African Psycho and the White Tiger
02.14.09 (12:53 am) [edit]The novel the white tiger was after all a great read. While I read on, what kept occurring to me was not other Indo-Anglo authors but African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou. These two authors tell almost identical stories in different locations, one in Congo and the other is India---an underclass man ending up killing his employer for it seemed the only way to overthrow the dead end of class system--- in totally different manners, so it is worth comparing the two. This is obviously the consequence, or another page, of the global narrative today. Or would it rather be put as the archetype of the universal struggle people are put through? This brought me back to Franz Fanon again. It seems the time finally caught up with Fanon's insight and theories. The mission of our time is, though, to come up with a way to be rid of the very justification of violence from his stance, if there would be any to process the revolution without it. Theoretically, though, there wouldn't.
ABC, ABCD
02.04.09 (12:04 pm) [edit]There is a term such as ABC that refers to American Born Chinese. If you add D to it, it would be about South Asians of the same situation; American Born Confused Desi. There was an independent movie entitled exactly ABCD released more than a decade ago. It was a mediocre movie about an Indian family in NJ, especially highlight ed the agony a pair of second generation siblings, a son and his younger sister, went through and the very realistic conpromises they made in their adult lives in the US, the ambivalence over pursuing their potentials and the burnden of family obligations they had, especially for the choice of who they would get married to and who they were really attracted to, and would split. Since it is pretty much cliched by now, there is nothing noteworthy that I can add to the film. Still, every time that I encountered ABCD materials, I was vaguely reminded of this film as well as the term of ABCD. In the movie, one of the lines actually addressed&n bsp;the younger sister, a profession, willful, liberated and nubile second generation by the term ABCD in rather a mocking tone. The funny thing about it was that it went as American Born Confused Indian omitting any other connotation desi could bring up but limiting it to only the Indian identity.
So it naturally crossed my mind while I was reading Jhumpa Lahiri's new---a year old already, however---colleciton of short stories. As many people have pointed out so far, this was pretty much the same content of what Interpreter of Maladie or the namesake were about, just in slightly different settings. That was the reason that I no longer got impatient or rushed to a store to buy a copy. Only when it got released, though, I read one story from the book, 'Nobody's Business,' to summarize the impression that I had over Lahiri's works; redundant. thus I did not pick up again until recently.
As a general after thought on Unaccustomed Earth was, after all, the reconfirmation of the stretched impression, or her first collection still seemed to champion its remarkable surprises over this third work of hers, unfortunately. The intersting thing this time was that she came back to the short story genre, rather than novel, which was more marketable. This might explain that she has acknowledged that the form she thrives in is it and she respects quality over any benefit her work would bring her: her popularity alone could bring readers no matter what she would release honestly speaking. Still, the materials she dealt with were amazingly the same from both of her previous works, only with more composure. This seemingly good quality, composure, even worked against the genre this time---it killed surprise potentials---and that might be the reason the whole collection read rather dull than it could have been. The author's observation in detail redeems, though. I was after all content that I had read it for the quality, that fruited from her maturity as a writer. But I would not name this to be her best work. If I picked the best work of the collection was 'Nobody's Business', after all. This time, though it read as different from how it appeared to be to me: this could read as a double of meaning of the covert and subtle political observation of, or even criticism against, the US foreign policy. The story of four people intertwined, Sang, Paul, Farouk, Deidra, could signify possibly the current affair over Middle East, American interference, women's condition, white and of color, and their gender and power struggle gracefully orchestrated in the firm structure. Anybody finds this sound interesting should read how she did that. It was VERY interesting if read intensively.
Just having begun White Tiger, I can't deny the impression of the story so up to date, or too catchy, just as the movie about the Indian Quiz Show that has been talked about, that I got slightly turned off. But is this what makes literary works 'relevent' nowadays?
Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Azar Nafisi
01.06.09 (12:18 am) [edit]I caught Azar Nafisi on Diane Rehm Show today. She was the guest to discuss her recent memoir on her mother. I found it novel when she mentioned that she had recently been naturalized as a US citizen, not because she was valueing the US reception more worthy, which was nothing given her ideology, but because her overstatement of her satisfaction for the event. It is not surprising that she became an American over Iranian given her stand so far: she is the kind the US literally welcomes for her being non-political and&nb sp;convenient dessident to pr omote US to be the almighty power while it is actually killing a lot of her fellow Muslims day by day. I would not say that she should be condemned for having no remorse regarding all these conflicts, or Islamic values, unlike the common US people would impose anybody from the region. But I never thought of her as anyone relevent as a literary scholar, and because that is what she is supposed to be evaluated for, I have been skeptical about this author. Her irressiponsible prom otion of Americanism, corny and dated individualism, employing those who were hounded from wherever the revolution was taking place, like Nabokov, as if to generalize everything was universal and same to the eyes of the elites. After all, I guess her motif of the use of Nabokov's texts and the source of her inspiration was uniformly c oming from her desperate desire to justify her being social elite, and to defend her own previledge. I found her book Reading Lolita... weird for its dismissal of class struggle among the women she represented. I was very curious to know how any different angle, such as Edward Said's, would have been read by a female intellectual from the Islamic culture, which could have x-rayed the situation she was in. But she only obscured it by promoting Americanism. I still wonder how she conceived the theory and the impact that it caused the literary criticism. There was no way she did not know Post-Colonial angle, or the predicament of Third World Femminism. How about Spivak's? Let's say Nafisi is just another previledged exile who has had easier life than the average citizens of the country, so no mystery if no caring for others' struggle was observed. If there was anything in common between Nobokov and herself was an exile protecting one's previledge and an occasional role of the dessident in the safe and comfortable range, to secure his/her status in the new found land of USA. In this sense, Nafisi can't be any handier poster woman for US foreign policy.
I was never a Nobokov fan and really don't understand why people still try to find something admirable in his works. He would have been the exact one who imposed his cock on someone like Nafisi, if only younger, just for her being a woman and was from the powerless, therefore inferior, background to his, and would have hushed her if she claimed his imposition. In that sense, Ayn Rand seemed to hold the same status in the US literary history as hers. Talentless but being a creator of the easy textbook formula of the famous cult Objectivism, which seems, in a way, pretty close to what Nafasi sounds like. There is a bunch of followers who only read the fountain head in ten years.
The nature of DRShow is talk-in, so the show shifted into it from the interview and her reading. The first caller turned out to be a calm but eloquent critic who showed disapproval to Nafish's loud but only self important stand; the call er was saying that Nafisi's being too thoughtless to take the stand of Americanism because it inivitably enhanced stigma and trauma Iran is still going through mostly due to the relationship to the US. Consequently Nafasi has been promoting anti-Muslim persepective, therefore she is irresponsible. This opinion astutely voiced my regard for Nafasi's work and political stand as well. To respond, and because I bet that this was the most anticipated inquiry and reproach to her, Nafasi repeated her rehersed answer just hysterically ot the opinion. It was the same theory of individualism, or Objectivism, which would only to secure her newly found status in the US. I guess the textbook of literary theory she had might be a bit too dated. She could not care less, though, for she only wants to save her own ass.
Can the Subaltern Speak or the Queen of Scatology
10.22.08 (2:37 pm) [edit]The Man Booker this year went to anoher Indian author.
I have not read the White Tiger yet, but I found the author's interview interesting when I caught it a while back in BBC, so I will absolutely pick the book as soon as it becomes available.
This news automatically lead my mind to the whole lineages of the Booker winner Indian authors. The very one that hits me is Kiran Desai (the Inheritance of Loss), the booker prize two years ago.
I was quite intrigued by this novel's winning the prize, for I had been a great fan of another Indian female author who had won Booker almost a decade before, Arundhati Roy.
So maybe I got my hope too high up for the Inheritance of Loss.
I still remember that I finished this novel totally exhausted and half disappointed. The novel was OK, don't get me wrong, but I had to question if I would have bothered if this was introduced without a prize or any hype. The coverage of the underrepresented area, the Indian-Nepali border in the late 80's when the independence movement had taken place, was good. But the whole take of this narrative on the (Post-) colonial state and the devastating effects of so called globalization on the region was so simplistic and didactic that I thought it was the text book like one dimensional handle, like a student handing in one's employment of the theory. I would give the novel's effort B+ but having to assess the grade of the text deprived the reader of pleasure of reading quite a bit. Besides reading the whole text did not erase the impression that I had had initially; the novel was so similar to its predecessor, the God of Small Things, just messier and shallower. In other words, it was predictable.
I believe the author Desai chose the style---the textualized oral tradition in somehow deliberately fragmental sentences rather than exercting author's omnipoint's narrative like typical novels do---to challenge the postcolonial discipline that the world is destined to live in, and I believe we can't deny the style she chose just because the whole essence of the novel, or 90% of it, ended up, ironically, the author's grandiose and lengthy chat in fleeting impressions of each character's lives.
The most value of this text was ironically in the descriptions of each characters' inner conflics and interrupted meditations on the interpersonal dynamics with others through lenses from a microscope to the macro-est possible one. So the author was contradictory exercising fullest her very authority as the author: she was speaking of everyone class, race, gender struggling minds with her literay theory text books in her hands, looking them up frequently. Some of her observations were very insightful and wise that I could not agree more. But did we have to go through the whole redundancy to read those countable good ideas roughly eight sentences buried here and there like a treasure hunt? The story, therefore, succumbed to be very predictable. This novel defnitely could have been revised and slimmed down into one third of the actual text that is in print. I remember that I was really spent by the time when I finally reached the end, but I finished it anyway, cover to cover.
The reason that I am jotting this down here is because I happened to find an inspirational review on The Inheritance... in amazon.com a couple of days ago while I was on the search related to the latest Booker winner. It was one of those negative reviews with one star that reminded me of the laborious process of finishing The Inheritance...; the reviewer found the novel deplorable because "the author was obsessed with vomit and body fluid." I surely do believe it was full of puke and shit, but I never thought this would ever be a criterion to condamn a book. I might need to pay another kind of respect to Desai, who could be really the queen of that field.
the time of Franz Fanon reincarnation
10.19.08 (5:04 pm) [edit]Because of the recent financial turmoil kickstarted by Lehman Bros, and the landslide followed to it, the panick that is going on is enourmous. This makes me think that you can no longer live as you somehow have managed. We are in an emergency situation in the echo of the alarm that went off not too long ago.
I am relatively OK given I have not got really much to lose in any case. ;P Yet the immediate question that occurs to me was oh, well, is it unwise to deposit money to a bank account? The answer seems to be yes. Under the circumstances where people just think and move in this doubtful and extra cautious manner, it is not a right move to put money there. But I am not even talking about any saving end, but the very minimum to pay my rent and some other micellaneous fees.
Gary Null was continuously emphasizing in his radio program, which is basically on when I am at home awake or asleep, that we should withdraw money and make sure you don't put any further in the bank. Ultimately, he told us to be prepared for the time when banknotes would be just pieces of paper. Theoretically, that is true and I agree with his view on this subject matter. The question that I have is how soon it will happen.
He also mentions that we have to store foods so that we would get by in the time when money would no longer worth anything we'd need. That would be a scary thought, but all the more, Franz Fanon's revolutionary theory becomes important ever: it is neither intellectual nor proletariate that would hold the key of revolution. It is 'farmers' that would initiate and progress the change of a society, hopefully in a worthwhile manner as opposed to accelrating the destruction. Whoever the closest to the immediate needs for survival ---foods rather than banknotes, which only has protected 'the have'---are the most crucial to maneurvers the world. The question is how prepared those people are. Anyway, I think I have come to understand Fanon's insightful but very dangerous theory better finally.