# 26 May 2005, 07:57AM: And She Wonders, Where Is Everybody?:
The new MC Masala column is up. I survey recent South Asian and diaspora lit.
And then there are the droning cookie-cutter novels that substitute magical realism for plot and pile on the descriptions of smells and tastes as though that makes for sensuous prose.
Just as smothering raw potatoes with rosemary does not make them homefries, a hundred food analogies will not make your book the next "The Mistress of Spices." One of the books I review, Asra Nomani's Standing Alone in Mecca, will get a fuller review from me in the June issue of Bookslut. As I started reading the book, I mentioned it to Leonard. I started my sentence, "So, Asra Nomani's 'Standing Alone in Mecca'..." but he thought I was starting a joke. We tried to find a punchline for about half an hour and couldn't figure anything out. Suggestions?
For a lighter literary moment, read an old Salon article by Susan McCarthy on Gary Larson (so old that Premium membership isn't required to read it). I love the bit about switching captions with The Family Circus, and of course the reference to Cow Tools.
AUTHORS from the Indian subcontinent write lots of books. Some are fantastic. Vikram Seth's meganovel "A Suitable Boy" entranced me with its epic scope, its closely observed characters and its implicit history lessons.
Cogito, Ergo Sumana by Sumana Harihareswara is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing the author at sumanah@panix.com.