Speaking the unspeakable
Further to this post about protests at Brick Lane against the filming of Monica Ali’s book, JR emails me this profile of Ali in the Guardian.
Nothing exciting in the profile, but it has director Peter Florence saying this about Ali’s work: “In a sense if you come under fire from those conservative people, you must be doing something right.”
Ummm, not always. Look at the protests over the Da Vinci Code film. Or Deepa Mehta’s Water. People who protest against films and books etc usually have issues to sort out within themselves. Just because some people decide to take offence against a creative work doesn’t necessarily make it a great work (At the same time, just because something is an awful bit of tripe doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a right to exist).
I have not read the novel but saw a fairly good review of it by Pankaj Mishra (reviewd ‘The Namesake’ in the same review). Of the few things of Pankaj Mishra I read, that review is one of my favourites. the other is his story “Edmund Wilson in Benares”. The link to the review:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16837
Comment by gaddeswarup — July 28, 2006 @ 5:51 pm