Certainty
I was sort of half reading the newest arts feature on CBC, only half-interested, when I ran into something that made me prick up my ears, in the midst of comparing Madeleine Thien's debut to The English Patient:
Ondaatje’s book fits with a postmodern program: the man at the core of the book is a cipher, illustrating the postmodern conceit that we have no identifiable selves, that we’re ever-changing combinations of almost random traits. Thien, whose book has been sold into more than a dozen foreign markets, doesn’t follow in Ondaatje’s footsteps. "[Humans] can understand each other," she says emphatically. "Perhaps not everything, but the real stuff."
I'm not sure why her quotation should resonate that strongly with me (I knew I agreed with her, but not that I apparently care so much), but it does.
Ondaatje’s book fits with a postmodern program: the man at the core of the book is a cipher, illustrating the postmodern conceit that we have no identifiable selves, that we’re ever-changing combinations of almost random traits. Thien, whose book has been sold into more than a dozen foreign markets, doesn’t follow in Ondaatje’s footsteps. "[Humans] can understand each other," she says emphatically. "Perhaps not everything, but the real stuff."
I'm not sure why her quotation should resonate that strongly with me (I knew I agreed with her, but not that I apparently care so much), but it does.
