South Asian Fiction Turns Eleanor Rigby
by Suzan Abrams
This article reflects my radical view as a past lover of South Asian literature. If it is ever possible to dissolve a relationship with a certain category of books, I am now contemplating plunging down that ravine while staying intent on a literary divorce and a hearty reconciliation with past loves.
I picture writers from the East who stay determined to write only about ethnicity as a pompous grandeur of heritage and culture, as squeezed into hovels or boxes with no chance of escape. This after reading dozens of books that all precariously cling to the same themes.
I fear sometimes these authors are their own worst enemies especially the majority of the newer South Asian novelists.
Do exclude the likes of award-winning novelists like Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Hanif Kureishi and other pioneering authors who once before, manoeuvred modern Indian writing in English with colourful and extraordinary stories of emigration and identity and who still command the top league with ease.
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But several of the newer writers from the Indian sub-continent, I fear, encourage publishers to label them in ways that limit their creativity like a straitjacket.
They insist on writing about race and nationality & forget the free rein of the imagination. There are broods from certain countries even in South-East Asia who insist on patriotism being screamed at from their plots…where freedom of thought is captured and patriotism which reflects a commissioned agenda, is dutifully mastered.
Of course, I stay convinced that there can never be originality in their very obvious fiction.
Tell the world about our country…the world doesn’t know our country…kind of thing” and the whole affair of English literature in that particular country ends up pathetic, contrived and superficial.
Because of such catch-labels, they exploit the ancient topics of emigration and identity. And where they were once the new rage for world publishing in the 1990s, they have now succeeded through their own persistence on writing about ethnicity in all its dull predictability, in destroying their popularity worldwide.
It is my view that such a community of multicultural fiction writing stays maimed when the rewards could easily have been trebled for literature in its new international form.
To say nothing of a work of fiction you may end up paying twice as much for, only to realise with a nagging intuition afterwards, that you’ve read it all before. Even the experienced book-buyer can’t always be too careful.
I feel writers from other continents could make a big difference if they wrote what moved them through a strong flow of imagination i.e. by what they feel compelled to rather than out of an obligatory service to the nation.
Perhaps, even a laziness is invoked when a writer chooses to rest on his laurels with a comfortable but stale view of history, nostalgia and familiarity, rather then having to probe the mind’s tougher reflections, insights and ideologies.
One of the braver ones I daresay is bestselling New Delhi author Vikram Seth, based in Great Britain.
When Seth was asked why he chose a complete European cast - this with the exception of a fictitious Japanese musician for his novel ‘An Equal Music’ (1992) where an English violinist stayed haunted by memories of a lover, he replied simply that it was because he ‘felt inspired to.’ And it all stopped there. There was nothing else to add, despite the fact that he offered no hint of an Indian anecdote.
For a start, there are the same-ish themes employed by Monica Ali - the only difference being that she spotted a Bangladeshi culture, also by Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake - the only difference being that she employed the greater eloquence, Preethi Nair’s 100 Shades of White had similar themes to both stories, though they were all written at different time periods.
All complain about a loss of identity. All contemplate returning home. All decide at the end of the day, they can’t bear their homeland.
Of course, Hanif Kureishi wrote about identity. But in the midst of it, he tackled subjects like homosexuality in all its wonderful brazen analysis and also displayed erotica in prose and film like the subject was a series of curious paintings.
I have not seen any other South Asian writer in 2007 courageous enough to do this. Kureishi also honed a distinctive style and actually helped pioneer a lively experimental scene in Britain and Europe in the 80s and he still rules the fort.
He’s not part of the predictable copycat stories South Asian writers conjure up these days.
Kureishi once tackled a difficult true story in Intimacy (1998) on abandoning his lover and 2 sons in London from a fear of commitment. This had nothing at all to do with emigration etc and ended up causing a fair amount of annoyance that he would dare walk out on his young family with no stricken conscience or shame to show for it afterwards. But at the time, he aroused a strong interest and created the kind of heavy controversy that made for a refreshing difference.
That’s the kind of subjects Asian writers should be daring themselves to write about. Anything that cajoles them to come out of their one-roomed shells. I have no doubt the window views are prettier.
Please look at this link to have some idea.
http://www.sawnet.org/books/fiction.php
Do you hear the majority of these writers being spoken about today in 2007? Yet, at one time for a season or two, they were. They may boast brilliant profiles and their books are said to be popular worldwide.
For several (not all), the lacklustre fiction cannot be beefed up even by the use of exotic elements. The issues of emigration don’t seem to offer any fresh insights, from the same questions another South Asian writer may have posed a few years ago.
The theme for Monica Ali’s Brick Lane bore a subtle but striking resemblance to Sunetra Gupta’s Memories of Rain written in the 1990s in Oxford England. Both plots talked about escapism…the return to the Indian homeland that would solve all problems.
Amulya Malladi’s The Mango Season, Lahiri’s The Namesake and Chitra Banarjee’s Queen of Dreams also spun a repeated nostalgia for the homeland, the visit to India and the relief once more in returning to the States. You could almost predict the plots.
By the time, Monical Ali wrote her second novel, Alentejo Blue (2006), that talked about eccentric characters, love letters and Portugal, it was too late. Her reputation had already been set with yet another story of Bangladeshi emigration and nostalgia in Brick Lane.
Had she made it her first, I believe she would have been seen as a highly-talented young author, fine-tuning her craft to an adventurous plot.
Publishers would have observed her taking the road less travelled and expounded on that trait. She would have set an exciting trend. Then there may have been other copycat stories, following hers.
But it didn’t happen that way.
Fame came along but to a familiar setting.
It is often somewhat difficult for one’s second novel to rise against the first. If you are involved in theatre, you would know that the second performance often hardly pulls in as big a crowd as the first before it begins to find its way up the ladder again.
In the last few years, Monica Ali’s name was everywhere. I heard it in Singapore, Australia and so forth. With the second book, one hears hardly anything at all. Her popularity has taken on a severe decline.
Veteran writers who have already made their names are feted when a new book comes out.
That’s no surprise. But newer south-Asian writers scatter like ants when they cling to the perimeters of dusty topics incapable of a good polish except for the familiar themes of a slight wistfulness, homesickness & nostalgia.
Why are these writers so afraid to tackle hundreds of other new subjects that have nothing to do with leaving the homeland for instance and just attempt to break the glass ceiling placed on them?
I believe that these writers give publishers and their agents a very easy time to pigeonhole them.
And it’s sad. It’s sad that south Asian writers offer so few choices in themes when the world being the playground it is could have afforded them hundreds more.
The road less travelled. The comic novel. The psychological thriller. The drama of present-day contemporary fiction without the constant meditation of the kind of past that moulded India’s history. This whether the author lives in the States or Europe. A blatant sexual episode and not one hidden by saree drapes or caught in a locked bedroom. A family trilogy. Pure adventure. So much more. But it simply isn’t so.
I’m also not referring to a success in its material aspect as to perhaps the greater more exciting subject of evolvement in literature and where it would have headed today if these writers had been a little more daring and adventurous with the attention afforded to them for the longest time, before the world slowly moved its eyes away again. They could have challenged the publishers/agents and got away with it if they wanted.
On a deeper introspection, many of the newer writers command an average mettle and they do succeed in dulling the reader’s mind. But if I probed this thought more carefully, then the topics chosen have definitely contributed to a major stalemate and it may affect even the sales of more talented and newer south Asian writers coming along. Some of the older ones who stay comfortable with their work have settled into conformity. Some stories stay politically correct while others lack a profound beauty.
I think where publishers are concerned, they may be riding an old horse. Because of the pioneering and highly talented authors that went before like Vikram Seth, Kureishi, Arundhati Roy and in a later version, the likes of Monica Ali, they keep hoping for another Roy or another Ali but the book-buyers haven’t as yet for a long time of late, given them that. They think the old themes filled to the brim with exotic elements are still safe but somehow, I don’t think so and time will tell as it already has for me.
I’ve been studying the market for this kind of literature for years. The damage will only be discovered later, not now. But it isn’t as easy for south Asian writers to get the notice of agents & publishers as they once did. In the 90s, they were all the rage and Time Magazine devoted a major section to Indian authors making it big in the West.
Interest has steadily dwindled but I don’t know if the technicalities have actually been probed fully by any media. I’d consider it early days yet. Give it another year or 2 is my reckoning and the effects will be clearly seen.
In the meantime, be prepared that such veteran writers may fail to garner sparkling reviews as they used to, although they could still expect a generous attention from their own communities.
A new south Asian writer who wants to be noticed worldwide for her/his writing from now, should take up the difficult challenge of seeking innovation by offering a completely different storyline to juggle happily with a distinctive talent. Otherwise, the new novel too is likely to be done for. There’ll be a season or 2 of publicity and a couple of quick prize nominations, before the once ‘promising’ read drowns sadly in the glut.
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Suzan Abrams is a writer and journalist and blogs at Behind the Curtain
So why, among all these gadzillions of words floating round cyberspace should anyone bother to read yours? The obvious answer is to offer something different; something new and exciting; to have a Unique Selling Point, in other words.
