Literary Criticism
(Extract of an interview with Prof. Victor Ramraj on literary criticism, Georgetown, Guyana. Ramraj is Professor of English at the University of Calgary, Canada.)
PP: THERE IS good literature, and there is bad literature. But what appeals to me may not appeal to you, and vice versa. How then do we know what is good literature and what is bad literature?
VR: Good literature and bad literature… that has varied over the years. We are in a post-modern period (of literature). This post-modern criticism has caused us to revalue a great many things. I’ll give you an example: Timothy Mo, a Hong Kong/British writer; his father is Chinese, his mother British. He has written two or three traditional novels, including ‘The Monkey King’, which is very much influenced by Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’.
It is about a Chinese figure in Hong Kong who tries to establish himself as an independent figure from his in-laws. Now, that is a very traditional 19th Century novel with a flowing narrative, cause and effect. Later, Timothy Mo wrote ‘An Insular Possession’, which is a fictional history of Hong Kong, and he adopts the Chinese romance structure, which doesn’t follow a linear chronological pattern. It rambles all over the place; it would have a laundry list, newspaper reports; it would have photographs; it doesn’t follow the linear pattern. Now that novel would not be considered a novel in the 19th Century; it didn’t have that clear linear chronological pattern.
PP: Is that good or bad? Or it is not cut-and-dried?
VR: Let me put it this way: Post-modernism now questions cause and effect. They feel there are multiple reasons for a character being what a character is. The mimetic novel is the type of novel which attempts to imitate life; which tends to simplify life. Of course, there is the question of mimetic: What is a novel imitating?  Is Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’ an accurate portrayal of an Indian family in the 40s and 50s? Post-modernist will question this; what we are getting is a Naipaul locked up in this attic, writing about his experience. If you compare that with Ismay Khan or Sam Selvon, other Indo-Trinidadian writers, whose is the truth – Naipaul’s, Khan’s, Selvon’s?
PP: I noticed that you jump straight to the post-modern period of criticism. Of course, we did not always look at literature through those lens; there were periods of the historical/biographical period, the philosophical period, formalism, new criticism, psychological, feminism … then the post-modernist period. So, was there a continual change in the way we look at literature down the ages?
VR: Yes. English as a discipline started… as taught in collages and universities, English as a discipline started as rhetoric. Let me introduce a book, ‘Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India’  by Professor Gauri Viswanathan. This book will shed some light on the issue. She showed that English — as it is currently thought of until post-modernism — she showed that English as a discipline started in India.  Macaulay wanted to make a group of Indians into Englishmen, who would be the liaison between the English and the millions they had to rule. So they wanted to educate a group of Indians to be virtual Englishmen. Salman Rushdie called them ‘Macaulay’s Minute Men’. English was found to be very useful for doing that; it implanted the right moral fibre in these young men. It did its work so well that the English carried home to do its damage on the working class. English as a subject taught morality …this is the origin of English Literature. And when we judge a work, we judge it according to that. Other criteria came along, including Mathew Arnold’s ‘touchstone’. He had a line of poetry which was a touchstone for judging poetry. Now, little or no attention is paid to that.
Post-modernism is revolutionary, not only in Literature, but it could be found in Mathematics, Architecture, etc. But there are two basic tenets of post-modernism: One, truth is relative.  Now that is a beautiful abstraction. But if I ask you to write your autobiography, explaining why you are what you are, you will give your version.  If your teacher wrote about you, your parents; if your friends wrote an account of your life, they will all vary.  And we will have to ask the question: Which is the truth? Post-modernism suggests there are multiple truths; there is no master narrative, which is what we had before. Cause and effect narrative is questionable. What made you what you are?  
PP: Should we accept totally what the writer says about his or her own work? Further, should we look at literature through Western eyes only?
VR: No, we shouldn’t, but then, we shouldn’t look at it the way the author wants us to look at it, because his version is one of many…
PP: So, it is important to have the literary criticism alongside of the literature that is being created every minute of the day. Here are some basic reasons: It helps us resolve the difficulty in reading certain texts; it helps us to choose between conflicting opinions of the work; and it helps to form a judgement, or to better appreciate that literature.   Good literature, bad literature. Could criticism make a writer?
VR: Very likely. Wilson Harris was made, I think, by the Belgian scholar, Hena Maes-Jelinek, who explicated Harris’ work well. I think writers are lucky to have someone like that, but it doesn’t happen too often.
In explaining criticism, you said that the critic talks to the reader, and that, I think, is a basic function. We are not talking to the writer. If I write criticism on Shakespeare, he is dead and gone; he’s not, will not, be concerned with what is said. Mordecai Richler said he reads critical reviews as market reports, as in this, one will sell 100 books, and that one will sell ten books.
Yes, our function is really with the reader, and you are right: There are different interpretations; but way back when F. R. Levis — Frank Leavis, who was a formalist…
PP: We mentioned formalism earlier
VR: But we didn’t have the time to go into details. Leavis said it is a common pursuit. I give my interpretation; you give yours, and yours may open my eye to certain things I may have overlooked. So, good criticism can complement the writing.
PP: That is a good note on which to stop…adjourn this session. Thank you very much.

WHAT’S HAPPENING:
•    A UNESCO-sponsored one-week creative writing workshop is set for Monday, August 8, 2011, between 09:00h and 16:00h. This project will be supervised by Writers in Concert (WICK), headed by Mr. Petamber Persaud. Limited places are available on a ‘first-come-first-serve’ basis. Facilitators will include local and international teachers/writers. The venue is the national Library. In order to apply, please email me your intention.

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