State of the art

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>At 09:46 PM 05/28/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>>Ms. Hammad does seem fabulous, but no
>>subaltern compares with the feisty Arudhati Roy .
>>When asked to comment on the possibility of
>>the Booker Prize contest accepting American
>>applicants, the 1997 winner with "The God of Small Things,"
>>declared, "I'm certainly not intimidated by American writers."
>
>Why should she be? The best fiction I've read in the last ten years 
>is from India. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of 
>Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy," give it a go. Best thing in english 
>since Trollope. It goes on for fifteen hundred pages, and when you 
>get to the end, you'll wish for another fifteen hundred.
>
>Joanna

The novel as an art form tends to cease to be compelling in most 
societies once they solve the "marriage question" in social reality 
(if not in ideology) via abortion, contraception, no-fault divorce, 
women's education, & women's de facto economic independence from men.

You can write a great novel that is not about "female troubles" (= 
women's troubles as well as anxieties of men troubled by women), but 
such a novel tends to be in some way "difficult" (e.g. _Moby-Dick_) 
and often unpopular.
-- 
Yoshie

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