Novelists show Western observers rendering Pakistan through prior literary stereotypes rather than direct perception

Evidence

Without insider advantages, Skelly is at first left to his own devices as he tries to make sense of his new surroundings. He employs personally familiar categories and cultural parallels to render what he sees: the hiss and pop of a lantern recalls “boyhood campouts”; the elaborate greeting given to a warlord is compared to the Pledge of Allegiance; and scampering village boys remind him of prairie dogs (291, 123, 265). In particular, he is thrown back on previous textual apprehensions of the East as a way of articulating his impressions: the white shalwar kameez that his short-lived first fixer wears is like “something out of the Arabian Nights” (32), and a nighttime scene evokes “silver spear points and galloping sultans” (329). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 344

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates the mechanism by which pre-existing textual Orientalism mediates perception — a key term in the contest-vs-reinforce analytic.