News! How much newness does any news have? What news-value do the non-new things carry? There are things, incidents and people that do not make news. They do not possess enough newness for the news-hungry world. These things and beings are useless for the manufacturers of news.
Among these manufacturers is a young sub-editor interning with a Marathi newspaper who looks at things that are mundane – no use for the news. Does he discover something in the mundane? Does he find anything more meaningful there than just making up news? This is The Story of Being Useless.
A writer writes or types. Where does his writing start and where does it end – and what is in between? What does he want to say and what does he want to hide? What lies beneath this façade of letters and words and sentences? What holds together the structure within? Why is this structure created in the first place? What about the writer who has written this novel or novella? Has he really created something novel or is it just a re-rendering of the old?
This is a story of a typist, well, a writer, who wrote ‘The Story of Being Useless’ and who is writing Three Contexts of a Writer.
About the Author
Avadhoot Dongare started writing fiction in 2007. He has published four novels in Marathi: Svatahala Faltu Samjanyachi Goshta (The Story of Being Useless, 2012), Eka Lekhakache Teen Sandarbha (Three Contexts of a Writer, 2013), Paan, Pani Ni Pravah (Leaf, Water and Flow, 2015), and Bhintivarcha Chashma (Specs on the Wall, 2018). The first novel was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2014. He has also published a critical essay Svatahacha Avakash Tapasatana (Probing One’s Space, 2017) about one of the translations he had done as a professional and a book of short stories for children. He blogs at ekregh.blogspot.in.
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