Not Reading Brick Lane

Abstract

Abstract When someone becomes or does not become a reader - and how we make a chim to or refuse these kinds of identity - clearly matters within globalued cultures, where the challenges of literary representation quickly become problems of cultural misrepresentation. Yet precisely because not reading would appear to amount to nothing, its significance remains unexplored. In order to trace the conjunctural and multiple meanings of not reading, this essay explores the embattled reception surrounding Monica AW s novel Brick Lane (2003) and its adaptation into film (2007), and locates not reading within a longer history of book controversies that L· overshadowed by the Rushdie Affair. Our paper argues that, far from mere negation, not reading is an intensely productive site of cross-cultural negotiation and conflict without which the contemporary significance of global readerships and reading acts makes only partial sense. Keywords Not reading, book controversies, Monica Ali, Brick Lane, Rushdie Affair, hierarchies of reading I look at the bewildered faces of male children, the fanatic faces of the igniters, the dull faces of the media men and ask: Do they read? In the name of that most philosophical religion whose opening injunction is 'read'? (Gayatri Spivak responding to images of the burning of The Satanic Verses in Bradford, 1989)1 Half of them haven't even read the bloody book! (anonymous 'Bengali media executive from East London' responding to protesters against the filming of Brick Lane, 2006)2 Common sense tells us there are many ways to read a book, but cultural critics have proved themselves poorly equipped to make sense of the different practices of reading that emerge when books become controversies. During times of trouble, undeclared hierarchies of reading and readers surface that leave recent advances in the study of cultural production and consumption at an impasse. Conjectures on world literature, wandering audiences and nomadic critics, the rapid extension and increased efficiency of print and digital technologies, the much touted decline of the book, the rise of the global literary marketplace: all pose important new questions around reading. But within these debates, discourses and acts of 'not reading' and the accompanying concern about 'non-readers' have yet to be adequately explained. Recent book controversies oblige us to answer questions about the meaning of not reading because it is through this category that their significance is frequendy produced, explained or dismissed. When someone becomes or does not become a reader, making a claim to this kind of identity (and indeed the refusal to recognise it) clearly matters within globalised cultures, where the challenges of literary representation quickly become problems of cultural misrepresentation. Yet precisely because not reading would appear to amount to nothing, its significance remains unexplored. Contrary to this logic, we argue below that, far from mere negation, not reading is an intensely productive site of cross-cultural negotiation and conflict without which the contemporary significance of global readerships and reading acts makes only partial sense. In order to trace the conjunctural and multiple meanings of not reading, this essay explores the embattled reception surrounding Monica Ali's novel, and its adaptation into film, between the years 2003 and 2006. To make sense of the controversy that emerged around this text and to understand the circumstances under which it arose, we look first at the recently emerging meanings of 'not reading', and then, following Igor Kopytoff 's wish for 'the cultural biography of things',3 we consider the social life of Ali's Brick Lane, and its prefigurement in the Rushdie Affair. We move from here to pursue more precisely the conflicted articulations of 'not reading Brick Lane' within the national and international print and electronic media. Finally, we locate not reading within a longer history of book controversies that is overshadowed by the Rushdie Affair. …