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.
Recycle! I gonna shoot you!
10.07.08 (5:56 pm) [edit]Saying this somehow makes me feel like I am the housewife figure of Kathleen Turner from John Waters' Serial Mom, who was on a rampage of killing anyone who would go against her domestic value and political correctness, from rewinding rental vedeos to recycling, but I am endorsing greatly in recycling and all other virtues as Turner embraced so I feel indignant when I see others not support this idea that is all worth organizing solidatiry for, regardless of colors or creeds. Please! Recycle! And to those who are store owners, you have to participate in this to promote the global agenda by buying the used bottles back.
I am writing this for that I discovered that another newly opened corner store that is just twenty steps away from my place doesn't buy back the used bottles. I was trying to support the store when it was opened given those men seemed to know way better than the previous store owner in the same quarter; there used to be this unfriendly, or precisely mean, Hispanic old witch lady apparently did not survive for her rather crude attitude in this community. Therefore I was quite pleased to see her store gone because basically I had boycotted the store during the whole time when it was around. And now we have this new store, which turned out to be another 'ethically unsound' one in terms of the community improvement and ultimately the eco practice.
If they are so low, it is their moral problem so it is just OK with me personally because all I will do is just forget about them and keep going somewhere farther so that I can have more sound approach to go eco-istic. But I still have to sigh, like is this a matter of education or class? Although there is some sort of gentrification that is exactly going on and being in progress for last five years in my area, still, the dominant population is those who are far backward in terms of the global eco and/or can't afford to think anything beyond mundane. They don't even care if bottles were thrown on the street! Imagine what kind of neighborhood where I live! It almost seems to be some sort of luxuary for them to think of anything more than the very basic and visible in day to day life. Or, am I being too much of the serial mom, just without kids?