WHAT WE ALL NEED By Richard Crasta Invisible Man Books Price: Rs 295 Pages: 179

There is something predictable about Richard Crasta's novels. They are always a frustrating marriage of fiction and non-fiction, brilliance and banality, irreverence and yet attempting to make a serious point. What they also have in common is sex. Crasta seems obsessed with the F word, starting with his best known work so far, The Revised Kama Sutra, and in the others he has penned since moving to New York some years ago. This one follows the same pattern. If anything, it offers even more evidence of his obsession with sex and the genital area. What we all need, says Crasta, is, well..., a good f**k.

Crasta's literary heroes are Henry Miller and Kurt Vonnegut and it shows. Much of his writing is modelled on these two literary luminaries and it sadly does not contribute towards originality of style. In fact, many of the thoughts and conclusions Crasta brings up in this book will be familiar to anyone who has read his earlier works. He found a formula in Kama Sutra and has been flogging it to death ever since, which is a pity as he is a writer capable of wit, intelligence and sharp insight.

In What We All Need, his latest work, he skitters from one topic to the next, from fiction to autobiographical detail, from George W. Bush to Bill Gates, war and terrorism, without getting his teeth into anything substantial except, of course, sex and its many variants. Crasta's literary style is like the premature ejaculations he is so fixated on: spurts of wit and quirky wisdom but a totally unsatisfactory experience. Crasta's parts (pun entirely intended) are far lesser than the whole and instead of the big bang we end up with a series of whimpers.

There is something predictable about Richard Crasta's novels. They are always a frustrating marriage of fiction and non-fiction, brilliance and banality, irreverence and yet attempting to make a serious point. What they also have in common is sex. Crasta seems obsessed with the F word, starting with his best known work so far, The Revised Kama Sutra, and in the others he has penned since moving to New York some years ago. This one follows the same pattern. If anything, it offers even more evidence of his obsession with sex and the genital area. What we all need, says Crasta, is, well..., a good f**k.

Crasta's literary heroes are Henry Miller and Kurt Vonnegut and it shows. Much of his writing is modelled on these two literary luminaries and it sadly does not contribute towards originality of style. In fact, many of the thoughts and conclusions Crasta brings up in this book will be familiar to anyone who has read his earlier works. He found a formula in Kama Sutra and has been flogging it to death ever since, which is a pity as he is a writer capable of wit, intelligence and sharp insight.

In What We All Need, his latest work, he skitters from one topic to the next, from fiction to autobiographical detail, from George W. Bush to Bill Gates, war and terrorism, without getting his teeth into anything substantial except, of course, sex and its many variants. Crasta's literary style is like the premature ejaculations he is so fixated on: spurts of wit and quirky wisdom but a totally unsatisfactory experience. Crasta's parts (pun entirely intended) are far lesser than the whole and instead of the big bang we end up with a series of whimpers.

AUTHORSPEAK: LUCY PECK

Past Hurrah   PICTURE SPEAK Delhi was not built in a day. On its dusty red soil epic heroes swaggered. Emperors who dreamt of immortality left behind a clutch of mausoleums while an empire translated its grand, sun-would-never-set delusion into sandstone. Refugees swarmed with just a shirt on their back, searching for a home. Each century left behind its footnote in brick and stone. When London-born architect Lucy Peck followed her husband to Delhi, she was at a crossroads of history. "Some parts are frozen in time, like Pompeii under the lava of the Vesuvius," she says. Every trip that she took with The Seven Cities of Delhi, a club of expats exploring the ruins in the capital, was like a culture walk. The past caught up with her. So Peck, 51, decided to bring out a comprehensive book on heritage buildings-from tombs, tanks and forts to temples and churches-in Delhi, most of them listed by the INTACH. The Walled City was the difficult part. Every weekend, Peck would leave with her friend for Old Delhi, nudge open the gate of a desolate haveli, walk past the yawning chowkidar to marvel at the cusped arches and the ornamental facade and carefully draw the ground plan of the building and record its story. "It was at the same time exciting and exhausting," she says. It shows in her book, Delhi: One Thousand Years of Building (Roli), where she puts together historical nuggets, architectural details and even the walks around the place. Peck is worried about the city's future, though. "Glass buildings are not suitable for Delhi's climate," she says. "There should be some control over how people design buildings." It is wise to heed her warning. In 1990, she wrote a research paper on the disastrous town planning in Bangalore. Fifteen years later, when the administration is waking up to the mud and morass the city is in, Peck wears an I-told-you-so smile. In India, you won't find a city revolving around an artist, like Barcelona around the startling genius of Antoni Gaudi, but Peck points to places which are inexorably linked to handicrafts and artisans. At Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, for instance, weaving is the art form of the masses. There are islets like that but "people everywhere must take pride in their total culture". From Delhi, Peck now moves to Agra to compile a similar book, to find the past breathing amid rush-hour traffic. - By Charmy Harikrishnan