And she is a fraud. A literary careerist who has parlayed an overwritten melodrama into unearned fame; a child of privilege whose early experiments in poverty were no more than a smart career move; a Yuppie whose real job was aerobics instructor, not slum bottle-recycler; a world-travelled, overeducated dilettante posing as a regional writer; and a fake saint who fucked her way to fame and survives, in spite of her complete lack of talent, because her crude scolding warms the heart of old British lefties who love it when their tame Indian slaves get up on their hind legs to denounce the bloody Americans, who oppress the world so much less skillfully than they used to.
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Hmmm.
Does everyone who writes for the Exile strive to sound like a less-well-targeted version of Hunter S. Thompson?
A little of this wannabe stream-of-consciousness invective goes a very long way. There's the unmistakable scent of the 16 year-old longing to shock lingering over Dolan's essay. It's a shame, because in-between the smirks, insults and rude gestures are some actually valid criticisms of, for example, the nature of the lefty/literary star machinery.
But maybe I'm being a bit harsh because I do respect Roy as a literary talent and consider her essays on Enron's incursion into India to be solid work. No, on second thought, I'm not being too harsh at all, this is a clumsy hatchet job.
Take this bit for example...
[according to Dolan, Roy is]"...a fake saint who fucked her way to fame"
Dolan offers no further explanation for this which, without verification, could almost be considered libelous, perhaps even mysoginist (women writers only gain fame through sexual favors?).
Using Dolan's method of critical analysis, I could write (with only the Exile website's photo of him as my guide) that 'Dolan's a middle-aged, balding, paunchy loser in geek glasses writing for a sour, wannabe edgy publication. Frustrated he can't get laid, he displays his professional jealousy and sexual neurosis by writing with excessive venom about Roy whose success and form he longs for.' Of course, I could be completely wrong but I've offered the same amount of proof for my insulting assertions as Dolan did -- which is to say, none.
It's a shame people feel the need to resort to such over-the-top absurdities when a simpler path is open. Roy can fairly be described as a talented fiction writer and essayist whose work related to the global economy, imperialism and similar topics, while often intriguing, tends to lack the necessary rigor the enemy's relentless scrutiny makes necessary.
That's really all that's required; villification and attempts at scorched earth marginalization say more about the attacker than about Roy.
.d.