Influences and Transformations: Mohsin Hamid’s Mongrelization of the West and the East in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Abstract

Influences and Transformations: Mohsin Hamid’s Mongrelization of the West and the East in The Reluctant Fundamentalist Biling Chen In his conversations with various interviewers, Mohsin Hamid often uses the idea of mongrelization to express his view of identity formation in an age when migration occurs with frequency and globalization proceeds at a fast pace. “This mongrelized, migratory thing is something we all participate in […] And there are people who don’t recognize they are mongrels. But there isn’t anybody who isn’t one” (“Exit West” 36:40–37:50).1 In Hamid’s dictionary, mongrelization is a neutral word, signifying a variety of contemporary human conditions, including multicultural dissemination and influence. By his own admission, the influences he has received from reading others’ writings are countless: “I am influenced by everyone that I read. The more I like someone, the more likely I’d be influenced. I am not always aware of my influences” (“The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Mohsin Hamid in Conversation with Akhil Sharma” 49:47–49:51). Mongrelization, accordingly, not only indicates a person’s continuous becoming, but also the process of a literary work’s production. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007),2 filled with direct as well as discursive references to world literatures and religions, is a case in point. Changez, Hamid’s well-read narrator, literally mentions F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 masterpiece while revealing his ambition to emulate Jim, his boss, who owns a house in the Hamptons: “a magnificent property that made me think of The Great Gatsby” (TRF 43). Aggressive in his pursuit of the American Dream, the Pakistani transplant likens his fearless state of mind to that in “Sufi mystics and Zen masters” (TRF 13). In [End Page 511] the realm of romance, his competition with the spirit of Chris, however, feels like an inadvertent sacrilege of the Holy Communion between Erica and her late boyfriend, “a religion that would not accept me as a convert” (TRF 114). Ironically, his genuine conversion happens when the Chilean publisher Juan-Bautista, meaning John the Baptist, “baptizes” him with a story about the janissaries, prompting his journey to a newfound religion: Pakistani nationalism. After being suspected of instigating riots against the US government, the evolving postcolonial subject draws on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) to express his complicated sentiment: “I have felt like a Kurtz waiting for his Marlow” (TRF 183). He cites Washington Irving’s gothic tale “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820) as unnerving his American guest into a rude awakening that the contemporary United States of America is as indifferent to the outside world as the village of Sleepy Hollow. Other textual influences are subtler, but the evidence of these influences can still be identified in Hamid’s essays and interviews. In “Get Fit with Haruki Murakami” (Discontent 98–101), Hamid acknowledges his longterm admiration for the Japanese writer. When Jai Arjun Singh points out in his conversation with Hamid the similar mental illness suffered by Erica and Naoko, the female protagonist of Murakami’s Norwegian Wood—a Bildungsroman also inspired by The Great Gatsby—Hamid agrees: “And what I did in my book was to embody that in an American woman” (see Singh). Accordingly, it is safe to say that Hamid’s portrayal of the ill-fated love triangle has its roots in the sexual-spiritual entanglement between Toru, Naoko, and Kizuki in Norwegian Wood. In a less straightforward fashion, Hamid revealed his reading of a Hindu sacred text while responding to an audience member’s question at a book festival (“Mohsin Hamid: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia” 49:49). Arguably, the Hindu scripture Hamid did not name is the Bhagavad Gita (2nd century BCE), given the popularity of the story in the Indian subcontinent and the geographical proximity of Lahore, his and his protagonist’s hometown, to Kurukshetra, also known as the Land of Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna’s dialogue with his charioteer and spiritual guide, Krishna, is evoked in Changez’s conversations about the fundamental principles of Underwood Samson & Company (i.e., Uncle Sam) with his colleague, with his mentor, and even with his cab driver, whom he addresses as “a charioteer” (TRF 157). Gerard...