For a few months now, I haven't been able to bring myself to read fiction/semi-fiction set in the Real World. It started with not being able to finish Reading Lolita in Tehran. Don't get me wrong, I love that book. It is page-marked and dog eared and margin-written in so many places, that I'm pretty sure I'm never going to lend it to anyone.
But I had a moment, while reading it. I was reading about custodial violence I think, the details are a bit hazy. I teared up and closed the book for a while. It was then that something in me just snapped. I tried all evening to explain it to someone. Something snapped, and I haven't been able to read fiction about real people with real problems since.
I tell myself that I don't want to know how other people interpret people's pain and anguish. I don't want Nafisi to tell me about people she knew who went through these things, I don't want her to tell me what she went through herself, I don't want Aboulela to tell me about Sudanese women and their everyday politics. I don't want to read fiction about people's sad, miserable lives. I don't want to know, not even if it is a tale of hope and rebellion, of struggle and triumph.
But even as I say it like this, it sounds unlikely. I have no problems whatsoever with reading non-fiction. I read Urvashi Butalia's book on the partition recently, and that was terrifically evocative and powerful as well. I also read Sharmila Rege's book on Dalit women's testimonios, which relies heavily on first person narrative (women telling their stories of hope, rebellion, pain, anguish, struggle and triumph). I didn't just finish it in a day, I was also very moved by it.
May be it was the theory in these books that made it interesting and readable for me. Perhaps it was because of the perspective with which I approached the narratives - While reading a work of fiction may mean following a story and empathizing, reading someone's story as a part of an argument or a theory makes it about the argument or theory rather than the story itself. While both fictional and non-fictional works have their politics, often works of non-fiction are explicitly about their politics (as a point of view, a part of a larger debate, a theory from which it takes and adds to) while works of fiction are simply about politics.
In any case, something snapped, and I haven't been able to read books that aren't strange, hallucinatory, fantastic or somewhat historical since.
But even as I say it like this, it sounds unlikely. I have no problems whatsoever with reading non-fiction. I read Urvashi Butalia's book on the partition recently, and that was terrifically evocative and powerful as well. I also read Sharmila Rege's book on Dalit women's testimonios, which relies heavily on first person narrative (women telling their stories of hope, rebellion, pain, anguish, struggle and triumph). I didn't just finish it in a day, I was also very moved by it.
May be it was the theory in these books that made it interesting and readable for me. Perhaps it was because of the perspective with which I approached the narratives - While reading a work of fiction may mean following a story and empathizing, reading someone's story as a part of an argument or a theory makes it about the argument or theory rather than the story itself. While both fictional and non-fictional works have their politics, often works of non-fiction are explicitly about their politics (as a point of view, a part of a larger debate, a theory from which it takes and adds to) while works of fiction are simply about politics.
In any case, something snapped, and I haven't been able to read books that aren't strange, hallucinatory, fantastic or somewhat historical since.
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