From: sundar@indigo1.hsis.uci.edu (M. Sundaramoorthy)
Subject: Tamil Literary Society - personal views
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 10 Oct 92 01:35:50 GMT

In this article let me explain the motive behind proposing 'Tamil Literary
Society':

	The response to my personal mail to about fifteen friends, whome
I consider as potential contributors, is overwhelming. As I suggested before,
this alone will be sufficient to start with. We have nothing to lose,
except some time we are going to spare in writing and editing. The response
from the general readership, I believe, will be eventually encouraging.

	As Raghavan Jayaraman and K. Srinivasan pointed out, many might have
not had the chance to read the authors we are are talking about and this
may be the reason for the general silence and this need not be due to
lack of interest. 

	Unless, one has really read the works of different authors, both
popular and otherwise, it is difficult to distinguish what kind of
works qualify to become 'literature'. But the popular culture in Tamil
Nadu doesn't create an opportunity to read all kinds of works to enhance
our literary knowledge and taste. The traditional sources to this exposure
should be the academic institutions, public libraries and the popular
magazines. However, these sources do not seem to cater the real needs.
The academicians, do not go beyond Mu.Va. and Akilan, the public libraries
at the best will have Jayakanthan, Vairamuthu and Mu.Metha, and of course
the popular magazines may go only upto Sujatha, Balakumaran and Sivasankari.
(There may be some exceptions). If we had influence of only these three
sources, we wouldn't have had chance to read other kinds of authors. If one
was fortunate enough to have some informed person as his/her relative or
friend, he/she could have been possibly introduced to these authors.

	I like to recall my personal experience in this regard.
Till I was 23 years, my exposure to 20th century writings was limited
to only popular writers of all kinds. I really believed that Chandilyan,
Kalki, Mu.Va., Akilan, Annadurai, Karunanidhi, Naa.Paa., etc. are great
writers and they deserve Nobel prize. This notion about literature changed 
when I went to IISc, Bangalore, thanks to two new friends, who gave me 
books of few authors I never heard before.

	The really good writers do not get recognition from the acadamic
circles, their books are not procured by the public libraries and the popular
magazines do not care unless they become popular by some other means. The
only ways these authors could reach the readers are through little magazines
and few publishers. These magazines and publishers do not get wide publicity
for the lack of money. 

	So we can take this opportunity of having a network, which do
not cost us anything, to popularise those writers, who deserve, but do
not get recognition for obvious reasons, to the extent we can. It is only
with this intention I expressed the idea of having a formal "Literary
Society" in SCT to few friends over e-mail and they encouraged to propose.

	Ku.Pa.Ra. compared three trends in Tamil magazines during his times,
as 'maNikkodi manObhaavam', 'vikatan manObhaavam' and 'kalaimagaL manObhaavam'
and went on to say, it is not the matter of what is needed and what is not,
but their proportion. But this 'proportion' seems to be more pathetic now than
his days.

	Let us include contributions of any author, no matter they are popular 
authors or literatuers. If we have everything together, we will be able to
compare and distinguish them. 

M. Sundaramoorthy
sundar@indigo1.hsis.uci.edu

P.S: I will post a formal announcement of 'Tamil Literary Society' on
Monday and try to bring out the first issue during the first week of November.