Amis frames the novel as rational and individualist against religion’s monological irrationality

Evidence

Amis argues that the 9/11 attacks prodded novelists out of their solipsistic reveries and forced them into more public writing, such as journalism and commentary pieces. He then juxtaposes what he takes to be the key principles of novel writing with what he depicts as the irrational and totalitarian impulses of politicized religion. He says that novelists create worlds aspiring to “shape and pattern and moral point” and claims that “a novel is a rational undertaking; it is reason at play, perhaps, but it is still reason,” whereas “September 11 was a day of de-Enlightenment” (13). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 97

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the opposing pole to Hamid and Naqvi’s dialogical, polyphonic novels — exactly the contrast the reader needs for situating both authors as contesting rather than reinforcing the Islamophobic frame.
• DEFINE: Defines the liberal humanist claim that the novel’s form is inherently rational, individualist, and anti-totalitarian — the vocabulary of the position Morey critiques.