The artists are responding to a public hunger for some insights into British-Bangladeshi life. They are providing reportage from an under-reported community. There is a price for that, and it comes in treating one's subjects with greater care than if they were made up.As I have said before in greater detail with reference to this novel, the idea that the subject of a novel is ever 'not made up' would be laughable if it were not coming from the pens and laptops of supposed intellectuals and literary experts.
As I said then: once real people and real places and real events get forged in the fire of fiction, you can't tell what's left of the reality, it simply doesn't relate to 'reality' in the way Greer, and the Muslim protestors, assume. ...Novels can't be divided up into the reality bits and the imagination bits, it's just one big meld, and the only real 'reality' of a novel is the author's psyche, and if it's a good or great novel it will have the reality of emotional truth.
5 comments:
Well said. Hear hear! :-)
Hi FB
And then, JK Rowling comes along and 'outs' Dumbledore as gay, after completing seven novels in which she didn't consider raising his sexuality.
Where does fiction end and life begin, exactly?
Excellent question, Pants!
Yes, hear hear! It's groups who for political or emotional reasons feel most embattled who feel the need to fight against every apparent threat to their position or world-view.
At a milder level (though I gather the naval history buffs can be pretty terrifying) readers who use fiction to acquire knowledge they missed out on at school also get very worried that what they're reading might not be 'right'.
Sometimes I feel like wearing a tee-shirt which says, 'This is a novel. I made some of it up. That's what novelists do. If you want history/politics/sociology, go and read a history/politics/sociology book.
Emma
Me, too, Emma!
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