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Homeless Bird
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From: uma at cyberport.com <uma>
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 10:49:11 -0700
Ginny, Linda, and all:
I'm not questioning the right to write, of whatever and wherever one wishes. But to me (and Rita, you are right, informed readers may of course disagree), HB seemed thinly characterized and I did not find the depth that obviously others have. In addition, I felt the story was driven by its message rather than by an inner artistic force. And it seemed as if there were too many places the author stopped to explain. Not an uncommon technique, and to some extent necessary when you must interpret setting or circumstance to a young reader. But in first person, it felt awkward, as if Koly were remembering suddenly, oh yes, there was this American audience she had to speak to, and hence phrases like "it would have been unseemly for me to call him by his name" or "for the giving of alms brings one much credit with the gods." A falseness of voice, like the Maa Ganges I mentioned earlier. I wanted Koly to be herself, to pull me deeper into what could have been a compelling and moving story, and instead she paused to deliver commentary. Other factors I've mentioned overwhelmed interest for me as well.
Tangentially related -- I've been reading criticism of South Asian diasporic writers (Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa, Arundhati Roy, etc. and others less known such as Anjana Appachana and Sara Suleri) and it's been an enlightening process. Some questions that might be relevant here -- how much interpretation is necessary, how much gets in the way of story? How much self-consciousness of audience is acceptable, how much is too much? In a sense it gets down to the very soul of it all -- why write, and for whom? I wanted to let you know, so you don't see my comments as coming from a narrowly ethnocentric perspective, these were the issues troubling me as I read HB.
Well, I will move over. I'm sure others have things of worth to say and I don't want to use up bandwidth with redundancies. Thanks for indulging my comments.
Uma
Uma Krishnaswami http://www.childrensbookguild.org/Krishnaswami.html
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" I wallow in uncertainty about punctuation, wording, and form [Margaret Wise Brown, letter to Lucy Mitchell, 1941].
Received on Sat 06 Jan 2001 11:49:11 AM CST
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 10:49:11 -0700
Ginny, Linda, and all:
I'm not questioning the right to write, of whatever and wherever one wishes. But to me (and Rita, you are right, informed readers may of course disagree), HB seemed thinly characterized and I did not find the depth that obviously others have. In addition, I felt the story was driven by its message rather than by an inner artistic force. And it seemed as if there were too many places the author stopped to explain. Not an uncommon technique, and to some extent necessary when you must interpret setting or circumstance to a young reader. But in first person, it felt awkward, as if Koly were remembering suddenly, oh yes, there was this American audience she had to speak to, and hence phrases like "it would have been unseemly for me to call him by his name" or "for the giving of alms brings one much credit with the gods." A falseness of voice, like the Maa Ganges I mentioned earlier. I wanted Koly to be herself, to pull me deeper into what could have been a compelling and moving story, and instead she paused to deliver commentary. Other factors I've mentioned overwhelmed interest for me as well.
Tangentially related -- I've been reading criticism of South Asian diasporic writers (Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa, Arundhati Roy, etc. and others less known such as Anjana Appachana and Sara Suleri) and it's been an enlightening process. Some questions that might be relevant here -- how much interpretation is necessary, how much gets in the way of story? How much self-consciousness of audience is acceptable, how much is too much? In a sense it gets down to the very soul of it all -- why write, and for whom? I wanted to let you know, so you don't see my comments as coming from a narrowly ethnocentric perspective, these were the issues troubling me as I read HB.
Well, I will move over. I'm sure others have things of worth to say and I don't want to use up bandwidth with redundancies. Thanks for indulging my comments.
Uma
Uma Krishnaswami http://www.childrensbookguild.org/Krishnaswami.html
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" I wallow in uncertainty about punctuation, wording, and form [Margaret Wise Brown, letter to Lucy Mitchell, 1941].
Received on Sat 06 Jan 2001 11:49:11 AM CST
