An American Master

November 4, 2014

Pulitzer-winner Vijay Seshadri is a worthy intellectual and artistic descendant of Melville.

Prizes are universally looked down upon by those who have a self-imposed sense of intellectual arrogance. After all, Orwell or Auden never got the Nobel — the best argument in our armoury. But I am now retracting a bit. Prizes do have their uses. I would never have heard of Vijay Seshadri had he not won a Pulitzer for poetry. And, of course, as soon as anyone with an Indian name gets recognition, we are busy claiming him or her as one of our own. Seshadri was born in Bangalore; for that matter, I too was born in Bangalore two years before him! That is where the similarity ends.

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