File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0110, message 571


From: "Jaclyn Rosebrook-Collignon" <jaclynr-AT-free.fr>
Subject: My two bits on Ms Roy
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 11:39:13 +0100


Hello everyone,

Are there no comparative literary people out there?  Are we really talking
about blatant plagiarism in GOST?  Of course not.  I'm a "literary" person
and I'm no great fan of the small body of writing that Roy has produced.
Not for any particular reason, just a question of taste.  I find her writing
too dense, to precious, suffocating - it doesn't fit in to my current
aesthetic needs, so to speak.  But that doesn't mean she's not a good
writer; she is a good writer *because* she writes like Faulkner, or even
Proust at times, but somehow differently.  And that's why so many people
like her.  (on a side note, I do however, appreciate her political views and
her engaged political essays and writing)

The article from the Indian Express is a "vulgarized"  but very adroit
comparative lit essay.  Has anyone ever heard of intertext, read Kristeva,
Genette, Barthes, etc? French thought as early as the 50's was talking about
this phenomenon.     As long as there is no actual lifting of words without
citing the source, writer's can no longer be accused of plagiarism. Ideas
and images don't belong to writers, all is fair fodder for all writing to
come - a sort of universal textual digestive process in the collective
writing memory.   Contemporary writers (esp Borgès) play on this idea.    It
is irrelevant if Roy has read Lee, Faulkner, Proust or Marquez (by the way
Salil, I wasn't convinced by your comparative example on rhythm and sentence
structure.)  Even if she had read them, and lied about it, what does that
change? She has copied nothing word for word.  She has certainly read other
writers influenced by the same people, and so on, and so on, and so on, like
that old hair commercial and the multiplying mirrors.
With this kind of reasoning we could say she stole the twin idea from (VC
Andrews?) *Flowers in the Attic* - a trashy series of novels in the 80's
that told the saga of two twins growing up hidden away in the attic and the
*love affair* that results - many books and pages later. And the fact that
two Indian writers go on about pickle is like saying to an American, you
can't write metaphorically (or sensorially) about hot dogs and apple pie or
whatever your cultural "madeline" may be.

What you all are saying about Roy is just proof that her writing stands up,
so to speak, to comparison.  This approach is what comparative literary
analysis is all about.  The only thing we're missing in your attempts to
*nail* Roy to the plagiarism stake, is a good conclusion to an interesting
comparative study.  So if Roy's writing makes us all think of so many
different sources that traverse cultures and eras, what kind of conclusions
can we draw?  How does she use the imagery, ideas and style in the same way,
how is it different.  There is a multitude of different legitimate and very
interesting questions we can ask from a literary perspective.

So quit bashing her for plagiarism, your accusations are moot given the
contemporary theoretical and literary context in comparative studies.  I
don't even *love* GOST like so many do, but I can appreciate it for it's
literary value that it undeniably has.  (on a side note: i like the
abbreviation GOST, for God of Small Things,  makes me think of ghost, of
course.  roy's book is all about ghosts not necessarily (or only) gods....
n'est-ce pas?)

My best!
Jaclyn

"Security is a false god, begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost."
Paul Bowles




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