ethics of publishing’ was one of two conferences organised by the Alliance française du Bengale in cooperation with the Institut Français, Navayana, Jadavpur University and the National Library.

A rare intellectual in the world of publishing, André Schiffrin was a publisher at Pantheon Books which came out with titles by Sartre, Vonnegut, Chomsky and Foucault to name a few. He established the non-profit publishing house, The New Press and has authored two globally acclaimed books-‘Business of Books’ and ‘Words & Money’, on the world of publishing.
The conference anchored by professor Abhijit Gupta, saw professor Amlan Dasgupta delivering the welcome note and professor emeritus, Sukanta Chadhuri holding forth on the eponymous Ravi Dayal, an Indian publishing legend.

On his first visit to India, Schiffrin regaled the ‘audience of readers and book lovers’ with interesting accounts and anecdotes culled from his own experiences as a publisher. From the declining standards of contemporary publishing, to the vice-like control of international publishing conglomerates on information, the prominence of the university press to the effects of technological advancement on the print medium, nothing escaped his perceptive eye.

“Publishing is an industry, this nomenclature means that they are not thinkers anymore but concerned with the pursuit of the bottom line. Large corporations control the field and for them, an idea makes sense only when it makes money instead of the other way round, which leads to imposition of market censorship,” said Schiffrin.

The lecture was followed by a stimulating panel discussion on the Indian publishing scenario, steered by Rimi B Chatterjee, writer and professor, Jadavpur University with speakers Naveen Kishore of Seagull, Mandira Sen of Stree and S Anand of Navayana.

‘The Business of Words’, the first combined edition of Schiffrin’s two books were published by Navayana on the occasion of Schiffrin’s visit to India.

The Printed World

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