Arundhati Roy is from Shillong, Meghalaya, India. She is the author of the novel "The God of Small Things" and recipient of the 1997 Booker Prize. Roy has since published a second novel ("The Ministry of Utmost Happiness") as well as various essays on politics and culture. She is an avid political activist and spokesperson on foreign affairs. Roy received the 2022 St. Louis Literary Award for her contributions to literature and her impact culturally, socially, and politically.
The following interview is between Arundhati Roy (AR) and one of the 2022 Head Editor's of Kiln, Amanda VanNierop (AV).
AV: Our theme for the magazine this year is “We Need to Talk…” We liked the idea of a theme that could be interpreted in a few different ways. Creatively, we feel this inspired a sense of urgency. Critically, it’s a bit more literal. What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “We need to talk”?
AR: I think of the fact that in certain places (and it’s true of the U.S. too, but certainly true of India)… something about how the communication in the world works now, especially the social media. It ushers and hustles people into the universes where they are comfortable and then it divides them so that we are in a situation where there are no shared set of facts anymore, and therefore conversation has ceased and there is only conflict or insult. This is a very dangerous place, so yes—we need to talk.
AV: What kinds of issues do you think writers should be talking about right now?
AR: “Writers” is a very broad term. I think that I’m the last one to prescribe lists of issues. I don’t see the world in terms of “issues,” I see the world through the lens in which one has a kind of political worldview. When you divide them into issues, it becomes a kind of… Well, not-for-profit organizations have issues and will get funded, and it just becomes all domesticated, whereas if you have a political worldview it’s never about single issues—it’s about how these things connect together. And only that can give you a radical understanding.
AV: Your novels tell very gripping and personable stories which a lot of people, in a myriad of ways, are able to relate to. Was this a goal of yours when writing these stories, and if not, what is your goal when writing?
AR: I don’t have goals when I write [laughter]. I write to deepen my understanding, and I write (novels in particular) to communicate and construct a universe and a way of looking at how human beings are with each other. Novels with goals are pathetic things.
AV: Anthony [Arnove] spoke yesterday of his job as editor being trying to find the widest audience possible. Is that something that’s on your mind when you’re writing, or are you just thinking purely about the storytelling and the narrative?
AR: Yeah, I’m not thinking about the audience. Especially when you write novels, the characters and the book… If you really allow them to, they make the decisions, you know? So, you can’t—it’s not a product. One is not selling mosquito repellent, where you are looking for a broad audience. I think when you start doing that, that’s the first step towards being a very mediocre writer.
AV: The God of Small Thingswas semi-autobiographical. Do you support the adage of “writing what you know?”
AR: Well… How do you know what you know? What you know keeps changing, doesn’t it? I think that if we all begin to think that the only way of writing is autobiographical writing… What about the people that have been in and out of that autobiography or that story? I think that’s, again, a very limited, narrow thing. As it says in the beginning of The God of Small Things, “Never again can a single story be told as though it were the only one.” So, it can be very false to write only what you know, because you should make it your business to know everything, or as much as you can. [It’s necessary] to include a universe in which all these various threads intersect or interact, otherwise we all climb into these little silos and put the locks on and become a very manageable people. The more radical you think you are by isolating yourself, and by building walls around yourself, the less is the possibility of revolutionary change.
AV: And you’ve written both fiction and nonfiction. How do you approach those two different forms when you’re talking about experience and knowledge in that sort of way?
AR: To me, both of them are so much a part of my body. I approach them both with very different speeds. The nonfiction is usually shorter and it’s usually an argument against a bullying consciousness that is being built up. Whereas fiction is a process which has no urgency at all about it, for me.
AV: Interesting. I actually have a quote from an interview you gave once that says, “The difference between fiction and nonfiction is a difference between urgency and eternity.” Our work at Kiln and VIA is both creative and critical, so could you talk more about that difference between urgency and eternity?
AR: I suppose in a simple sense it is about the fact that both are extremely important. If you cut yourself off from what’s going on in this place that you live in every day, saying that “I am doing something that is for eternity,” I don’t think it will be. The tension between those things is what makes me—the fact that I am a writer who does work a lot on her craft and thinks a lot about structure and language and narrative, and yet, I can deploy that lonely voice from the heart of a crowd.
AV: Yesterday I spoke with Anthony about the intersection between politics and literature. As a student, I find that relationship to be quite obvious. Your work is also a mix of political activism and storytelling, so how do you view that relationship between politics and literature?
AR: How do we define those two things? I believe that every fairytale is deeply embedded in politics. What is politics? Politics is not just elections and political parties, and even literature that claims it isn’t political is deeply political in what it chooses to involve or not write about. I mean, for example, let’s say you were a writer writing in South Africa during apartheid and you didn’t mention that at all—it’s a political decision, isn’t it? I’m not saying that everyone has to deal with all the issues in everything they write, but somehow you can read through what people are doing to see what they ignore and what they don’t. That process of editing is a political process. Which is not to say that you musn’t write about the “secret sex life of the goldfish” and that it isn’t poetic and beautiful, of course it is. But, everything is wound into a texture of the other thing, you know?
AV: That’s why I find it difficult to separate art from politics, or art from the space where it’s been created in history.
AR: The only time and the only people who can make it seem as if there is something distasteful about being political are people who are really comfortable in the status quo and want it to be the default position—that there’s something like “pure art” which doesn’t have to deal with all of these things.