I am primarily a creative writer and given the option I would prefer to write a short story or a novel rather than an essay in criticism. Yet I have done quite a substantial amount of critical writing in Marathi and some in English too. When I first wrote short stories in Marathi, they were quite unlike the short stories commonly written in those days. They were roundly criticized for being obscure, bereft of beauty, devoid of moral content and obscene as well. Mardhekar's poems got the same treatment. I had therefore to throw light on what I was trying to express, the kind of perceptions that constituted the material of my stories, the social and moral insights by which they were informed and the sense of form that shaped them. Eventually I and Mardhekar were acknowledged as the creators of the New Short Story and the New Poetry in Marathi. But that was not the end of the story as far as my critical writing was concerned. I got involved in various controversies that basically stemmed from my perceptions about literature and literary criticism. These perceptions led me to question of the validity and usefulness of the Rasa theory and I was embroiled for years in a controversy with Marxists who, I claimed, understood neither literature nor the dynamics of socio-economic developments. The heyday of Marxism is over but there are other invasions of the field of literature and I do get involved in controversies again and again although not as often as I used to in my younger days.
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