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11. Can Rohinton Mistry’s Realism Rescue the Novel?
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11 Can Rohinton Mistry’s Realism Rescue the Novel? Laura Moss On the back cover of the American paperback edition of Rohinton Mistry’s recent novel A Fine Balance, there is an excerpt from the New York Times: ‘‘Those who continue to harp on the decline of the novel ought to . . . consider Rohinton Mistry. He needs no infusion of magic realism to vivify the real. The real, through his eyes, is magical.’’1 The celebration of Mistry’s choice of ‘‘a compassionate’’ realism (and the implicit denigration of magic realism) is but one critic’s perception of Mistry’s prose, yet it is also a comment on contemporary attitudes to the form of realism. The back cover, written to appeal to an ‘‘average’’ American consumer, depoliticizes Mistry’s novel as it is placed in the company of ‘‘masters from Balzac to Dickens.’’ In this light it can appear as if Mistry’s use of the form rescues the (European) novel from the uncomfortable possibility of being overtaken—threatened, even—by magic realism, a form that has been most often associated with Latin American writing and therefore recognized as fundamentally non-European. Furthermore, the use of realism by a writer of what has recently been called the ‘‘far rim’’ (whether that be India or Canada) is taken to resuscitate the humanist traditions of the realist novel.2 Mistry’s novel is accepted as having a sweeping appeal by the back-cover critic precisely because it does not resemble what has come to be viewed as a postcolonial novel of Notes to chapter 11 are on p. 164. 157 resistance—whether that be to caste in India or racism in Canada. The reason for this is simple: Mistry’s novel is unequivocally realist and the prevalent view—both popular and academic—is that, for whatever reason, realism and resistance do not converge. While Mistry’s novel resists on every page, his resistance comes in the form of realism and is therefore often ignored as a focus of the text. The problematic nature of critical assumptions about postcolonial examples of realism stems, at least partially, from the privileging of the notion of resistance in postcolonial discourse. The concept of ‘‘resistance ’’ has been fetishized to the point where it is even often presented without an object. At the same time, there has been a critical elevation of writing perceived to be experimental or writing that plays with nonrealistic form. Within postcolonial criticism, these simultaneous developments have converged in the production of a profusion of studies linking, and sometimes suggesting the interdependence of, political or social resistance and non-realist fiction. If a text does not fit the profile of postcolonial resistance, as realist texts seldom do, it is generally considered incapable of subversion. David Carter, in his article ‘‘Tasteless Subjects,’’ notes that postcolonial critics tend to present realism as a monolithic whole that is ‘‘complicit with the process of imperialism’’ and therefore with ‘‘universalism , essentialism, positivism, individualism, modernity, historicism, and so on’’ (1992:296). In spite of many examples of recent politically charged realist texts, the critical expectations about the form often hold that it is a reinforcement of conservative, specifically imperialist, ideology. On one hand, this assumption has led to the co-option of literary realism by conservative critics. On the other, it has led to the virtual dismissal of the realist novel by those critics looking for an apparently radical form to hold disruptive content. As part of the larger body of critics in the Academy, postcolonial critics are prominent in establishing such expectations. Non-realist writing is frequently privileged by the critics because of the assumption that its various forms are inherently conducive to political subversion because of their capacity for presenting multiplicity. I challenge the idea, as it has been developed or assumed by many postcolonial critics, that realism is almost necessarily conservative, and non-realist forms are inherently somehow more postcolonial—and therefore subversive. What is at issue in this paper, then, is the limited function of criticism when critics place too tight an ideological hold on realism and are not inclined to recognize the varieties of its possibilities or its capacity for multiplicity. I chal158 Postcolonizing the Commonwealth: Studies in Literature and Culture [54.234.184.8] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:50 GMT) lenge this critical hegemony, arguing that realism is a viable, perhaps even indispensable, form for political and social engagement in postcolonial contexts. As such, the study is a reaction to the positioning of...