Welcome to the lead, the new lines magazine podcast. I'm Lydia Wilson, and this is a podcast where we delve into the biggest ideas, events, and personalities from around the world. Modernism was a movement that broke the mold across literature, philosophy, music, architecture, and many other artistic forms. And intellectual fields summarized most famously by poet Ezra Pound's injunction to make it new.
Consciously breaking with traditions from classical influences to the romanticism of the 19th century, modernism sought to find new forms of expression, producing aesthetic movements from Bauhaus to futurism in literature. Writers such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce experimented with extended interior monologues to capture a more nuanced, they hoped, portrayal of human consciousness. With me today is May al Naqib, who teaches English and comparative literature at Kuwait University.
She is the author of the novel An Unlasting Home and the short story collection The Hidden Light of Objects. She recently wrote an article for New Lines entitled A Portrait of James Joyce's Lessons in a Kuwait English Class, which will be in the forthcoming summer print edition of the magazine. She is joining me today to discuss what modernism can teach us, whether as students or writers. May, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Lydia. Now May, you're the expert here.
What did you think of my formulation of modernism in the introduction? It's such a contested word, isn't it? So without getting into the weeds too much, how do you characterize it for your students? I think you did a, I mean, you did a great job. My sense of, you know, modernism is that it was a cultural artistic movement that was responding to the incredible transformations that were happening at the turn of the century.
.999 You know, from industrialization to urbanization to modernization in, in all areas of life, you know, the extensive expansion of advertising, but also the technological changes, the, the, the rate, the rail, the train, the train system, the standardization of time, all of these. Experiences were changing people's understanding of themselves in the world and this artistic movement was, was responding to that, engaging with, with that.
So this, it was really such a dynamic moment in the history of, of humanity, really, and these artists were responding and engaging. They were both reflecting. That experience, but also, you know combating it, I think, in some ways. So what they were doing wasn't simply it was really, as you said, a kind of shift away from realism and naturalism, although it included elements of that, but it was reflecting a kind of changed reality. Not the one that had that had dominated in the 19th century.
.998 So I think that what was also interesting about modernism was that it wasn't just a aesthetic, a question of aesthetic experimentation, which it certainly was, but I think it retained it wanted to cultivate a sense of critique, you know, and I think that's what is interesting to me about modernism, even today, or why it remains so resonant, I think, for me. 24 00:03:28,834.999 --> 00:03:36,608.33233333 Well, let's take an example, and why not the example of your essay, do you think you can somehow describe it to listeners who haven't read it yeah. 25 00:03:36,608.33233333 --> 00:03:45,108.33133333 So, I read portrait of the artist when I was 14 for the 1st time, and I stole the book off my older sister's shelf. 26 00:03:45,118.33233333 --> 00:03:46,628.33133333 She was reading it at university. 27 00:03:50,56.66566667 --> 00:03:56,216.66566667 And I picked it up and I started reading it was, it wasn't an easy read, no doubt, but it spoke to me. 28 00:03:56,256.66566667 --> 00:03:57,686.66566667 It really resonated. 29 00:03:58,306.66566667 --> 00:04:08,636.66566667 I think in for, for a number of reasons, but one of them was because this was literally the portrait of an artist as a young person, I didn't really hit that. 30 00:04:08,636.66566667 --> 00:04:12,516.66566667 It was a young man mattered far less to me than than you would think. 31 00:04:12,546.66566667 --> 00:04:14,166.46566667 I really yeah. 32 00:04:15,486.56566667 --> 00:04:21,246.56566667 I identified with Stephen as somebody who also was seeing themselves as a writer. 33 00:04:21,246.56566667 --> 00:04:25,376.56566667 I was beginning to have a sense that that writing was the thing I wanted to do. 34 00:04:25,846.56566667 --> 00:04:31,616.56466667 And here was an audacious young teenager coming into him his own as a writer. 35 00:04:32,246.56566667 --> 00:04:39,156.56566667 And the text itself was incredibly experimental and it kind of pushed my sense of what I'd been reading my whole life. 36 00:04:39,196.56566667 --> 00:04:46,726.56566667 But here was this book that pushed my sense of what language could do, you know, challenging me, slowing me down. 37 00:04:46,726.56566667 --> 00:04:47,966.56566667 I had to read and reread. 38 00:04:47,966.56566667 --> 00:04:48,686.56466667 I didn't get it. 39 00:04:48,686.56566667 --> 00:04:52,116.56466667 I'm sure that half of it was lost on me at that age. 40 00:04:52,796.56466667 --> 00:05:27,391.56566667 But then the second layer that really drew me to that novel was how You know, again, how critical Stephen was of his environment, church, nation, and family, and those ties resonated so much with me growing up in Kuwait, where those same lines, what Stephen might call, would call the hollow sounding voices, You know, restrain a young person and a young person, you know, who has ambitions, who's thinking bucks against those restraints. 41 00:05:27,501.56566667 --> 00:05:33,331.56466667 And so I was cheering Stephen on and it just really viscerally spoke to me that book. 42 00:05:34,351.56566667 --> 00:05:36,881.56566667 Yeah, maybe we should just characterize it, though. 43 00:05:36,921.56566667 --> 00:05:50,461.56766667 I mean, it's a very loosely autobiographical piece, isn't it? It's, it's not so long, not the tone that Ulysses is but it tracks the interior debates of a young person going through. 44 00:05:51,1.56666667 --> 00:06:01,961.56666667 Oh, everything from the day to day meal times, day to day walks, right through to a religious retreat, hasn't it got? And listening to the clerical approach and. 45 00:06:02,266.56766667 --> 00:06:19,96.56766667 And responding to it, both pro and anti, and watching those tensions, I think is at the heart of it that young people haven't got it figured out and they are kind of struggling to absorb, maintain process, and respond to the, the, the, the, the influences coming their way. 46 00:06:19,276.56766667 --> 00:06:22,696.56766667 Would you say that was an okay characterization of the book A Absolutely. 47 00:06:22,696.56766667 --> 00:06:23,866.56766667 And, and beginning to end. 48 00:06:23,866.56766667 --> 00:06:30,826.56766667 So it, what's so interesting is that it's written in this free, and it, well, the, the mo, the majority of it is written in this free and direct. 49 00:06:31,246.56766667 --> 00:06:37,426.56766667 Speech style, which is third person, but very close, almost first person in its tone. 50 00:06:37,466.56766667 --> 00:06:48,156.56666667 So it starts out with baby talk, pretty much baby Steven, you know, all the way to the end where he graduates, he's going to be going off into the world. 51 00:06:48,206.56766667 --> 00:06:52,936.56766667 And then just the last few pages switch to first person. 52 00:06:53,396.56766667 --> 00:06:54,196.56766667 And that's Steven. 53 00:06:54,981.56766667 --> 00:07:05,531.56766667 You know, writing in his diary, which was another thing that drew me so much to portrait when I read it at 14, because I had been keeping a diary since the age of about 10. 54 00:07:06,201.56766667 --> 00:07:20,221.56766667 And it's the diary writing that turned me into a writer, really, because I was just obsessed with writing things down, things that meant nothing really, but you just expand on them, you turn them around, you, you know, you experiment with voice. 55 00:07:20,656.56766667 --> 00:07:36,786.56666667 All of really, I realize now that the hours and hours I put into writing and keeping a diary was like, my was really a kind of apprenticeship into becoming a writer, you know? And so that too, I was like, Oh, Stephen as well keeps this diary, you know? And you're absolutely right to say that. 56 00:07:37,286.56766667 --> 00:08:06,716.56866667 We witness in portrait all the, the challenges that Stephen has to face so that the nationalist arguments for and against and the different factions, the different sides, the religious, and he's drawn in, you know, as young people often are, they get seduced by a religious calling or you know, they're not, they're unsure, you know, of what it is that they believe or don't believe and they have to kind of They have to feel uncomfortable. 57 00:08:06,786.56866667 --> 00:08:08,216.56866667 And, and Steven certainly does. 58 00:08:08,216.56866667 --> 00:08:16,836.56866667 And, and you're right to remember that lecture, the, the sermon about hell and hell fires and all these things that it is just awful. 59 00:08:16,836.56866667 --> 00:08:28,886.56866667 And it goes on and on and on purposely because I think that Joyce wanted his readers to really feel how overwhelming that rhetoric can be and how it can really. 60 00:08:29,226.56866667 --> 00:08:37,746.56866667 Strangle, you know, in strangle, youthful enthusiasm and, and, and in a way, paralyze you with fear, which is what Stephen goes through. 61 00:08:37,746.56866667 --> 00:08:41,806.56766667 He's almost paralyzed with fear and has nightmares after that. 62 00:08:41,826.56866667 --> 00:08:51,226.56866667 And then he comes out of it, you know, and so, as you say, we see this kind of trajectory from childhood into just the moment, just before he sets out into the world. 63 00:08:51,816.56866667 --> 00:09:02,136.56866667 And for me reading it at that age, Was really just you know, it's not that also I'm not sort of, I didn't turn into a Joyce scholar or anything by any means. 64 00:09:02,136.56866667 --> 00:09:09,986.56866667 I'm not and didn't read his, you know, didn't have the same kind of connection with his other works that as I did with with this 1. 65 00:09:10,606.56866667 --> 00:09:12,786.56766667 but portrait is 1 that I've come back to. 66 00:09:13,126.56866667 --> 00:09:21,216.56866667 Over the years, and yeah, you, I'll let you go ahead, Lydia, but then we can maybe talk about how it is to teach it as well in Kuwait. 67 00:09:21,816.56866667 --> 00:09:23,56.56866667 Well, yeah, absolutely. 68 00:09:23,216.56766667 --> 00:09:24,176.56866667 I'd love to explore that. 69 00:09:24,176.56866667 --> 00:09:35,576.56866667 I just wanted to ask one more question first, which was, you described very well how it resonated with you as a kind of fledgling writer, keeping a diary and all the rest of it, and also trying to make sense of the world. 70 00:09:36,41.56866667 --> 00:09:41,161.56866667 But I think you also wrote in your essay about certain resonances with the culture you were growing up in. 71 00:09:41,191.56866667 --> 00:09:53,651.56766667 And that's probably quite surprising to a lot of people to link Joyce's Ireland and a, and a teenager's life in Kuwait a century or, no, not quite, but, you know, many decades later. 72 00:09:53,821.56766667 --> 00:09:54,251.56766667 Yeah. 73 00:09:54,251.66766667 --> 00:09:54,941.46866667 What was... 74 00:09:55,241.56866667 --> 00:10:09,191.56866667 What was so recognizable to you about the early 20th century that portray of a artist as a young man portrays? Well, I think it is exactly those three things that Stephen identifies as hollow sounding. 75 00:10:09,191.56866667 --> 00:10:13,751.56866667 The hypocrisies he picks up on, one has to do with the narrative of the, of the nation. 76 00:10:14,396.56866667 --> 00:10:29,16.56866667 So, the, the feeling of nationalism of linguistic pride of wanting to define, which makes sense in a colonized context for Steven, you know, and what he was and the environment that he's that he's trying to convey. 77 00:10:29,611.56866667 --> 00:10:32,11.56866667 In Kuwait, this was, I was coming of age. 78 00:10:32,11.56866667 --> 00:10:37,511.56866667 I mean, I, I came, you know, I was coming of age in the 80s, but, you know, growing up in the, in the 70s. 79 00:10:38,651.56866667 --> 00:10:45,861.56766667 This was a moment where Kuwait's statehood was pretty well established, but it was also going through a kind of golden age. 80 00:10:45,891.56766667 --> 00:10:50,411.56866667 I was able to witness that golden, the end kind of of that golden period. 81 00:10:50,461.56866667 --> 00:10:56,441.56866667 So there was a lot of, you know, I think, you know, you, the nationalist rhetoric exists and it always kind of does. 82 00:10:56,481.56866667 --> 00:11:07,211.56866667 But again, I think young people, the job of young people is to question precisely those kinds of assumptions and narratives, you know, the things that are inherited. 83 00:11:07,781.56766667 --> 00:11:14,631.56866667 Family, as you, as you're familiar with in the Middle East, is a formidable force in a young person's life. 84 00:11:15,291.56866667 --> 00:11:18,951.56866667 and what they can and can't do, what, you know, the restrictions that exist. 85 00:11:18,951.56866667 --> 00:11:19,981.56866667 I mean, I was very lucky. 86 00:11:19,981.56866667 --> 00:11:22,521.56866667 I grew up in a relatively liberal household. 87 00:11:22,921.56766667 --> 00:11:24,691.56766667 I went to an American school. 88 00:11:24,951.56866667 --> 00:11:30,601.56866667 Kuwait itself at the time in the 80s, 70s, 80s, was very open and liberal. 89 00:11:30,601.56866667 --> 00:11:33,31.56766667 So it isn't the place that it would become. 90 00:11:33,271.56866667 --> 00:11:37,161.56866667 Where in some ways I think Joyce's words are even more applicable. 91 00:11:37,706.56866667 --> 00:11:50,516.56866667 Today, let's say than they were even at the time when I was growing up, but I did witness, you know, family restrictions and was aware that family was a force that young people had to reckon with, especially young women. 92 00:11:51,216.56766667 --> 00:11:54,991.46766667 And and so then, and then, of course, religion now, religion. 93 00:11:55,391.56766667 --> 00:12:03,521.56766667 Again, at the time that I was growing up was not the kind of force it would become, but nonetheless, it was too much for me. 94 00:12:04,551.56666667 --> 00:12:12,621.56666667 So I felt like these three elements were, were restrictions that I wanted to challenge in my way and, and certainly did. 95 00:12:12,631.56566667 --> 00:12:32,896.46666667 And so, again, I felt like I had It was just like, I don't want to say exactly a blueprint, but it was just a kind of model for something that came before, something that I could relate to, and I think, of course, in literature, the best stories, the ones that are immortal are the ones that it doesn't matter when they were written. 96 00:12:33,136.56666667 --> 00:12:43,626.56666667 You know, and, and that it will apply, hey, that's a bit of a cliche to say, but it, but it's true, you know, it should resonate all the way through time and we can pick it up and connect. 97 00:12:43,636.56666667 --> 00:12:46,276.56566667 And that I think is the special thing that fiction can do. 98 00:12:46,636.56666667 --> 00:12:50,496.56566667 Well, we'll get onto how, how you've attempted to do that in your fiction in a bit. 99 00:12:50,576.56666667 --> 00:12:54,206.56666667 And yes, great literature resonates over the centuries. 100 00:12:54,471.56666667 --> 00:13:07,241.56666667 But to a greater and lesser extent, right? And as you say, the nationalism and the religion for sure has changed a lot in your part of the world, in Kuwait, in the Gulf, and probably all over the world. 101 00:13:07,341.56666667 --> 00:13:16,41.56666667 So what is the difference now? in teaching it to your students than it was that very first time you experienced it as a teenager. 102 00:13:16,451.56666667 --> 00:13:17,561.56666667 It's so interesting. 103 00:13:17,561.56666667 --> 00:13:22,541.56666667 I mean, so there are a couple of issues in teaching Joyce to my students. 104 00:13:22,541.56666667 --> 00:13:31,306.56666667 So on the one hand, because things In the Middle East, I'll speak of my experience in Kuwait, but I think it applies elsewhere. 105 00:13:31,306.56666667 --> 00:13:38,456.56566667 We've seen a rise in Islamism, in conservatism for a number of complicated political reasons. 106 00:13:40,696.56566667 --> 00:13:51,711.56666667 We've seen a rise in all of this, and we've also seen in Kuwait a rise in Patriarchal family structures, and this has to do with the change in in demographic. 107 00:13:51,711.56666667 --> 00:13:53,681.56666667 We have more conservative families and so on. 108 00:13:54,161.56666667 --> 00:13:55,811.56666667 And this has affected everything. 109 00:13:55,821.56666667 --> 00:13:57,821.56666667 You know, it affects the parliament. 110 00:13:57,831.56666667 --> 00:14:02,841.56566667 It affects the general culture and social systems in Kuwait and how people live. 111 00:14:02,911.56666667 --> 00:14:04,361.56666667 And of course, how people live. 112 00:14:04,381.56566667 --> 00:14:07,941.56666667 And of course, it also affects the lives of young women. 113 00:14:08,671.56666667 --> 00:14:20,671.56666667 And so you're and you so you see this kind of dovetailing of you the rise in religious conservatism and social patriarchal conservatism in Kuwait. 114 00:14:20,691.56666667 --> 00:14:29,501.56666667 So it's happening at the levels, again, all, all three, the same three levels that we taught or the three, same three elements that we, we spoke about family, religion. 115 00:14:30,16.56666667 --> 00:14:37,656.56666667 And even at the level of the nation, because there have been more restrictions politically for, you know, different reasons that are given. 116 00:14:37,656.56666667 --> 00:14:41,636.56566667 It can be security reasons to protect the, the nation state and so on. 117 00:14:42,146.56666667 --> 00:14:49,106.56666667 And the history of you know, the invasion has affected the rise of that kind of nationalist conservatism, understandably. 118 00:14:49,756.56666667 --> 00:15:02,86.56666667 So you would think that Joyce's narrative would resonate more powerfully with young people today reading it in Kuwait, more than it did with me, because I grew up in a relatively open, more liberal Kuwait. 119 00:15:02,706.56666667 --> 00:15:03,856.56566667 But that's not the case. 120 00:15:04,296.56666667 --> 00:15:05,356.56666667 Ah, okay. 121 00:15:05,761.56666667 --> 00:15:13,761.56666667 How do they how do they respond? Well, I think it's not the case because of the difficulty of modernist style. 122 00:15:14,471.56666667 --> 00:15:29,561.56566667 So, because this and my and my students, and I think this may be true of students everywhere, because I've spoken to professors that teach in other parts of the world as well in English departments and, you know, there's a kind of sense that students. 123 00:15:30,191.56666667 --> 00:15:45,831.56566667 Are not they don't have the same kind of attention that reading requires and modernist read the reading of modernist text more so because of its difficulty because of its experimental challenges, you know, it is never easy. 124 00:15:45,831.56566667 --> 00:15:50,281.56666667 It's not just telling a story, right? The form is the content of of modernist text. 125 00:15:50,801.56666667 --> 00:15:56,711.56666667 And so my students display an impatience with The, the writing. 126 00:15:57,141.56666667 --> 00:16:01,741.56666667 And so the content, which would be, which it does in fact resonate with them. 127 00:16:01,741.56666667 --> 00:16:07,791.56666667 Once we slowly and very slowly unpack Joyce's, is Joyce's story. 128 00:16:08,171.56666667 --> 00:16:14,941.56666667 It does resonate with them, but they need to kind of get through, have the patience to get through the writing itself. 129 00:16:15,361.56666667 --> 00:16:18,221.56666667 So there's this kind of conundrum between both. 130 00:16:18,871.56666667 --> 00:16:24,311.56666667 I mean, that is part of modernism, isn't it? To kind of slow down our reading and to kind of make us think more. 131 00:16:24,334.9 --> 00:16:42,84.9 You take your students through that basically through in class close readings do you? Is that how you do slow it right down? And this is the difference between teaching Joyce 20 years ago when I first started teaching at Kuwait University, almost 20 years in 2004 versus today. 132 00:16:42,164.9 --> 00:16:49,124.9 So, 20 years ago The students were much more able to grasp the. 133 00:16:49,704.9 --> 00:16:54,424.9 Narrative style and the form of the modernist text that I was teaching. 134 00:16:54,884.9 --> 00:17:04,604.9 It didn't require a kind of handholding going through the text page by page, drawing their attention to what the language is, they were more capable of doing that. 135 00:17:04,604.9 --> 00:17:12,214.9 And we could focus on other other things, although obviously, with modernism, the form is a key aspect of what you want to focus on. 136 00:17:12,214.9 --> 00:17:17,294.9 You can't, you know, you can't let that you can't just overlook that at all. 137 00:17:17,314.9 --> 00:17:17,634.899 That is. 138 00:17:18,174.9 --> 00:17:33,394.9 The main part, in fact, I would say of of the discussion, but the students seemed more capable and they had a, you know, their attention was they were more able to slow down themselves and to read it and to kind of really get something out of it. 139 00:17:33,414.899 --> 00:17:41,714.9 And it resonated with them with their experiences and modernism didn't seem so far removed from their experience, I think. 140 00:17:42,359.9 --> 00:17:51,639.899 It has less to do with Euro American modernism being far removed from Kuwait and, you know, not that it, it doesn't apply or that you can't read it. 141 00:17:51,639.9 --> 00:17:53,479.9 I think it's, it absolutely does. 142 00:17:54,9.9 --> 00:18:03,349.9 I think it has more to do with what has happened to young students of literature or young students in general and their capacity to focus and read. 143 00:18:03,729.9 --> 00:18:07,649.9 And that, of course, has to do with the technologies that they've grown up with in the last. 144 00:18:08,344.9 --> 00:18:11,374.9 You know 30 years or, or 20 something years. 145 00:18:11,794.9 --> 00:18:14,744.9 Well, it's a loss to them because modernism is wonderful. 146 00:18:15,244.9 --> 00:18:19,34.9 But let's go back to the idea of modernism as critique. 147 00:18:19,44.9 --> 00:18:36,864.899 What were you aiming to get out of these or get across to your students out of these very close readings you did? Well, you know the philosopher Marshall Berman talks about, he, he phrases it in a way that I really like, he calls, he talks about modernism's critical bite. 148 00:18:37,734.9 --> 00:19:40,654.898 And, you know, modernists, they were really about They wanted the shock of the new there was something about the shock of the new that would wake people up out of their mainstream bourgeois complacency into, as, as you've said, a kind of critical understanding of the world, and you can only do critique by slowing everything down, having the distance to be able to think about what it is that you're observing with speed when it goes quickly, you don't have that necessary gap in order to allow modernism or whatever else to have or to kind of to you, to, to, to, to implement or to, to kind of What's the word I'm looking for to, to, to have this critical effect on on you as a reader, you know, so, so that's, that's what I try to then, you know, convey to my, my students is that the difficulty that you're having is in order for you to slow down and they do have to slow down because everything around them is so speeded up and then. 149 00:19:41,154.899 --> 00:19:43,624.899 Ask yourself what it is or why it is that it's doing. 150 00:19:44,544.899 --> 00:19:59,514.899 Why is it that it's doing this thing experimentally? It isn't gratuitous because modernists were thinking very carefully about every word, every comma, every way of conveying and, you know, you quoted Ezra Pound at the beginning. 151 00:19:59,969.899 --> 00:20:13,129.899 Ezra Pound was certainly one of those who considered every word and cutting things down to their absolute minimal necessity, you know, in order to precisely shock the reader and wake them up. 152 00:20:13,419.899 --> 00:20:38,109.897 I mean Joyce writes about it in Portrait, the, the difference or the kind of debate between what, you know, his sense of aesthetics, stasis versus kinesis, static The static experience of art where art again stops, it becomes timeless, or it holds you in place so that you can think versus movement, which is more historical, you know, and, and I think you need both. 153 00:20:38,119.897 --> 00:20:42,169.898 So you, you can't think about art as being timeless and removed from the world. 154 00:20:42,189.897 --> 00:20:48,699.898 And in fact, I think this is the thing about modernism, why it got, has gotten kind of a bad rap once it was created. 155 00:20:48,769.898 --> 00:21:07,929.898 codified as being this elitist, apolitical ahistorical movement that was removed and all about organic forms and separated from the world and so on that is not taking consideration class or gender or race or other key issues. 156 00:21:08,579.898 --> 00:21:14,979.898 But if you read modernist texts, they are full of everything political. 157 00:21:15,194.898 --> 00:21:20,494.898 all the economic questions that they were dealing with, war the transformations of society. 158 00:21:20,494.898 --> 00:21:24,674.898 I mean, Wolf is certainly one we could, we could think about in this context. 159 00:21:24,704.898 --> 00:21:36,684.898 So I think it was, it was kind of, you know, I think literary movements get categorized in a certain way in preparation for the next movement, which is less different than the one preceding than we might think. 160 00:21:39,199.898 --> 00:21:39,909.898 Yes, I agree. 161 00:21:39,979.898 --> 00:21:40,779.898 I agree. 162 00:21:41,329.898 --> 00:21:43,609.898 But I want to kind of move on to your own writing. 163 00:21:43,609.898 --> 00:21:49,779.898 And you took the title of your recent novel from Joyce, didn't you? An Unlasting Home. 164 00:21:50,99.898 --> 00:21:53,69.898 Can you tell us where this came from and why you chose it? Yeah. 165 00:21:53,69.898 --> 00:21:57,409.897 So I hadn't been thinking about Joyce at all as I was writing. 166 00:21:57,479.897 --> 00:21:58,759.897 Not consciously. 167 00:21:59,784.897 --> 00:22:15,94.897 In retrospect, when I think and all this stuff happened when coming up with the title, it made me realize how much Joyce and how I, how much of him I had absorbed and how much it did in fact inform what I was doing in An Unlasting Home. 168 00:22:15,144.897 --> 00:22:21,164.897 So I had a working title for a very long time for many of the years that I was writing An Unlasting Home. 169 00:22:21,514.897 --> 00:22:23,494.897 I had this working title in my head. 170 00:22:24,94.897 --> 00:22:24,574.897 And. 171 00:22:25,19.897 --> 00:22:35,149.897 The trope of birds runs through an unlasting home, and there was the word birds in my working title, but my title wasn't really working anymore. 172 00:22:35,549.897 --> 00:22:40,769.896 And my editor really didn't think that it, it resonated enough for her. 173 00:22:40,769.896 --> 00:22:42,879.897 It really didn't speak to the novel. 174 00:22:42,879.897 --> 00:22:44,459.897 And it, it wasn't the right. 175 00:22:44,774.897 --> 00:22:55,634.896 One, and I opened myself up, though it was really difficult because when you have a title for, you know, however many years you're working on a long project, you really kind of have a stake in it. 176 00:22:56,64.896 --> 00:23:00,404.897 But I opened myself to the idea that, okay, let me think about another title. 177 00:23:00,444.896 --> 00:23:04,794.897 And I just went through hundreds of possible titles. 178 00:23:07,484.897 --> 00:23:11,274.897 It was painful and I have, you know, I have just pages and pages of. 179 00:23:11,979.897 --> 00:23:15,649.897 Titles going back and forth and nothing worked for me at all. 180 00:23:15,689.897 --> 00:23:18,899.897 And the few that I picked out didn't work for my editor either. 181 00:23:20,299.897 --> 00:23:24,909.897 And then it was in the middle of the night that I remembered Joyce. 182 00:23:25,719.897 --> 00:23:41,849.896 Was choices writing is full of birds and I remembered in portrait specifically, I, I went to my, my shelf and picked up portrait, my copy of portrait and start flipping through and I found all these references to birds and then I landed. 183 00:23:42,774.897 --> 00:23:45,954.897 On this quote, then he was to go away. 184 00:23:45,984.897 --> 00:23:46,904.897 Yeah, I can give it to you. 185 00:23:46,904.897 --> 00:23:59,774.896 So then he was to go away for they were birds ever going and coming building ever and unlasting home under the eaves of men's houses and ever leaving the homes they had built to wander. 186 00:24:00,809.897 --> 00:24:28,129.897 And I just thought that that was such a beautiful depiction of the characters in my novel, the women who build these unlasting homes, literally under the eaves of men's houses, and then leave them migrate for necessity, for ambition, for whatever it is, to other places in order to, to, to wander really, and to, and to find that these homes will always be unlasting. 187 00:24:28,139.897 --> 00:24:38,894.897 And so this sense that this, I just, it just jumped out at me, An Unlasting Home, and I knew immediately this was the title, and my editor loved it immediately, and so that was it. 188 00:24:39,214.897 --> 00:24:57,104.897 Well, I, just to kind of put that in context, your novel is a portrait of generations of Kuwaiti women loosely described, I suppose, as Kuwaiti, because it stretches, obviously it stretches back far before the country's official date of independence, and right into the time. 189 00:24:57,734.897 --> 00:25:03,934.897 when there was far more movement between different Arab countries, I suppose, different Arab areas. 190 00:25:04,924.897 --> 00:25:10,314.897 But it also takes us right into the present, if a slightly tweaked version of the present. 191 00:25:10,344.896 --> 00:25:26,519.897 And I don't want to give any spoilers, but I can say that it's not an optimistic picture of contemporary Kuwaiti society, is it? I mean, I think I'd go so far in saying, and feel free to push back, it kind of comes across as an elegy for your country. 192 00:25:26,689.897 --> 00:25:34,899.897 It pays homage to the people, the history, the culture, while showing the present as increasingly conservative and stifling. 193 00:25:35,179.897 --> 00:25:37,229.896 And yet you still choose to remain there. 194 00:25:37,469.897 --> 00:25:45,894.897 Can you, can you tell me about that tension? I do think that An Unlasting Home, I think an elegy is a great way of describing it. 195 00:25:45,914.897 --> 00:25:52,24.897 And I think that in some ways, it's a story about a, about lost futures. 196 00:25:52,884.897 --> 00:25:59,824.897 So it's, it can, as you said, it goes from the early 20th century and it crosses across the Middle East. 197 00:25:59,824.897 --> 00:26:02,994.897 So from Lebanon, Turkey. 198 00:26:03,309.897 --> 00:26:05,519.897 Iraq all the way to India. 199 00:26:05,549.897 --> 00:26:08,819.897 There's a character, a key character who is from Goa. 200 00:26:09,629.897 --> 00:26:23,369.897 And from the early 20th century into the, that golden period I mentioned in the 50s, when Kuwait was, you know, exporting oil to its independence in 1961, all the way to 2013, exactly as you've said. 201 00:26:23,964.897 --> 00:26:36,424.897 But in order to understand this moment in 2013, when the protagonist Sada, who's a philosophy professor at Kuwait University is accused of blasphemy under a new law that makes it a capital crime. 202 00:26:37,174.897 --> 00:26:51,704.896 You can only really understand both how Sada has arrived at this junction and how Kuwait has arrived at this junction by going back and then going back and gathering all these various stories of these women. 203 00:26:52,404.897 --> 00:26:56,284.897 Makes it possible to understand what Kuwait has lost. 204 00:26:56,734.897 --> 00:27:04,4.897 So, you know, this again, the lost potential, the lost possibility, possibilities for this country that was. 205 00:27:04,544.9595 --> 00:27:06,674.9595 Really quite magical in many ways. 206 00:27:06,694.9595 --> 00:27:25,304.9585 I think Kuwait historically not just in the present, not just in the contemporary or modern moment, but going back thousands of years has this layered history and it is a junction, you know, between places, both for animal life, including birds. 207 00:27:26,114.9595 --> 00:27:33,954.9595 You know, it's a kind of migratory intersecting point and people and trade and all of this and geography and geology. 208 00:27:33,954.9595 --> 00:27:41,324.9595 So, you know, you can dig, dig, dig and find, you know, a remnants of civilizations that go back thousands of years. 209 00:27:41,384.9595 --> 00:27:52,624.9595 So all of this together, you would think constructs, a future or a present and future, which is just bright and that moment was there and Sada. 210 00:27:52,634.9595 --> 00:28:06,824.9595 The character is kind of a product of it, but then obviously, because of the invasion, but not only the invasion, many other things as well, both regional and local culminate in Kuwait, not. 211 00:28:07,79.9595 --> 00:28:09,779.9595 Fulfilling the promise of what it could have become. 212 00:28:10,579.9595 --> 00:28:16,629.9595 So I think that answered the first half of your question, but then the second half, I can't remember what you said. 213 00:28:17,869.9595 --> 00:28:18,409.9595 What you asked. 214 00:28:18,699.9595 --> 00:28:30,519.9595 Well, actually, just leading on from that, I just wonder if you could actually say then, and, and, what is the future for teaching modernism in Kuwait? Yes. 215 00:28:30,539.9595 --> 00:28:30,859.9595 Okay. 216 00:28:30,859.9595 --> 00:28:45,39.9595 And that also reminds me of the, the second half of the question, which is why do you stay given that it's an elegy or given that, you know, I can identify all of these elements in Kuwait that are, you know, disheartening, disturbing. 217 00:28:45,139.9595 --> 00:28:52,839.9605 Why is it that one stays? And I think I think that, you know, you make, you make the decisions that you do in your life. 218 00:28:53,49.9605 --> 00:28:53,619.9605 And. 219 00:28:54,59.9605 --> 00:28:58,329.9605 You, I don't, you know, I think that I am the writer that I am because. 220 00:28:59,14.9605 --> 00:29:00,694.9605 of the context in part. 221 00:29:01,84.9605 --> 00:29:08,724.9585 I don't think if I had left Kuwait, I would have been able to write neither An Unlasting Home or The Hidden Light of Objects. 222 00:29:09,634.9585 --> 00:29:14,444.9585 I don't think that they are, I don't think that these books are simply Kuwait books. 223 00:29:14,849.9595 --> 00:29:28,239.9595 Because I think that they can speak across, just like, I mean, I'm not comparing myself to Joyce here, but Joyce kind of fabulates an Ireland that appeals way beyond you know, the borders and boundaries of Ireland. 224 00:29:28,279.9605 --> 00:29:31,789.9595 And so they spoke to me all the way to Kuwait when I was 14. 225 00:29:32,259.9595 --> 00:29:35,609.9605 And I think I try to fabulate a Kuwait that does the same. 226 00:29:35,619.9605 --> 00:29:39,804.9605 So I have had people You know, that that are in the UK or in the U. 227 00:29:39,804.9605 --> 00:29:39,984.9605 S. 228 00:29:40,14.9605 --> 00:29:42,534.9605 and have nothing no connection to the Arab world. 229 00:29:42,574.9605 --> 00:29:47,794.9605 But, you know, there's something that connects there about a lost place or a lost experience. 230 00:29:47,794.9605 --> 00:29:51,54.9605 It's 1 that we all experience, you know, just with the passage of time. 231 00:29:51,804.9605 --> 00:29:54,974.9595 So I stay because, it's a tough question, Lydia. 232 00:29:54,994.9595 --> 00:29:58,94.9595 You know, it's a tough question, but part of me is connected. 233 00:29:58,144.9595 --> 00:30:01,434.9585 You know, my, my mom is buried there. 234 00:30:01,484.9595 --> 00:30:10,214.9595 There's an element of connection to the land and maybe still to some of the potentialities and maybe also for my writing. 235 00:30:10,864.9595 --> 00:30:15,624.9595 And in terms of modernism and teaching modernism, I'm even less optimistic. 236 00:30:15,654.9595 --> 00:30:29,344.9605 I don't see, I mean, for this class, which I was so excited to teach and maybe in past, in the, in the past would have maybe 20, 25 students because they were small classes, 400 upper level classes generally, but. 237 00:30:29,619.9595 --> 00:30:42,119.9595 This time had seven students registered, and that's in part because we have much, you know, fewer, much fewer literature students in our department, which teaches both literature and linguistics. 238 00:30:42,389.9595 --> 00:30:48,919.9595 And I think in part because of this, this problem that I identified about students not wanting to read. 239 00:30:49,444.9595 --> 00:31:11,514.9595 So, you know, there are fewer students that want to major in, in literature, but then again, you know, modernism, even though I think that at the end, it was a fulfilling experience for my students, I hope I'm not just saying that because I, I, you know, I hope that's not just wishful thinking, but I think that the 7 students who registered in the class enjoyed it at the end and got something out of it. 240 00:31:11,954.9595 --> 00:31:15,634.9595 But how do we draw them into modernism? I don't, I don't know. 241 00:31:15,634.9595 --> 00:31:23,884.9595 I don't, I think there will be the few that will always, you know find writers that they're attracted to, and some of those will be modernist. 242 00:31:24,34.9585 --> 00:31:28,714.9595 But I'm not sure it's a move that's on the rise in Kuwait, certainly. 243 00:31:29,684.9595 --> 00:31:29,884.9595 No. 244 00:31:30,164.9595 --> 00:31:33,124.9585 Well, things change over time, so there's always hope. 245 00:31:33,154.9585 --> 00:31:33,694.9585 There's always hope. 246 00:31:35,594.9585 --> 00:31:36,564.9595 May al Natib. 247 00:31:36,604.9595 --> 00:31:38,184.9595 Thank you very much for joining us. 248 00:31:38,649.9595 --> 00:31:39,929.9595 Thank you so much, Lydia. 249 00:31:39,929.9595 --> 00:31:41,309.9595 It was an absolute pleasure. 250 00:31:42,99.9595 --> 00:31:45,199.9595 This has been The Lead, a podcast by New Lines Magazine. 251 00:31:45,559.9595 --> 00:31:48,649.9595 You can find May Anne Naqib on Twitter, at May Anne Naqib. 252 00:31:49,29.9585 --> 00:31:57,229.9595 Buy her latest book, An Unlasting Home, at All Good Bookshops, and read her essay on teaching Joyce in Kuwait in the next print issue of New Lines Magazine. 253 00:31:57,729.9595 --> 00:32:02,19.9595 This week's episode was produced by Joshua Martin and hosted by me, Lydia Wilson. 254 00:32:02,439.9595 --> 00:32:07,759.9285 For more like this, subscribe to The Lead on your favorite podcast app, or visit our website at newlinesmag. 255 00:32:07,759.9285 --> 00:32:07,769.7975 com.