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I'm on a listserv dedicated to research methods; so's one of my dissertation advisors. During a conversation about using novels for social science research and teaching, my advisor made a proposition: all social scientists are failed novelists. My immediate reaction, from the part of me that spent the years of 1998-2000 identifying primarily as a writer, was along the lines of "Who're you calling failed?" In general, I've been thinking about the relationship between writing fiction and writing ethnography as I pick my way through my fieldwork-oriented chapters. Apart from the fact that I'm constrained by adherence to actual data, many of the elements of writing I'm doing don't strike me as so different from the ones I practiced as a short story writer: conveying character, theme, tone, meaning through carefully chosen details and scenarios.
Writing the 'other,' writing about people not like you in some significant way, is hard. Those of us in fandom are just coming off a year of debate on the subject of when and how to do it right, but it's a constant concern for researchers too, at least those of us who feel a normative duty to our research subjects. I constantly worry about how I'm describing Arab American communities, and thinking about how others, including others with whom I have serious disagreements, might use what I say, and what possible interventions I might make to forestall this.
I'm thinking of this now because I just picked up Matt Beynon Rees's mystery novels set in Palestine. Rees is a journalist who has lived in Jerusalem for many years and covered Israeli and Palestinian politics for Time Magazine. His novels feature Omar Yussef, a refugee and teacher in an UNRWA school, and are murder mysteries with political intrigue thrown in for fun. There are four novels in the series: The Collaborator of Bethlehem, A Grave in Gaza, The Samaritan's Secret (set in Nablus), and The Fourth Assassin (set in Brooklyn). Sadly, my library only had the last three, but I ordered them and picked them up eagerly.
I've read through them now, and find that they're inspiring me to think much more than I would have expected. To be blunt, they're not very well written; Rees doesn't seem to be very good at characterization, and so most of his characters fall flat. I also find myself very dissatisfied with them as fictional representations of Palestinian life and politics. They aren't overtly or intentionally racist, and Rees is clearly familiar with and positive towards Palestinians. But being a nice guy doesn't make your work unimpeachable, sadly, as we all know.
Because I found them so interesting, I'm planning on doing three posts on them, because I have kind of a lot to say. In this first one, I talk about the ways that Rees uses language, particularly the distance between Arabic and English, and the ways I think that his decisions are othering, and representative of the broader trend towards othering in his work. In the second, I'm going to talk specifically about The Fourth Assassin's discussion of Arabs in New York City, which has particular issues that strike me as someone who is also writing a book set, largely, in Bay Ridge (and as someone who's worked at the UN, which is the other major setting of the book). In the third, I'm going to talk about the reception of Rees's fictional works, which I think help indicates precisely how the things he establishes are problematic.
( Inshallah: the beginning of our problems )
Look for my post on The Fourth Assassin and on the reception of these books in the days to come!
Writing the 'other,' writing about people not like you in some significant way, is hard. Those of us in fandom are just coming off a year of debate on the subject of when and how to do it right, but it's a constant concern for researchers too, at least those of us who feel a normative duty to our research subjects. I constantly worry about how I'm describing Arab American communities, and thinking about how others, including others with whom I have serious disagreements, might use what I say, and what possible interventions I might make to forestall this.
I'm thinking of this now because I just picked up Matt Beynon Rees's mystery novels set in Palestine. Rees is a journalist who has lived in Jerusalem for many years and covered Israeli and Palestinian politics for Time Magazine. His novels feature Omar Yussef, a refugee and teacher in an UNRWA school, and are murder mysteries with political intrigue thrown in for fun. There are four novels in the series: The Collaborator of Bethlehem, A Grave in Gaza, The Samaritan's Secret (set in Nablus), and The Fourth Assassin (set in Brooklyn). Sadly, my library only had the last three, but I ordered them and picked them up eagerly.
I've read through them now, and find that they're inspiring me to think much more than I would have expected. To be blunt, they're not very well written; Rees doesn't seem to be very good at characterization, and so most of his characters fall flat. I also find myself very dissatisfied with them as fictional representations of Palestinian life and politics. They aren't overtly or intentionally racist, and Rees is clearly familiar with and positive towards Palestinians. But being a nice guy doesn't make your work unimpeachable, sadly, as we all know.
Because I found them so interesting, I'm planning on doing three posts on them, because I have kind of a lot to say. In this first one, I talk about the ways that Rees uses language, particularly the distance between Arabic and English, and the ways I think that his decisions are othering, and representative of the broader trend towards othering in his work. In the second, I'm going to talk specifically about The Fourth Assassin's discussion of Arabs in New York City, which has particular issues that strike me as someone who is also writing a book set, largely, in Bay Ridge (and as someone who's worked at the UN, which is the other major setting of the book). In the third, I'm going to talk about the reception of Rees's fictional works, which I think help indicates precisely how the things he establishes are problematic.
( Inshallah: the beginning of our problems )
Look for my post on The Fourth Assassin and on the reception of these books in the days to come!