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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