Re: criticising Arundhati Roy

[Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/15/07, Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There's nothing wrong with defending her.  But you can do so by saying something
> positive about her is rather than saying something about Doug here.

The thing is that it's Doug who is dismissing her without paying any
attention to ideas and no one else, and he's been doing this anti-Roy
campaign for some time, here and elsewhere.

Personally, I disagree with Roy on many things, and I didn't care for
her first novel either on account of style, but it's not like she's
wrong on everything, and there are things on which she turned out to
be more correct than I had previously thought.

On 4/15/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm intrigued to learn that the critique of Roy is all about her
> personality. I thought the Toor essay was an excellent analysis of
> how she functions as a commodified celebrity, and how the new class
> created by "neoliberalism" functions within India and in its
> relations with the outside world (including the Indian diaspora).

Toor's criticism is mostly about Roy's novel and how Roy has been
received in the West at the time when she first got media attention on
account of winning the Booker Prize in 1997.  It's been ten years
since her Booker, and Roy has changed in that decade.  What does Toor
think about what Roy is saying now, for instance in the interview that
I posted here?  One can't know that without asking.
--
Yoshie