Sunday, August 03, 2003

 
Amitav Ghosh, "The March of the Novel through History: The Testimony of My Grandfather's Bookcase"

A novel's particular setting differentiates it from other story-forms. A novel is inherently hard to translate because its originary setting is intrinsic to meaning and narrative. Previous story-forms were translatable and diffused cultures as international art forms, because their settings were dispensable to the narrative--making them imminently adaptable. These stories gave meaning without specifying origin. For them, the core is not where but how.

Yet to represent a sense of place in prose means to start with dislocation, so as to better describe one's immediate environment in addressing the international "bookcase" community.

posted by Open Mouth 9:21 PM