ams wrote:
So... why is Arundhati Roy so evil?
Evil - no. Boring and vacuous, yes. In my book, her crimes are mainly
literary. The first and largest peeve is her hysterical, cliche-ridden,
purple prose. To me, her writing illustrates the polar opposite of 'felicity
of style'. Second, her muddy thinking - many of the columns I've read
demonstrate an exaggerated sense of self-importance, while the writing is
laden with misplaced hyperbole.
Even when objectively inclined to the same side of an argument as Ms.Roy, I
find myself annoyed by the sheer stupidity of her reasoning. The Narmada Dam
issue, for example: her initial column in Outlook was an ill-considered
polemic against technology in general, with some sappy romanticisation of
tribal lifestyles, while impressively managing to avoid any convincing or
substantive argument (and this on a subject where powerful arguments exist:
social justice, environmental impact, the preservation of cultural
diversity, to name a few).
Her subsequent commentary on the same subject plumbed new depths:
cringe-inducing metaphors ("When NATO bombed Yugoslavia, a tiger in the
Belgrade zoo got so terrified that it started eating its own limbs. The
people of the Narmada valley will soon start eating their own limbs."), and
the by-now-usual mix of self-aggrandizement with mawkish sentimentality. As
for her columns on the Gujarat riots, she made up stuff - lied outright,
actually. Again, this happened when there was no dearth of genuine tragedy
to report on.
Her writing is replete with sentiment in lieu of passion, fiction instead of
fact, with little substance and less style. As for her behaviour outside of
her writings, I can only say that she often does more damage to the causes
she ostensibly supports than good - for example, her immature tirade against
the Supreme Court just before a critical judgement in the dam case annoyed
the Narmada Bachao Andolan more than anyone else.
cheers,
Divya
