I remember reading an amazing essay about how to write essays (if anyone knows what I'm talking about, PLEASE leave a citation in the comments!!) at some point in high school or college, one that explained but also demonstrated how it was both a very open and a tightly controlled art form, how it had no one particular kind of topic, how it could be serious, or funny, or both, personal or impersonal (I suspect it was written by a Pole, but I could be wrong). My point is: the essay is a noble form. Not all magazine articles are essays. There are many pieces of writing that are quite good as short pieces of writing, but they are not necessarily good essays, and they are perhaps better encountered in a magazine than in a book with other pieces like them. That is, I think, the case with the pieces in this book.
To be clear: I enjoyed reading this book. Hamid's prose is light and pleasant -- not breezy or chatty exactly, but comfortable. The topics covered in the book are reasonably weighty, but the tone is for the most part even and conversational, often with a more personalized, confiding feel. The things he has to say are interesting, and I agreed with pretty much all of them. The problem is -- and it seems awfully demanding to hold this against him -- nothing said here really made me stop and think, or see things in a new way. It all seemed very familiar. Perhaps this is a testament to how clearly and effectively he articulated his ideas, so much so that they instantly seem like things one has already thought! Certainly, it can't be true that I've thought all of those things, because there were plenty of things about Pakistan that I didn't know beforehand (though the political analysis of these new pieces of information essentially validated beliefs I already hold). And yet, for all its musings on culture and identity and dislocation and politics, I think the most memorable piece in the collection is a description of standing next to a woman, a stranger, on a hot day, a very sensual evocation of the intimacy of sweating beside someone. Perhaps it means that Hamid is better at saying things more indirectly, say, in a novel...
In any case, I very much hope that people who haven't thought all these things will read the collection, and come to agree with Hamid and I. And I look forward to reading his fiction.
To be clear: I enjoyed reading this book. Hamid's prose is light and pleasant -- not breezy or chatty exactly, but comfortable. The topics covered in the book are reasonably weighty, but the tone is for the most part even and conversational, often with a more personalized, confiding feel. The things he has to say are interesting, and I agreed with pretty much all of them. The problem is -- and it seems awfully demanding to hold this against him -- nothing said here really made me stop and think, or see things in a new way. It all seemed very familiar. Perhaps this is a testament to how clearly and effectively he articulated his ideas, so much so that they instantly seem like things one has already thought! Certainly, it can't be true that I've thought all of those things, because there were plenty of things about Pakistan that I didn't know beforehand (though the political analysis of these new pieces of information essentially validated beliefs I already hold). And yet, for all its musings on culture and identity and dislocation and politics, I think the most memorable piece in the collection is a description of standing next to a woman, a stranger, on a hot day, a very sensual evocation of the intimacy of sweating beside someone. Perhaps it means that Hamid is better at saying things more indirectly, say, in a novel...
In any case, I very much hope that people who haven't thought all these things will read the collection, and come to agree with Hamid and I. And I look forward to reading his fiction.
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