Epluribus unum might be the proper political aspiration for a large and multifarious country, but when it comes to the novel people tend to applaud something closer to the opposite. The novel gets idealized as a liberal agora, a meeting place of competing voices, the space for a special kind of evenhanded âdialogism.â Joseph Brodsky praised Dostoyevsky for his ability to play devilâs advocate against his own Christian faith: religious readers, making their way through Dostoyevskyâs many-voiced f iction, might not become atheists, Brodsky said, but they finish his novels uttering âthe creedâs dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.â Salman Rushdieâs âThe Satanic Versesâ was defended on similar grounds in 1989, after receiving its terminal review by the Ayatollah Khomeini. âOurs is an age of competitive languages,â the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes wrote, ten days after the fatwa was issued. âThe novel is the privileged arena where language in conflict can meet.â
This is true of Dostoyevsky, and true, also, of the Rushdie of âThe Satanic Verses.â But itâs an idea mainly honored in the breach. Most contemporary novels are too narrow to allow for the truly dialogical: autofiction is a bedroom rather than an arena. Ours is an age of crazily competitive languages, yet, paradoxically, this renders us politically squeamish. For who enjoys being yelled at? Even novelists whose lenses are turned outward seem to lose their nerve when it comes to the risky art of extending the principle of charity, of endowing oneâs political opponents with presumptive reason and comprehended motive. Not so the Indian writer Devika Rege, whose first novel, âQuarterlifeâ (Liveright), is a fearless achievement in multifarious listening.
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YULE RULES
âChristmas Eve in Millerâs Point.â
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Regeâ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseonâs message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether youâre horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: youâre flailing in the vast chasm of your childâs relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movementâ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.