So I got a forward from my good friend D in NYC the other day telling me that a novel called The Scar of David by Susan Abulhawa won a national award. The synopsis that followed said the book traces the lives in a Palestinian family through the major wars and massacres of the second half of the 20th century, starting with the Naqbe in 1948 through to the Jenin massacres in 2002. And I was excited. A novel about Palestine and by a Palestinian-American awarded the National Book Award? In a country like this? With the whitewashed, privileged literary establishment we have? Amazing! But, no. Upon closer inspection of D's email I realized it wasn't the esteemed National Book Award that Ms. Abulhawa won but something called the National "Best Books" Award, which, from what I can tell, isn't quite so esteemed. And in an email exchange with D, I realized The Scar of David had crossed my desk last spring. D sent it to me asking me to review it for an academic journal about the Middle East she's involved with. I remember getting 34 pages into it, trying to like it, wanting to at least be interested by it, but so bored by the limpid prose, the repetitive description, and the predictable, slow storyline that I had to stop. It would have been too painful to go on. I even remember being offended at the way Ms. Abulhawa represented her own people! When I told D how I felt, she had agreed I should stop. It seemed obvious it was a waste of time.So why did the book win an award? There are many possible reasons. Maybe after page 34 it got really amazing. Maybe I am close-minded about prose and not fit to review anything that I don't consider up to a certain level that is completely arbitrary, some standard I've established in my mind that can't ever apply to the world at large, even though I might feel like it does. More likely, perhaps, the topic of Palestine is "sexy" lately (you know, Arabs and terrorists and shit) and gets little novelistic treatment on American bookshelves, so Ms. Abulhawa fulfilled some need, found some pocket of interest. And perhaps her prose, which I found limpid, to some is quite readable, easy, understandable, clear. Ms. Abulhawa's website says she was the speaker at some Wisconsin book event, and that she just sold Dutch rights with 10,000 copies pre-sold (a decent number if you who don't know from publishing). Where am I going with all this? Oh, you know, to a pessimistic place... where art and cultural exposure don't necessarily coincide. I'd love it if a good novel about Palestine or Lebanon or Egypt won an American award. But the fact that a bad (ok so I'm not 100% sure it's bad but at this point I'm going with it) one did, and that this bad novel is primarily a topical novel, riles me for a bevy of complicated reasons I can't disentangle for you right here and now. Maybe I should just shut up and go work on my own book already. (Incidentally, I do think scars are sexy.)
3 comments:
I'm truly dissapointed by your post. I am the author's agent, so I may not be objective. Do you really think any award committee, a major book fair selection committee, several academics, dozens of readers and several publishers around the globe could be wrong about the book you panned without ever even reading it? The choice by Oxfam Novib of this book has nothing to do with scars or terrorism being "sexy". Oxfam is engaged in this issue and chose The Scar of David for its Dutch members because of its incredible historical accuracy and the quality of its writing that you referred to twice as "limpid" (was that your vocabulary word for the day?). Yes, you should go ahead and write your own book. Those who can, "do", those who can't, "talk" about it. You would be lucky to have a result as absorbing, compelling and captivating as The Scar of David.
"Limpid" is actually the wrong word. Your comment, Mark, made me look it up, and it basically means clear. "Limp" would probably be better for what I was trying to get across. True, I only read the very beginning of the book, but I've spent enough time reading slush piles to know when I'm ready to move on. I'm not trying to continue this exchange at the level of a playground brawl, though it sort of feels that way. I only hoped to convey through my post certain complexities that I've encountered recently when witnessing particularly cultural and topical art. I am confused and worried at how certain topics might cloud the artistic worth of the thing itself and often find myself asking whether a movie or a book or a painting made by an Arab about Arabs would get the exposure it does if it was similarly made by,say, a Texan, about Texans. Obviously the reversal doesn't quite compute but the idea of it interests me. These thoughts didn't only come after "Star of David" but also things like "A Perfect Day," a recent Lebanese feature film that screened here in SF at the Arab Film Festival which felt too artsy for its own good, as well as "Minhom Fihom" an Egyptian film aimed at telling varied stories of Egyptian women but to my mind clearly essentialized them. My opinion. My blog. I'm kind of glad you found my post because, as far as I was aware, only a handful of people I know ever read my blog. And I hope you don't hate me too much for what I wrote because I may come off cheeky and mean, but I'm only thinking out loud. As for my own book, I'm working on it, slowly. Should have a good draft done by this summer. Might I send it your way?
You should really give it a second try. I just finished the Dutch version and it is marvellous. Will read the English version though to see if you're right. :)
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