In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

I've decided recently that I'm assigning myself fifty pages of reading per day. It's an attempt to keep me in the academic frame of mind despite my absence from its environs (job at the academic library withstanding).

I had to order a number of new books in order to justify my foray into literary fiction. It went thusly.

S: Oh, you got new books.
M: Yup.
S: You got ten new books with only that one gift card?
M: Yeah. I may have spent a little more than the gift card.
S: What? (Growing horns)
M: At least I'm not gambling it away on basketball games.
S: I thought you said you won money this year.
M: I did. I did. Drink this. (Slips something in her drink). It's a forget me now.


The first book to arrive was In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, a farmer from Pakistan. Let me get this out in the open first, I pretty much don't really enjoy books by people from other countries. This isn't even true, but I have a point. The fact of the matter is that I think Reading Lolita in Tehran is kind of a shitty book. And I'm not sure about Three Cups of Tea, but, in general, I think the American public is currently obsessed with the "idea" of the Middle East. Thus, if you're willing to write something provocative, hello Khalid Hosseini, the American public is probably going to eat it up because it feels a bit like travel. It's a kind of voyeurism.

Confession: I am a graduate of an American institution where I obtained my MFA in Creative Writing. Therefore, I have a vested interest in people reading fiction by people from the U.S. about the U.S. Which, despite my bias, seems like the most fascinating of subjects to read about. I don't live in Tehran, (and look, I know that it's important to learn about other cultures and people. In fact, I think all high school juniors should have to do a mandatory year overseas. It's hard to make demons of people with faces, and personalities, and quirky laughs) and I don't think we've done a great job figuring out good old America yet, so why the hell should I be more interested in finding out about where I've not been, when I'm not even really sure where I'm at?

I guess I just kind of abhor the literary hype machine that gears up around these books. A hype machine, which never asks the question that is essential to art. Is the damn thing any good?

Incidentally, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is quite good. I read it with the idea of resistance in my mind, but the writing is genuinely good, the story lines familiar and strange both, the characters unique, and extremely sad. I can see why the book made it as a finalist for the National Book Award this last year. It was pretty damn good. That's all that I'm really asking for when I read a book. I just want it to be held to the same literary standard that great books by guys like DeLillo are.

It would also be fair to mention at this point in time that I'm a literary snob. And, that to most people the desire to learn about another culture is a good thing, and if it is pursued through fiction, even fiction that isn't quite literary, that it is a good thing. Not every person in the world is a literary snob. However, part of being a snob is secretly desiring that the masses would think just like you do. In that vein, everyone should probably go out and read this book. The first half of the stories are about the strict class divisions, and the latter half is primarily composed of finely wrought tales. In fact, the most touching one to me was the simple story of a couple in college meeting the boy's parents for the first time.

P.S. It's not a great year to be a basketball fan either. The Lakers currently hold the NBA championship and Duke the NCAA championship. How entirely unpleasant.