Mohsin Hamid Engages the World in The Reluctant Fundamentalist: “An Island on an Island,” Worlds in Miniature and “Fiction” in the Making

Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou

doi:10.13169/arabstudquar.41.4.0271

Abstract

The Reluctant Fundamentalist proves vitally engaged in the concerns of the mind and its passages reveal a struggle with difficulties of a sort that make anxiety seem an innocuous euphemism or outdated scholarly endeavor, which inevitably veers the reader's attention away from their importance in understanding the text and its world. This essay is concerned with the psychological, artistic, historical and geographical contingencies Mohsin Hamid faces in putting together his novel/la1 through the travail of production and publication. The Reluctant Fundamentalist has cemented Hamid's reputation and taken on the guise of a relatively autonomous sphere in its own fashion. Hamid resorts to powerful actions of a “begetting” kind, and specifying points of departure for his novel/la grows increasingly problematic. The novel/la is in fact intricate, and its resemblance with many productions is striking nevertheless. Going against the grain of fundamental and dominant traditions through a reluctant ethos, Hamid engages in beginnings and beginnings again to find alternatives, a Saidian reasoning read in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Taking its cue from Hamid's reflection on the manufacturing of his own “fiction” and Said's Beginnings, this essay examines how Hamid builds on Albert Camus's La chute as a point of reference to inaugurate The Reluctant Fundamentalist which owes its genesis to miscellaneous acts of beginning based, among many others, on McEwan's Atonement and Ali's Brick Lane. Hamid also engages world events such as America's beginning as a nation and 9/11, which both have inspired the novel/la's impulse to begin and begin again in the process of production. These influences with the alternatives given make up the texture of his novel/la, which is not only creative in nature, but also theoretical and philosophical in trajectories.

Highlights

I showed it [the novel/la] to my agent in July 2001 and he said, “You know, I don’t really buy this Pakistani man, this Muslim guy living in New York, feeling really disenfranchised, wanting to go back.” [. . .] But September 11th happened and my sort of quiet attempt to tell the story was overtaken by events
Hamid’s emphatic concerns are historical and secular in themselves as he resorts to a subversive kind of action against what appears to be calcified in its own right, the titular combination of fundamentalism and reluctance that best captures Hamid’s trajectory, very much Saidian in this case
If the triangular love story were to be taken into consideration here to elaborate clearly on this premise, and a scheme of Hamid’s progress in the production of his novel/la were to be made, it would start with Chris having an “Old World Appeal”, symbolizing tradition and fundamentalism, and diagnosed with lung cancer symbolizing an inability to breathe in, a static condition in itself disabling life— his being dead—and resumes with Erica who stands for inspiration, a sort of a discovery in Greek enthusiasm added to it the critical Changez enabling life anew

Summary

Introduction

I showed it [the novel/la] to my agent in July 2001 and he said, “You know, I don’t really buy this Pakistani man, this Muslim guy living in New York, feeling really disenfranchised, wanting to go back.” [. . .] But September 11th happened and my sort of quiet attempt to tell the story was overtaken by events. The idea showcased in the introductory quote is that TRF— permeated by several references—is amenable to the influence of 9/11 undergoing permutation that propels its production in a moment when it falls prey to intellectual stagnation The title, in this way, may well connote an intention of a creative appeal to begin a new artistic project through a critical and reluctant reaction as to a fundamental, dynastic tradition. This essay mainly focuses on a fundamentalism of an artistic type (without exclusion of others) as Hamid destabilizes the orthodoxies of tradition and engages in criticism, as per Said’s conception of a contemporary critic, to “space out” in artistic production, meaning to create artistic space for himself It draws correspondences between Hamid’s text and other texts, and examines how he builds on Albert Camus’s La chute (The Fall) (1956) as a point of reference to inaugurate TRF owing its genesis to an act of beginning based on other beginnings. He explains that texts “are events, and, even when they appear to deny it, they are a part of the social world, human life, and the historical moments in which they are located and interpreted” (4)

Discussion

Conclusion