Editing R. K. Narayan (section)

===Critical reception===
Narayan first broke through with the help of [[Graham Greene]] who, upon reading ''Swaminathan and Tate'', took it upon himself to work as Narayan's agent for the book. He was also significant in changing the title to the more appropriate ''Swami and Friends'', and in finding publishers for Narayan's next few books. While Narayan's early works were not commercial successes, other authors of the time began to notice him. 

[[Somerset Maugham]], on a trip to Mysore in 1938, had asked to meet Narayan, but not enough people had heard of him to actually effect the meeting. Maugham subsequently read Narayan's ''The Dark Room'', and wrote to him expressing his admiration.{{Sfn|Greene|2008|pp=68, xxiv}}{{Sfn|Varma|1993|p=26}} Another contemporary writer who took a liking to Narayan's early works was [[E. M. Forster]],{{Sfn|Lago|Hughes|Walls|2008|p=185}} an author who shared his dry and humorous narrative, so much so that Narayan was labeled the "South Indian E. M. Forster" by critics.{{Sfn|Sampson|Churchill|1961|p=743}} Despite his popularity with the reading public and fellow writers, Narayan's work has not received the same amount of critical exploration accorded to other writers of his stature.{{Sfn|Brians|2003|pp=59–60}}

Narayan's success in the United States came a little later, when Michigan State University Press started publishing his books. His first visit to the country was on a fellowship from the [[Rockefeller Foundation]], and he lectured at various universities including [[Michigan State University]] and the [[University of California, Berkeley]]. Around this time, [[John Updike]] noticed his work and compared Narayan to [[Charles Dickens]]. In a review of Narayan's works published in ''[[The New Yorker]]'', Updike called him a writer of a vanishing breed—the writer as a citizen; one who identifies completely with his subjects and with a belief in the significance of humanity.{{Sfn|Gupta|1986}}

Having published many novels, essays and short stories, Narayan is credited with bringing Indian writing to the rest of the world. While he has been regarded as one of India's greatest writers of the twentieth century, critics have also described his writings with adjectives such as charming, harmless and benign.<ref name="New Yorker Review">{{cite news|url=https://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218crbo_books|title=The Master of Malgudi|last=Mason|first=Wyatt|date=18 December 2006|newspaper=[[The New Yorker]]|access-date=2 September 2009|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090603183424/http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218crbo_books|archive-date=3 June 2009}}</ref>  ''[[The Financial Expert]]'' was hailed as one of the most original works of 1951 and [[Sahitya Academy Award]] winner ''[[The Guide]]'' was [[Guide (film)|adapted for the film]] (winning a [[Filmfare Award for Best Film]]) and for Broadway.

Narayan has also come in for criticism from later writers, particularly of Indian origin, who have classed his writings as having a pedestrian style with a shallow vocabulary and a narrow vision.<ref name="Reluctant centenarian" /> According to [[Shashi Tharoor]], Narayan's subjects are similar to those of [[Jane Austen]] as they both deal with a very small section of society. However, he adds that while Austen's prose was able to take those subjects beyond ordinariness, Narayan's was not.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.hindu.com/2001/07/08/stories/13080675.htm|title=Comedies of suffering|last=Tharoor|first=Sashi|date=8 July 2001|newspaper=[[The Hindu]]|access-date=9 July 2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111115210912/http://hindu.com/2001/07/08/stories/13080675.htm|archive-date=15 November 2011}}</ref> A similar opinion is held by [[Shashi Deshpande]] who characterizes Narayan's writings as pedestrian and naive because of the simplicity of his language and diction, combined with the lack of any complexity in the emotions and behaviours of his characters.<ref name="Outlook - Deshpande">{{cite magazine|url=http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211645|title=Paved The Ways|date=15 May 2001|magazine=[[Outlook (Indian magazine)|Outlook]]|access-date=5 September 2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101101020955/http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211645|archive-date=1 November 2010}}</ref>

A general perception on Narayan was that he did not involve himself or his writings with the politics or problems of India, as mentioned by [[V. S. Naipaul]] in one of his columns.<ref name="Master of small things"/> However, according to [[Wyatt Mason]] of ''The New Yorker'', although Narayan's writings seem simple and display a lack of interest in politics, he delivers his narrative with an artful and deceptive technique when dealing with such subjects and does not entirely avoid them, rather letting the words play in the reader's mind.<ref name="New Yorker Review" /> [[K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar]], former vice-chancellor of [[Andhra University]], says that Narayan wrote about political topics only in the context of his subjects, quite unlike his compatriot [[Mulk Raj Anand]] who dealt with the political structures and problems of the time.{{Sfn|Iyengar|Nandakumar|1983|p=331}} Paul Brians, in his book ''Modern South Asian Literature in English'', says that the fact that Narayan completely ignored British rule and focused on the private lives of his characters is a political statement on its own, declaring his independence from the influence of colonialism.{{Sfn|Brians|2003|pp=59–60}}

In the west, Narayan's simplicity of writing was well received. One of his biographers, [[William Walsh (academic)|William Walsh]], wrote of his narrative as a comedic art with an inclusive vision informed by the transience and illusion of human action. Multiple Booker nominee [[Anita Desai]] classes his writings as "compassionate realism" where the cardinal sins are unkindness and immodesty.{{Sfn|Sanga|2003|p=198}} According to Mason, in Narayan's works, the individual is not a private entity, but rather a public one and this concept is an innovation that can be called his own. In addition to his early works being among the most important English-language fiction from India, with this innovation, he provided his western readers the first works in English to be infused with an eastern and Hindu existential perspective. Mason also holds the view that [[Edmund Wilson]]'s assessment of [[Walt Whitman]], "He does not write editorials on events but describes his actual feelings", applies equally to Narayan.<ref name="New Yorker Review" />