Anticipating Reactions to the Autobiographical in Jamaica Kincaid's See Now Then
 |
(
Elisabetta A. Villa, Getty Images
/
February 1, 2013
)
Jamaica Kincaid at Festival Delle Letterature Di Roma 2010
"There are two ways to read Jamaica Kincaid's mesmerizing new novel, See Now Then.
The first is the way any work of art should be read: by simply
absorbing what's on the page. This is how I read the first two-thirds of See Now Then."
 See Now Then A Novel Jamaica Kincaid Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 192 pp., $24 It becomes impossible to avoid the personal life story of Kincaid during his well-intended reading: READ AS ART.
Tobar who has little knowledge about Kincaid's personal life but he becomes too tempted to verify details and consequently, does some research and reports on the findings. His research changes the reading from simply ART to Art -Influenced-Autobiography and it completely changes the meaning of her work. He writes that "All of this is relevant because Kincaid, the author of more than a dozen
books, is a public literary figure. And seen through the lens of some
basic but widely known facts of her life, reading "See Now Then" becomes
quite a different experience." Similarities about the physical appearance of Mrs. Sweet to Kincaid and Mr. Sweet to her former husband, Allen Shawn begin to create another layer of meaning in the work- it begins to feel "uncomfortably voyeuristic" as he reads. I await the arrival of my copy and my own sneak peek into Jamaica Kincaid's life.
|
