You can take the writer out of the garret…
I have no hesitation in jumping into the middle of the debate currently running between Darryl Accone and Percy Zvomuya in the pages of the Mail & Guardian because it was spawned in the first place by a blog of mine in which I discuss the difficulties of being a writer who is occasionally asked to review the works of her fellow writers. Darryl Accone makes oblique reference to my blog – no names mentioned – in his opening piece Publish and be damned. It was left to Ben Williams to provide a link to the blog, as well as to the debate it inspired on Litnet.
Accone mentions that several South African writers have called for more robust criticism of their work and suggests that they should be careful what they wish for because he and Zvoyuma are about to provide it in spades. He goes on to add that, “We were beaten to the first salvo when the doyenne of books editors and literary critics in this country, Maureen Isaacson, obliged with just such a piece in the Sunday Independent.” It’s worth mentioning that Isaacson’s 2009 piece is in fact almost two years old and did not arise from the context of the present Book SA debate at all.
This new atmosphere of robust and fearless criticism may truly be said to apply to meta-criticism too. What’s sauce for the writer is sauce for the critic. Those who undertake to provide a “State of South African Literature” address must be prepared to have their conclusions analysed.
I will grapple with Accone’s piece first, although it’s like getting to grips with mist. The title, ‘Publish and be damned’, together with the Farenheit 451 reference, appears to be an exhortation to writers and publishers alike to ignore the cavillings of others and produce books fearlessly and often. This segues into a lament against over-publishing and the dismal process of bookstore fire sales, remainders and pulping.
“Do we,” Accone asks, “the reading, book-buying public — need or even deserve such opportunities for ceaseless consumption?” Too many books are being produced, in other words, and it’s largely capitalism’s fault. Readers have never had such a voluminous output of books to choose from – there is literally something to suit every palate.
Is that a “Hooray” I hear you utter? Mais non, mes amis, this is Not a Good Thing, however much it may sound like one. Why? Because Kafka was only published after his death and we all know what a good writer he was.
Having built a convincing argument for the parlous state of Too Many Books, Accone moves on to South African literature. He proposes a theory as to why South African literature is in the sad state it’s in: “So many writers, so little writing. Online chatter and conversation about being a writer, the ‘writerly life’, or a writer’s miserable existence in a sports-obsessed country with low literacy rates seems, at least to me, to be robbing writers of writing time.”
So South Africa, it seems, does not suffer from the Too Much Writing malaise that afflicts the rest of the world – we suffer instead from Too Little Writing. We have, apparently, a whole bunch of writers who are not writing enough. Instead they are sitting around day after day on their miserable backsides whingeing online about what a hard life they have. This surprisingly nannyish observation deserves further scrutiny.
When I think of the South African writers I know – and I know a goodly few – I think of people who are producing novels at the steady and respectable rate of one a year, or one every two years. This is clearly not enough for Accone. But wait – a few paragraphs earlier he was complaining about too many books and too much choice. It seems we can’t win.
His complaint ties in neatly with Percy Zvoyuma’s piece “You are what you read”. I find myself in complete agreement with approximately 85% percent of it, but the remaining 15% renders me almost speechless with dissent.
That 15% comes at the end of the piece in which Zvoyuma declares himself disappointed with the generation of South African writers born in the 1970s and 1980s. They are not as good, it seems, as those who came before them. But, he adds, in a spirit of fairness, “I don’t mean to dismiss a whole generation of writers because I know there is a small number of hungry, busy, beady-eyed romantics who are quietly working. They sit at a computer without an internet connection, write until the small hours of the morning, stare at their manuscripts and, unsatisfied, start writing again.” We are getting to the gist of the problem here, and it is startlingly similar to Accone’s complaint. It’s the online writers who are the problem – and what a problem they are.
“Sadly, these [the good, offline writers] are standing outside the spotlight — it is the attention-seekers, the spoken-word poets, writers and whatever mutant this genre has spawned who are tweeting their novels, poetry and their every second thought. So what we have is lots of writers and yet so little writing.”
Quite aside from the nonsensical nothing-saying of that phrase, “writers and whatever mutant this genre has spawned” (what mutant? what genre?) this passage is very revealing.
Both Accone and Zvoyuma clearly have a big problem with writers who have an online presence. There may be several reasons for this:
Reason One: they are irritated by all the tweeting, moaning, online chatter and general collegiality that exists among South African writers online. If this is the case, I have a very simple solution to propose. Don’t listen to us. Switch us off. Erase us from your lives. Don’t friend us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Don’t read our blogs or our rants on Book Chat. It’s very simple. No one is forcing you to eavesdrop on the conversation. By all means, opt out of it.
Reason Two: they genuinely believe that having an online presence makes us worse writers or makes us write less often. They have a sincere, if nannyish, concern for our welfare since we took the online plunge. One wonders whom they have in mind specifically? Lauren Beukes perhaps – one of the first South African writers to move over to Twitter, and the person Book SA justly named as its Writer of the Year for 2010? Surely not. If anyone is a truly excellent ambassador for SA lit both at home and abroad, it’s Lauren. Her online presence has clearly been an asset, not a hindrance, to her career.
Reason Three: they are threatened and unsettled by the extent to which writers have stampeded the online sphere. It must be comforting for critics to think of writers as safely occupying their candlelit garrets, working and reworking their manuscripts, grateful for the little crumbs of praise reviewers toss their way, and humbly responsive to criticism. How disconcerting it must be for reviewers to be instantly and publicly challenged by the writers they have criticised. Not to mention the fact that high-profile writers are doing them out of a job as reviewers. More and more books editors are approaching writers to interview and review other writers. It means they have two well known names as a drawcard, rather than just one.
Online writers, too, are less dependent on critics for reactions to their books as they have a hotline straight to their fans. And this goes for spoken word poets too, against whom Zvoyuma seems to have a particular peeve. Spoken word poets and online writers alike are an unruly lot. They are difficult to control and don’t know their place. They are apt to be outspoken and to answer you back.
The unfortunate truth is that any attempt to shove us back into our candlelit, offline garrets will not succeed. The genie is out of the bottle. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Today’s writer is a new and different animal. Love us, hate us, ignore us or engage with us, our days of silent acquiescence are over.
