tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-902749068350117138.post4404772784597737272..comments2022-04-05T12:54:15.819-04:00Comments on The Short Story Reading Challenge: Nam Le's The BoatKate S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16897618197257393697noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-902749068350117138.post-37422226180232314982008-08-02T19:49:00.000-04:002008-08-02T19:49:00.000-04:00Thanks for the response everyone -- and thanks for...Thanks for the response everyone -- and thanks for posting the review, Moazzam, I found it most interesting.Rebecca H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10825532162727473112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-902749068350117138.post-10806168888410978532008-07-30T21:33:00.000-04:002008-07-30T21:33:00.000-04:00hi there, thanks for a good review. i should also ...hi there,<BR/> thanks for a good review. i should also point out that the book is getting good coverage everywhere it seems. it is like when industry puts all its weight behind someone, but he's probably a writer with potential. Henry Kanzru, in his review for NYT Books Review section, pointed out, "This is all painfully self-conscious, but it at least allows Le to stage some of the real and slippery problems facing a nonwhite writer trying to negotiate the world of contemporary fiction production. It reads as a manifesto of sorts, a way for the author to assert his right to roam outside his ethnicity, and to justify the rest of his collection, which neurotically avoids the “Vietnamese thing,” taking the reader around the world in 80 days, with narrators of all ages and genders, before coming full circle in the title story — 40 pages of entirely unpostmodern realism about boat people suffering as they try to escape the new Communist state.<BR/><BR/>This striving for otherness has a fraught, weightless quality, like watching someone thrash around in zero gravity." <BR/><BR/>Towards the end, Kunzru adds, "“The Boat” is transparently a product of the increasingly formalized milieu in which American writers train — a well-wrought collection that, in its acute self-consciousness, trails a telltale whiff of “the industry” that is its initial concern, of the “heap of fellowship and job applications” the fictional Le needs “to draft and submit” when he’s interrupted by his father. “Ethnic lit” is unhappily what emerges when identity politics head into the marketing meeting, and for any writer with a non-WASP name, it’s all too easy to feel one is being pimped for one’s “background and life experience” (real or imaginary), and somehow colluding in the production of a crude, essentialized version of oneself in return for an advantage over ethnically uninteresting peers. Le is starting to grapple with the subtleties of authenticity, but one comes away feeling that it’s not really his subject, that he has a future as a very different kind of writer."<BR/><BR/> - moazzammoazzam sheikhhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04667465930413071388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-902749068350117138.post-51119642790268198112008-07-28T21:19:00.000-04:002008-07-28T21:19:00.000-04:00Nice review! I've never heard of this author eith...Nice review! I've never heard of this author either. Our library doesn't carry any of his books, but they can get them thru interlibrary loan.<BR/><BR/>Thanks!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15334812243182354729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-902749068350117138.post-92004157542221588292008-07-27T20:44:00.000-04:002008-07-27T20:44:00.000-04:00This sounds very interesting. I haven't heard of t...This sounds very interesting. I haven't heard of the author. Is this his first work? I must put it on my list.Rebecca Reidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06062252252301802298noreply@blogger.com