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Theorizing The Diaspora, John C. Hawley

English

In his provocative essay on the place of the committed writer in contemporary western society (“Inside the Whale”), George Orwell makes a passing observation about the effects of exile, self-imposed or otherwise, on the scope of a writer’s subject and purpose: “[L]eaving your native land,” he suggests, “[. . .] means transferring your roots into shallower soil. Exile is probably more damaging to a novelist than to a painter or even a poet, because its effect is to take him out of contact with working life and narrow down his range to the street, the cafJ, the church, the brothel …