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23 December 2016


Novel Anthropology

A fictional depiction of the human condition, whether foreign or domestic, says much more about the author’s and reader’s states of mind than about the depicted character or society.  In fact, it may not be determined by anthropological facts at all.  Its anthropological significance is that fiction, like games, is a human exercise that engages the human mind in an entertaining, if not instructive, way that is deemed valuable for its own sake.  A novel may be evaluated and criticized for the beauty of its portrayal and its use of the language without regard to the accuracy of its analysis. 

That summarizes my mistake in asking a central Asian resident for his impressions of a novel about his society written by an American friend of mine.  I was disappointed by the novel’s lack of appeal for the native Asian, for he obviously found it misrepresented his thoughts about his own society.  He and I were reading the novel as an anthropological treatise, rather than as a literary construction which used the framework of an American’s experiences in that society to tell a story that would be a worthwhile mental exercise for his intended mainly American readership.  There may be differences of opinion on the work’s success as an analysis of an Asian society while there was broad acclaim for the novel as a literary triumph.

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