[Reader-list] Objective Novels!!!!

[Sunandan K.N.]

Mr Vinod Jose reviews which came in Biblio and was frowarded to reader's list:

"When a novelist claims that his work "is based on a true incident"—a
claim that gives legitimacy to the book—one expects him to portray the
period and its reality with some objectivity."

Philosophers of sceince now are doubtful about the objectivity of even
scientific narratives. And now Vinod wants a novelist to be objective.

He continues: "From a novel telling Naxalite stories, one would at
least expect the
author to provide the readers with some accurate portrayal of how a
guerilla squad carries out an operation. This is also lacking in this
novel. The author seems to have done very little research on this
matter and leaves much of it to his imagination."
 Is imagination a crime of a novelist. If so, is there any difference
between a news paper report and a novel? Here it seems the reviewer
has done very little reserch regarding this.

He also writes: "Naxalites fell short of achieving their
goal, but if it had not been for them, issues such as the agrarian
crisis in Wayanad (manifested in the alarming rate of farmers'
suicides), alienation of land from the adivasis (the 2003 police
firing on adivasis inside Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary), large scale
deforestation (the felling of trees in Wayanad by the Birlas since
1960s for their newsprint factory and the subsequent environment
movement) etc. would have remained in oblivion."

Here vinod give all credit to naxalite whatever happens in Wynad.
According to him the farmers protest under christian church, the
environmental movements and the Adivasi gothra sabha lead by Janu etc
all are part of Naxalite movement. Where as the remaining naxalite
groups consider all these movements as imperialist agents..

Here vinod could do a little more research and be more 'objective'.

I haven't read the novel and I am not going to read it. I almost know
it is trash..

sunandan

knsunandan at gmail.com