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Monday, August 24, 2009

Literary Saloon on the Farouk Hosni debate

The Literary Saloon does a great job taking to task Mahfouz translator Robert Stock over his piece on Egyptian Culture Minister and would-be head of UNESCO Farouk Hosni.
Instead of introducing examples of this [anti-Zionist] intelligentsia, Stock is happy to instead toss out generalizations such as:
This whole imbroglio only serves to highlight the Egyptian literati's generally hateful and hidebound views of Israel, which are often more virulent than those of the Egyptian public at large.

Examples ?
One example, please ?
I don't doubt that examples galore could be dug up (after all, examples of every opinion under the sun are readily found) -- but, hey, how about digging up at least one to appease me? (And surely it's telling that he doesn't: is there any name he could come up with that any of us would recognize -- Gamal al-Ghitani? Sonallah Ibrahim? [the writers I'd consider among the cream of Egyptian literati and intelligentsia] even Alaa al-Aswany ? Somehow I suspect these guys haven't been spouting "hateful and hidebound views" -- so who has? By which I mean: who has who can in any way be taken seriously, as al-Ghitani and Ibrahim and even al-Aswany can.)

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