The Reinvention of the Palestinian Novel

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This paper argued that The Pessoptimist is a post-realist novel, a sub-genre of the multifaceted, all-encompassing postmodernism. This classification recognizes the novel’s pivotal realist dimensions, both as defined by some major theorists of the genre, namely James and Abrams, and as reflected in some features and themes of the narrative, especially the determinism brought about by the creation of the new oppressive ‘state’, which dispossesses and displaces many of Saeed’s people and subjects and coerces Saeed to the demeaning role of the ‘collaborator’. He, like the protagonist of Ellison’s Invisible Man, is expected to be a ‘good boy’ throughout, fulfilling what is required of him, without any regard or support as to what he wants or seeks to become. As a result of this coercion and suppression, he is forced to live a ‘monotonous, boring life’, as he says, from which other realist protagonists cannot escape. Luckily, however, Saeed, like the protagonist in Invisible Man, possesses the will and the determination to depart from and disrupt the determinism imposed on him, by employing several tacit and explicit strategies of resistance to transform his life, as well as his narrative, into what may best be termed post-realist. The ‘post’ here, which signifies the transformation or the going beyond, is to be underscored. Such transformative strategies are associated with many elements in the narrative, including the adoption of ‘pessoptimism’ as a philosophy, covert resistance through yessing, masking and playing along as a ‘collaborator’ — in addition to the contextualisation of his situation within history, his love stories, and, eventually, full transcendence, as happens to the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five. The ultimate aim of examining Habiby’s masterpiece within a generic context is to suggest that it may best be read and understood, not as a realist or modernist novel, but as post-realist, and inevitably postmodernist.

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