The Nature of Naming

I am currently reading a book entitled How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid. It is a fusion of several genres, specifically the “self-help” genre and the bildungsroman. The novel is about “you” and is set in an unspecified country in Asia. It chronicles “your” path to commercial success, beginning the novel with your complete destitution. And proceeds to plot the trajectory of your increasing financial advancements. What is particularly striking about the novel is the complete absence of any kind of mental dialogue. It is told in second person. This is an interesting choice because while the book is satirizing the self-help genre it is simultaneously giving the fictitious account of a very specific character named “you.” The bildungsroman genre is almost always told in third person, sometimes first person omniscient. Never have I seen it done in second person P.O.V. As a result of Hamid’s narrative choice we are left with no mental dialogue from the main character -or any of the characters for that matter. All description is of action and dialogue. In the end we are left to discern the motivations behind all of our main character’s actions. I repeatedly found myself asking the question whether or not this style of narrating distanced me from the text -making “you” feel animalistic- or if it allowed the reader to more easily inhabit this world of “rising Asia” -the likes of which I have never seen or remotely imagined before picking-up this novel.

We are never told what country we are in; Hamid does an excellent job of not giving too many clues, although from the information I’ve gathered, India seems like the most logical hypothesis. We are never given any names -they would lend themselves too readily to the geographical location, and take away from Hamid’s satirical use of the address “you.” In what ways is this address useful? If anything, in my case, (and probably the case of a majority of the Europeans and Americans who read the novel) it draws attention to the fact that I have never experienced or seen the type of destitution this novel discusses in my life. The “you”evokes feelings of guilt because of my lack of identifiability and complete philistinism to the lifestyle of those in rising third-world countries. This paired with the fact that this kind of mass destitution is identifiable in more than one Asian country (China, India, Pakistan, etc.) seems to be drawing attention to the global indifference of wealthier countries toward the poverty and neo-liberalism of a rising Asia. Hamid’s prose is masterful in that, he uses it as a vehicle to point out the glaring discrepancies between third and first world definitions of poverty.