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| Wole Soyinka (Photo: Entertainment Express) |
A navigable screen, in computing, usually points back to a dirty floor and a crowded workspace at the head of software development.
This necessary contrast is equally visible in the creation and reception of literature in its various categories.
There are works which lend themselves seamlessly to their audience and claim the foremost stacks.
Yet that polished finish, the illusion of effortlessness in the dazzle of genius, often belies endless midnight hours of trial and error.
Succinctly put, greater effort by the creator means less effort for the receiver.
In this instalment, I submit not a papal bull but a modest proposal for writers to be at it restlessly for the good of literature.
There is already a great deal of restlessness in the book sector, but perhaps not the kind which is culturally profitable.
An unsettling majority of books being published in Zimbabwe leaps from conception to delivery without a period of imaginative gestation.
While the writers merit recognition for keeping us posted, it would be much healthier if they harnessed their energy into something more durable.
Otherwise, a deathly aura will forever cloud books which cannot take a life of their own beyond the support of promo copy.
These works, currently floating in peer accolades, often lack the normative outlines and the novel vibe which should constitute good writing.
In some cases, what is passed for a book is a little more than a collation of quotes and anecdotes by influential figures.
What remains attributable to the writer borders not so much on inspiration but imitation.
While resourcefulness is a necessary faculty, it must be synthesised and packaged in a harmonic fashion.
The dictionary man, Dr Samuel Johnson, says from an observable record, that a man will read a whole library just to write one book.
However, as we have seen in our computing metaphor, the integration of influence is necessary in the background but must be kept subliminal for the end user.
Multiple influences weave into each other to enrich content at the head of development but if their protuberance at reception impedes ease of navigation, then there is a problem.
The worst fraud in the writing of the day is a tendency by authors to make free with other people’s work as if they have exclusive access to them.
As the terrain is at the moment, isolated notables need critical rehabilitation to step out of this deluge of content.
A massive segment of the book industry in the current setting reflects publicity not publishing, literacy not literature and activity not artistry. As long as emerging writers major on detail but not quality and emotive facility, they will only move by being drawn like vessels without engines.
The indie bubble is already enduring polemical assaults from established writers, some of them rather generalised.
Sue Grafton puts down self-publishing to a short cut: “I compare self-publishing to a student managing to conquer Five Easy Pieces on the piano and then wondering if she or he is ready to be booked into Carnegie Hall.”
For Grafton and others, established writers are not necessarily children of privilege but uncompromising workers who earned their contracts. Such an assessment however does not consider that the space is rapidly diminishing in the traditional sector.
In Zimbabwe, for example, what worked 15 years ago is a subject of nostalgia, nothing more. To prescribe the same route for emerging writers is to disregard the changing times.
Wole Soyinka implies as much in a rejoinder to a book when he accuses a “sterile literary aspirant” for self-publishing after self-respecting writers had rejected his trash. However, the indie bubble is good news in that it allows divergence of opinion and liberates access to the public square.
It is a good thing that we can hear different voices outside the austere structures of traditional publishing but such an opportunity must be embraced with a sense of professional responsibility.
There is need to commit to research and to cultivate a creative flair so that new works will not only be timely but also timeless.
As Leo Tolstoy observes that art obtains when the writer “consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and . . . other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them.”
It may be a fair assessment that local writing has been clouded by the Zimdancehall effect. To begin with, it is difficult to tell one writer from the other.
The same template, and the same anecdotal plug-ins, seems to suffice for the writers. It is clear what is in jeopardy when writers do not take it upon themselves to bring something new to the bookstore.
The industry is running down to a semblance, but not the substance, of productivity. Like Zimdancehall again, there is no technical variety.
It is possible to predict the next piece by listening to the current or remembering the elapsed. Sadly, this is true for most of our mass-produced titles, particularly motivational literature.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with the positive drift after which most of the new books are themed.
Besides, the fascination with life enhancement themes is understandable at a time when many are gasping for the breath of inspiration.
All the more reason for emerging writers to have excellence in their bull’s eye when gunning for publicity!
Motivational and evangelically themed literature certainly has its place in the everyday canon as people struggle to make the most out of their lives.
However, the trouble is when so many tag themselves into a cause without demonstrating their commitment to quality.
While the motivational upsurge may be sound in terms of its thematic propositions, there is need to look beyond intention to reception.
As noted evangelically themed writer John Bunyan points out in his novel “Pilgrim’s Progress”: “No one throws away the apple for the core.”
Inspirational writing may be powered by some of the greatest ideas but the writer’s responsibility is to break them down for the largest audience possible in the language of the day.
What we have, for the most part, at present, are ephemeral pamphlets of varying volumes, not works of enduring literary value.
This weak link compromises the vast potential for transmission of great ideas through art.
When writers recycle scriptures in technically bankrupt paraphrases, they short supply the self-replicating creative potential of the Bible.
To reach the world with their message, inspirational writers need to master the beauty, melody, colour and potency of language.
After all, as Albert Einstein says, “Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
