The Truth Will Out: Mohsin Hamid Speaks His Name in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Abstract

The debate on Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist has, over the years, built what Stanley Fish calls an “interpretive community” which dictates how a work should be read and discussed. The quite tedious yet all-pervading claim that Hamid, in his novels, concerns himself with globalization, economy, neoliberalism, politics, multiculturalism, identity, and whatnot is today so fashionably common among Hamid critics that it feels like this is all what Hamid's literature has to offer. This article engages in a critical discussion with Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and its critics and suggests a new alternative to reading the novel and, by implication, Hamid's other novels. It argues that a significant aspect of The Reluctant Fundamentalist has been left undiscussed: art. Hamid's text, I submit, not only reflects on its own footprints, which makes it metafictional, but also revolves around Hamid's own artistic pursuits, experiences, and intimacies which, I suggest, are represented through Erica, herself a novelist in the story, whom Hamid artistically uses to speak his name.

The Artist’s Way: Mohsin Hamid Confesses an Artistic Trauma in his Non-Fiction

“…This is not to say that the truths non-fiction offers are crystal-clear and reliable. They can be to a certain degree, but like the truths of fiction, they are to be taken with a grain of salt as an artist, even in their non-fiction space, indulges in disguise and misdirection-as already shown in my latest article (Madiou, 2021). However, non-fiction remains more straightforward and clearer in terms of personal truths and, therefore, can help confirm the claim that Hamid is preoccupied with his artistic experiences.…”

“…But let us take an example that is more relevant to the topic at issue. Hamid's fear that his texts might reveal something intimate and thus extremely personal is (as shown previously in Madiou, 2021) expressed in the various defence mechanisms he uses in his non-fiction. While they protect Hamid as an artist, these mechanisms also www.plutojournals.com/asq/ reveal that Hamid strives to keep and protect a secret in his fiction.…”

“…To prevent this threatening situation from unfolding, the artist generally engages in disguise, in dabbling in the symbolic, in tampering with words, in making things unclear, in leaving the audience's thirst for details unquenched. In writing, this disguise takes many forms, such as symbolism, which includes puns, metaphors, metonymies, allegories, the creation of personae, and other tricks and techniques, such as authorial manipulation which (as discussed in Madiou, 2021) may take the form of authorial lying, misleading, hiding, twisting words, and so on. However, even after such disguise, the feeling of embarrassment may still prevail because the artist is conscious of what they have done and where they have done it.…”

“…Because it was judged brief, Hamid went through seven drafts to complete it, yet the artistic project did not start with the seven-draft idea, which is originally the methodology he followed in the production process of his debut novel MS. Hamid in fact wrote just one draft of TRF and submitted it for publication, hoping it could be published as it initially was, but the reviews were negative. Hamid tells us about this in DC (as also glanced at in Madiou, 2021), saying, "[U]pon reading it, my agent told me he was puzzled by the protagonist's inner conflict: why would so secular and Westernized a Muslim man feel such tension with America?" (68).…”

Navigating Economic Inclusion and Psychological Exclusion

“…www.plutojournals.com/asq/ Madiou (2021) argues that the novel revolves around Hamid's own artistic pursuits, experiences, and intimacies which are represented through his relationship with Erica.…”