* Long Post. Take Bathroom break now *
In every village, in addition to the village madman and the village idiot, there invariably exist the village’s literati. These would be the folk who gather under the biggest tree, and fueled by an array of potent brews, churn out the village’s literature — poems, skits, stories and of course unbelievably filthy songs and skits.
It goes without saying that literature, oral and otherwise, is an important constituent of society.
The post I did, On Reading, drew a variety of interesting feedback, most of it offline. Apparently my choice of eclectic reading material wasn’t “literary enough”. Someone actually put it precisely like that.
It reminded me again why I view critics, and people who purport to critique literature, with a highly jaundiced eye. Why? Because if no two people are alike why on earth would two people derive the same enjoyment and grasp from a poem, or a song, or a novel?
“I’m quite surprised at your choice of books,” a resident of the Ivory Tower told me. I’m very sure said resident was smoking a cigarillo at the time. “Stephen King,” resident confided in the next line, “doesn’t do real writing. Not true literature.”
Well!
Even now I’ve been unable to come up with a suitable response to that outrageous statement.
Along with Government of National Unity, this without a doubt is one of the most ludicrous things I have heard all year.
What makes a good book?
I would say some books are good because they have
- Good writing
- A good story
- Both of the above
Good writing again is a very subjective thing. Everyone has their own ideas as to what well written prose is. Some people enjoy a heavy use of metaphors and allegories. Others prefer the flowing use of seldom used words, the sort of reading where you don’t actually know what the words mean, but you grasp their meaning as you soldier on. Others thrive on similes and onomatopoeia. Others on simplicity. And so on.
The same thing goes again for stories. Your combination of likes and dislikes and ideas and aspirations leaves you best placed to decide whether or not a story is good.
And so you can find a book that has good writing and absolutely no story, a book with atrocious writing but a riveting story or if you are lucky, a book that has both.
And so I find it rather pompous for someone to pontificate that Stephen King doesn’t do “real literature”. Why not? I happen to think on average that he is a brilliant writer and he tells excellent stories.
The look whenever people discover that Stephen King wrote the Shawshank Redemption AND the Green Mile is still priceless. Priceless.
In school I deeply resented the literature courses, English AND Kiswahili. You read a short story and spend precisely three weeks dissecting every nuance of the story, making impossible connections and conclusions that would surprise and amaze the author. You spend hours and hours extracting “themes”, “stylistic devices”, “plots” and all sorts of things from a 5 page narrative.
You do the same nonsense for the 20 or so short stories and by the time you are through you have completely forgotten what the original story was about. And then you move on to the plays and do the same thing.
Based on one line a character a student proudly writes in his exam
Kamau is dishonest, and not truthful. We see this when he says “Fine” when asked “how are you”, despite him coming from a funeral. It also shows that he is polite, because he answered a question when he was emotionally not ready. It also demonstrates his emotional strength.
Or, the exam paper says the following:
Identify 3 categories of stylistic devices used in this story, and give 3 examples of each.
As Tony Soprano would say, Whadhafaak?
After four years of subjection to this our reading youth are released to the wild with a somewhat interesting take on literature.
Writers who don’t make use of metaphors and allegories and all this stuff is somewhat less literary than his fellows.
Really? I beg do differ!
I ask you, Why can’t we just read for the freaking story? Isn’t the story, after all, the aim of the game?
If you read the Sunday Papers, and particularly the Sunday Standard from cover to cover you will have come across the section called the Literary discourse.
If your reading fare is fast and furious ping pong between pompous pontification and indignant outrage, this is the page for you. During the course of the year a variety of individuals, self anointed as authorities on literature have attempted to tell us mere mortals what does and does not constitute literature. Some of the slugfests that I remember off the top of my head are. Some of the more spirited ones I remember pitched the Kwani camp on one end and a bench of the local literati on the other.
The literati objected to Kwani, how it was spelt, whether it was literature, its use of sheng, its use of sheng poems, the length of pieces.
The Kwani Camp, needless to say, gave as good as they got and objected to the literati, their qualifications to be the same, their mandate to question them, and the challenge to their ideas.
Needless to say it was fascinating reading the skirmishes every Sunday.
But one of the things that came way from the debate was a challenge to the idea of literature in the traditional sense. The established literati were seething at the idea of poetry in sheng. POETRY IN SHENG!
Personally I love the idea. As you no doubt know by now I am all for breaking the mould that restricts literature to printed books filled with long winded metaphors.
If people express themselves best in sheng, by all means let them!
I am all for increasing the realm of literature into new fields like stories in sheng, poetry in sheng, poetry in music, powerful lyrics, multimedia and last but jolly well not least, blogs.
A fortnight or so ago, I occasioned to end up on the same table with three gentlemen from camp Kwani. Reading from left to right they were as follows:
- African Bullets And Honey, complete with a cigar
- Binyavanga Wainaina, complete with notebook
- One Potash, complete with … er …. self contentment
Potash was very taken, and absolutely had to touch ABH’s cigar the cigar ABH happened to have with him.
In true Hemingwayesque fashion, a short skirted waitress was summoned and dispatched to get three beers and one coke. After several years of stares ranging from puzzled to downright incredulous, I am quite thick skinned and I feel quite nothing ordering sodas in a bar.
Needless to say, discussion flitted from issue to issue on literature as a whole, its form and perception globally and locally. Blogging of course threw itself into the mix. As the publishing press for the common man its pretty hard to beat.
Just think of the scathing reactions from Africa over the Live 8 Debacle. Had this been 5 years ago Bob Geldof, Jeffrey Sachs and the rest of their ilk would have been in blissful ignorance of just how fine disdain the whole thing was held by many.
The whole concept of writing and publishing must evolve around the blogging phenomenon. You can get yourself read by millions without going anywhere near Simon and Schuster or Bantam Books.
Of course the question is, how do you get the denarii, the chumes, the cash, the iron men outvof it?
Will blogging become the new writing? Granted, you can’t quite take your favourite blog into the throne room after a heavy meal, but suppose you could?
Kwani is currently hosting The Kwani Litfest starting today and ending on the 28th. All sorts of famous names that I cannot pronounce will be in attendance. The brochure talks about something called barbecue poetry that I am very keen to find out more, especially the barbecue part.
If you can make your way there, fashionably late of course, please do. The more voices there are the better. Many great names in literature will be in attendance and it would be a fantastic forum to discuss literature in all its current and future forms.
Click image for a bigger version. Click HERE to go to the official blog.
Kenya should be able to export more than just miraa / khat / gomba (Delete as appropriate)
Henry Mancini – Baby Elelphant Walk