Sarfraz Manzoor

you often hear artists say that once they have completed their work it no longer belongs to them, it belongs to the world and their interpretation is only as valid as that of anyone else who chooses to read the book or watch the film or attend the play. now that i am in the position for the first time of having written a book what has struck me is how different other people’s interpretations of ones work can be to the writers own intentions. i recently had a meeting with a senior television executive who wanted to talk about the possibility of making a documentary inspired by the book. ‘What I would really like to see’ she said ‘is you in Luton talking to some young angry Muslims.’ That was, she surmised, the logical programme proposal based on the book. I cannot say she is wrong as it was only her opinion but for me that was about as far from what i had intended the book to be about as is possible. similarly she mentioned that she saw parallels with the portrayal of my father in my book and the character Om Puri played in ‘east is east’. But that film was written by a mixed race man about a father who had married a white woman and who was thus wrestling with a whole different set of issues than my father. I found East is East to be the sort of film that could only have been made by someone utterly rejecting their Asianness, it was a film lacking in any generosity whereas i know my book is far more sympathetic and generous to my parents. and yet this television executive had not sufficently noticed this and thus made the comparison. Meanwhile as American publishers see the book and discuss whether there might be an American market for it one of the messages that has come from them is that they think the book might be too British in its subject matter. that might seem initially true but again for me the book was about fathers and families, about childhood and hero worship, about Bruce Springsteen and the power of dreams. All universal themes and all things that would have an appeal beyond British shores. And yet again there is this failure to see beyond the obvious and it makes me wonder why that is. i think it is possibly a simple failure of imagination and a consequence of over-reading the significance of one theme at the expense of all others. joan didion’s year of magical thinking is not only of interest to those who knew of didion and her husband, it touches anyone who has ever loved and lost. you dont need to be jewish to like woody allen and philip roth, you don’t need to be spanish to love almodovar. im not pretending my little book is even in the same solar system as those artists its more a comment on how strange it feels to have people talk about ones work talked about in unfamiliar ways. im sure there will be plenty more of that when the reviewers get round to sharing their thoughts.
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