--- On Tue, 23/3/10, Suresh Ramasubramanian <sur...@hserus.net> wrote:
> From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <sur...@hserus.net> > Subject: [silk] For the Arundhati Roy haters out there > To: silklist@lists.hserus.net > Date: Tuesday, 23 March, 2010, 6:44 > Absolutely classic, thanks to Atanu > Dey for pointing me (and the rest of india-gii) to it. > > http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6487&IBLOCK_ID=35 > > Great Literary Frauds of Our Time > By John Dolan > > Too bad it compares the dog of small minded mallus to "to > kill a mockingbird" - > which was much better written than this one. And was > actually sincere. > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From an Arundhati-Roy hater, who hates the review ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Absolutely classic? Suresh, you git, what's wrong with you? A series of vicious remarks, no before and after, no backing for the statements made, and that's absolutely classic? If you are so easily turned on, I'm writing to you separately with URLs that you really must read. This particular essay sucks. It sneers with no pause, smiles mysteriously and significantly and uses its elbows and winks like it was going out of fashion. Just watch this (an extract from the review, with comments added after //): "And she is a fraud. //Why? Because the essay says so; because she said, once, in an interview a long time ago, that she liked the book "To Kill A Mockingbird". Because she's from a long line of Indian do-gooders who piss off the Amerikan Kulturnyi like the writer of the essay. "A literary careerist who has parlayed an overwritten melodrama into unearned fame; //'Overwritten melodrama': fair dinkum; 'unearned fame': what's earned fame, smart-ass? "a child of privilege whose early experiments in poverty were no more than a smart career move; //Believe; I said it. Her background is not unknown to many here. She was born to privilege, but hardly got to see much of it. Smart career move? Difficult to refute, since there's not even a half-assed attempt at justifying it. "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."//Wow. Without the exclamation mark. Fake, fucking and leftie-beloved; all the entry tickets to the American Hall of Fame, all in one package. Why fake? She's no saint. What saint? Hey, don't go dumb on me. I already said I'd had enough of Indian saints like Ghandi, Nehru and Baghwan Rajneesh (OK, OK, he didn't say Ghandi, he did say Baghwan; he doesn't like these Hindoo creeps getting into Pat Robertson territory). Fucked her way to fame? Just a bald statement, presumably meaningful because she's female; would it even have come up for a male author? In any case, that's a disqualification for America and Americans, or for anyone in the western world? That's news. The reviewer mentions Updike. NOT a good idea, reviewer mio, about as smart as her mentioning To Kill a Mockingbird where all the culture vultures could pick it up. Leftie-beloved? Ah, now we're getting there. That's what this piece of shit is all about, isn't it? It's about all of these bastards who went neutral on us when we were fighting the VC and quelling dissent in Guatemala, and getting a handle on those pesky rebels in Nicaragua. They and their British, homosexual, leftie fans. All against the Amurrican way of life. What they need is the bomb. End of quote, end of breathless rush to immortalise essay. Suresh, you really like this? Honestly? I need to hear you say that once again.
