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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
Like many Americans, since 9/11 I've become much more interested than ever before in such subjects as the Middle East, the "Arab World" and the "Muslim World," and have been reading up more and more on the history and culture of the region; and one of the first things you learn when you do something like this is that the traditional colonialist view about this region that has dominated Western textbooks since…well, the colonial period (namely, that virtually all human innovations since the Renaissance have come from Western civilization, and that the Eastern countries have essentially been backwards, superstitious warrior kingdoms since the fall of the Islamic Empire in the same years) is not really right at all, and that in the last 500 years there have in fact been plenty of parallel developments between East and West in such things as science and the cutting-edge arts. And that brings us to Reza Aslan's remarkable new anthology Tablet & Pen, which aims to help along this cross-cultural learning process as much as possible; made up exclusively of influential 20th-century works from the Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Urdu languages, and chosen by this Western-raised scholar specifically because they relate so well to famous Western touchstones, Aslan's main point in even putting this together (including many classic pieces being published here in English for the very first time) is to show just how similar the avant-garde lit scenes have actually been between East and West in the century and a quarter between the late Victorian Age and our own Age of Sincerity (or whatever you want to call the times we're currently living in).
And indeed, for Americans like me who previously didn't know anything about this subject, this compilation is a revelation, concrete proof of just how widespread things like abstraction and social realism were in the Early Modernist era, even while they were being applied in the East not for the purposes of having more sex and plotting socialist takeovers like Western artists, but rather going hand-in-hand with the nationalist movements forming in those countries at that time, rallying calls to basically unite around what was in some cases literally brand-new languages for a brand-new age (like in the case of a newly democratized Turkey), or at least brand-new applications of these languages in ways the culture had never seen before (like in Egypt, for example, which didn't see its first character-heavy three-act short stories in its entire literary history until the 1910s). The similarities then continue throughout this chronological collection, the stories of the Late Modernist era increasingly about the conflict between Israel and the Arab world, the new role of southeast Asia in post-colonial times, and other tricky issues heading into the countercultural and then Postmodernist eras; which then leads us to now, and a time when global online culture is bringing the Eastern and Western arts together in a way neither have ever experienced before. An enlightening, fascinating, always thought-provoking and entertaining read, this comes heavily recommended to any Westerner wishing to learn more about the last century of Eastern history, and will dispel many of the notions all of us here in the US have been raised with concerning the importance of the West in particular on the shape of 20th-century global culture.
I have not finished this book yet. I'm reading it for a book club I've been in for years. So far I am underwhelmed. In some ways the book seems to be suited for a survey course which might perhaps have supplementary material to really open up the world of Arabic literature and in another way I think it is lacking perhaps in the translations which don't seem to make the literature very engaging. The selections from Palestinian writers seem rather obvious in that the writers feel oppressed by Israel and hate the West. Does this give us insight beyond what we read in a newspaper? To me that is what literature should do. I am taking the advice of Mr. Aslan and reading cover to cover rather than just dipping in here and there. I certainly hope it gets better. ( )
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(4.13)
3
Like many Americans, since 9/11 I've become much more interested than ever before in such subjects as the Middle East, the "Arab World" and the "Muslim World," and have been reading up more and more on the history and culture of the region; and one of the first things you learn when you do something like this is that the traditional colonialist view about this region that has dominated Western textbooks since…well, the colonial period (namely, that virtually all human innovations since the Renaissance have come from Western civilization, and that the Eastern countries have essentially been backwards, superstitious warrior kingdoms since the fall of the Islamic Empire in the same years) is not really right at all, and that in the last 500 years there have in fact been plenty of parallel developments between East and West in such things as science and the cutting-edge arts. And that brings us to Reza Aslan's remarkable new anthology Tablet & Pen, which aims to help along this cross-cultural learning process as much as possible; made up exclusively of influential 20th-century works from the Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Urdu languages, and chosen by this Western-raised scholar specifically because they relate so well to famous Western touchstones, Aslan's main point in even putting this together (including many classic pieces being published here in English for the very first time) is to show just how similar the avant-garde lit scenes have actually been between East and West in the century and a quarter between the late Victorian Age and our own Age of Sincerity (or whatever you want to call the times we're currently living in).
And indeed, for Americans like me who previously didn't know anything about this subject, this compilation is a revelation, concrete proof of just how widespread things like abstraction and social realism were in the Early Modernist era, even while they were being applied in the East not for the purposes of having more sex and plotting socialist takeovers like Western artists, but rather going hand-in-hand with the nationalist movements forming in those countries at that time, rallying calls to basically unite around what was in some cases literally brand-new languages for a brand-new age (like in the case of a newly democratized Turkey), or at least brand-new applications of these languages in ways the culture had never seen before (like in Egypt, for example, which didn't see its first character-heavy three-act short stories in its entire literary history until the 1910s). The similarities then continue throughout this chronological collection, the stories of the Late Modernist era increasingly about the conflict between Israel and the Arab world, the new role of southeast Asia in post-colonial times, and other tricky issues heading into the countercultural and then Postmodernist eras; which then leads us to now, and a time when global online culture is bringing the Eastern and Western arts together in a way neither have ever experienced before. An enlightening, fascinating, always thought-provoking and entertaining read, this comes heavily recommended to any Westerner wishing to learn more about the last century of Eastern history, and will dispel many of the notions all of us here in the US have been raised with concerning the importance of the West in particular on the shape of 20th-century global culture.
Out of 10: 9.6 (