Generic frameworks and active readership in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Abstract

This article considers the role of the reader-as-judge in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It builds upon and extends the idea of the cathartic function of authorship as a response to trauma by alternatively considering the activation and empowerment of the reader that is enabled by the dramatic monologue style of Hamid’s novella. Indications that the reader is called upon to make active decisions can be found in the second-person address that is directed beyond the pages. The layering of different genres also means that readers have to choose what they believe to be the most suitable generic framework for understanding the novella. Marking a new intervention into the study of this novella, the article argues that The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an example of a contemporary dramatic monologue that encourages a more active way of reading by calling for readers’ discernment and judgement, while resisting comfortable closure. The article considers how and why the novella functions as a dramatic monologue, before moving on to those matters that the reader is being called upon to judge, and the wider implications of this readerly positioning in relation to the politics of mourning.

Keywords:

• genre
• dramatic monologue
• 9/11
• national allegory
• reader
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Notes

1. This view is frequently reflected in news media that repeatedly return to the symbolically overdetermined moment of 9/11, as well as in fictional and critical accounts that centralize its importance as an epoch-defining event. At the time of writing, the online store Amazon lists 366,124 paperbacks under the search term “9/11”. See Butler (2004) for further discussion of the violence entailed in the selective memorialization of 9/11 and its victims.

2. Albert Camus’ The Fall (1956) is a key literary precursor to The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Camus’ narrative similarly consists of a series of dramatic monologues delivered ostensibly to a stranger but also implicating the wider reading audience. Hamid’s inclusion of a character called Juan-Bautista is a nod to The Fall’s protagonist and orator, Jean-Baptiste Clamence.

3. This is a type of children’s story in which the reader plays the part of the main character and makes choices as to which section to move to next, thus determining the plot’s outcome. The form was first used in a series of books by Edward Packard.

4. A libidinal approach to desire is demonstrated by Sigmund Freud throughout his oeuvre, whilst Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1977) explain desire with reference to machines in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.