Last year, one of the most interesting nominations for the Booker was a book called “Animal’s People”, written by Indra Sinha, about a boy walking on all fours because of the Bhopal chemical incident. Well, now Indra Sinha is standing behind the work he did on the novel by joining eight other people on a hunger strike designed to bring the chemical manufacturers who created this atrocious situation, U.S. based Dow Chemical, to justice.
The case of the hunger strikers is weakened by two factors. One: It happened all the way back in 1984. Sure, the last few years have seen an increased rate of maladies from the accident, but it’s difficult to reach back that far to prosecute. Two: The pesticide accident actually occurred under a different company, Union Carbide, which has only recently been appropriated by Dow Chemical (in 2001).
But I still think it’s encouraging to see authors take action. Which is not to say that writing a book is not taking action. It is. And if “Animal’s People” hadn’t been nominated for a Booker, then Indra Sinha would never have had the platform to perform a hunger strike. But it’s also encouraging to see action beyond the book. Indra Sinha hasn’t mentioned the duration of his fast (in his novel, characters promise to fast until death), but I would guess that it will extend as long as media coverage continues, and as long as the fast is pressuring the Indian government not to concede too much in its settlement with Dow Chemical.
All this action is reminding me of Sartre’s concept of committed literature (“littérature engagée“), which argues that authors ignore the moral and political component of their best canadian pharmacy no prescription writing at their peril. Of course, I don’t particular admire the trilogy Sartre wrote under the aegis of this philosophy of committed literature, but his idea still holds sway. The committed novelist should be deeply engaged in the world, both through his/her prose and action. Here’s a quote from Ravi Vyas explaning committed literature further:
But “commitment” did mean at least one thing: That literature should not be a sedative, a feel-good pill or a sub-division of the entertainment industry. It should be an irritant that would provoke men to change the world in which they lived and in so doing change themselves. By adopting this role the writer would ensure that the content of his work would avoid sterile dogmatism; it would be addressed to the potentially free reader and by doing so, the writer would also be freeing himself. The process is dialectical and reciprocal. Also, it meant that there would be no room for ambiguity, for what could be called the “music of chance”.
The danger of Committed Literature is that it will fall into a thesis novel (what the French call “Roman a these“) — a story with an axe to grind — rather than a novel of ideas (“Roman D’idees“) — which is a genuine exploration of ideas in the context of narrative. And novels that shun ambiguity — or even don’t prize it highly enough — tend to slip into the thesis novel. From what I’ve read of Animal’s People, though, it is a novel of ideas.
Update: Here are two videos about the chemical manufacturer and those impacted by the chemicals. The Written Nerd, and LitKicks both add their two cents.
