ktravula – a travelogue!

On Written English

Prompted by my sister’s observation on reading Larry King’s My Remarkable Journey. “The language is remarkably simple,” she said. The fact is that we have been so used to the literary culture that passes off grandiose English as the only true means of good literary communication that when we see one that pulls off a feat of enchanting us without pretending to be grand, we are pleasantly surprised and are forced to look at ourselves again.

How the literary culture in Nigeria (as borrowed from Britain) successfully evolved into the idea that it is better and more acceptable to write (and speak) as difficult possible when given the opportunity is really beyond me. And for all who bother about it, this is the singular most (de)pressing issue in Nigerian literature today. Not just the language of our writing – which will remain English for a long while – but the way we use it. The argument is long and tedious, and will – if not properly articulated – spill over into very many distracting directions, but what is clear is that we still haven’t mastered the ability to simply write, simply.

My favourite essay of all time is by George Orwell, titled Politics and the English Language(1946), and I’ve always recommended it for anyone wishing to be called a writer. In it, he highlights the very many wrong ways in which we use the English language a famous one being the rendering of a verse in Ecclesiastes in “modern” English. According to him, and I agree, this verse…

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

would most likely be written by today’s writers as follows:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

He admits in the end, as I do now, that he too may have occasionally fallen into the temptation to use more words than necessary in order to sound grand, or just for the drought of ideas. Yet, it is inexcusable. There is a reason why I was able to complete Larry King’s book in two days and I’m yet to complete one by a Nigerian writer since more than a year ago, and it doesn’t have to do with their personalties, a glossy cover or their countries of origin. And it is the same reason why V.S. Naipaul is now one of my favourite Nobel Prize winners. There is just something enchanting about a simply but brilliantly-written work.

Conversations

Ivor: Do you feel that current Nigerian politics has influenced your writing? And if so to what extent?

KT: No, but that is as far as my deliberate rebellion will allow, and I have tried as much as possible to fuse much of my own outlook in the speech of the characters I create. I cannot control the unconscious however. If I’m a writer at all, I’m one because of my upbringing and influences all tainted with patches of Nigerian history and my own upbringing in the many cultures that I’ve interacted with. The rest are my own questing polemics. In essence, I don’t write so as to be patriotic except to defy and to question, but mostly to locate the common humanity in my characters as well as in those who read and connect with them. I like the simple, small, family things, not the grand “national” political ones, and I’ve dedicated myself to exploring the small ones. I’ve discovered that they’re often even more fun than big politics. And as a writer, you get the liberty of imagination. Politics is more restricting. In that, Marachera was right. But overall, we are still a sum of our individual experiences, and are conditioned by our environments whether we like it or not.

Read my full conversation with Ivor Hartmann on new writing in Africa on the Sentinel Blog. Ivor is the writer and publisher from Zimbabwe, now living in “economic exile” in South Africa.

A Case for Blogging

‘”The book is dead” – Ikhide. “Ikhide is dead.” – The Book ‘ – Grafitti.

There is no doubt that new technologies taking over the culture of publishing have sort of made the book redundant. But how total is that overthrow of the almighty good old hard cover material once known as the book? In the beginning, there were scrolls, nay, first there were hieroglyphics and scrawling on stone cave walls. And that was after communications went on via drum beats, gongs, and loud whistles across farm fields. Skip to the present, across generations of texts, scrolls and patches bearing thousands of important scriptures, texts and messages for generations.

We have the ebook, and many electronic ways of communicating ideas, almost like the book. Almost like most ancient means of communication. The iPhone could as well be a smooth but feathered pebble sent across from a far village to transmit a short message from a dying man to another – aroko; a phone call a mystical connection of voices between distances. Even babalawos might be able to explain that with some of their ancient texts. The man rubbed his head three times, chewed on the sour kola as he stood on top of the hill and called the name of his son seven times, and from where he was thousands of miles away, the young man rose from his sleep, dusted his mat, and headed homewards, without even saying goodbye to his expectant wife… From generations to generations, communication has evolved and will continue to do so, surprising each generation after the other. The graphic design of a recent cover of the Economist has Apple boss Steve Jobs holding two iPads on either arm. The headline was The Book of Jobs but the image was that of Moses returning from the mountain with two stone tablets – each as big as the iPad – in his hands.

The book should die, if it must, as soon as possible. For one, it will remove the pressure of traditional publishing, and an author of a short story in an anthology of eleven might not have to wait forever to lay his hands on the first copy of such a work. Where does the book get off with that distinct characteristic of charm that breeds suspense, and an always pleasing first touch, smell and feel? Try as we may, that first touch never fails to surprise and to please. Yet I protest. How many words does it take to write a novel? Forty to a hundred thousand? How many words have I written on this blog so far? Over two hundred and twenty- seven thousand words and over a thousand nine hundred pictures. Bollocks! Die book, die! A magazine editor won’t publish an already blogged poem. Bollocks. A newspaper requires exclusive rights to published articles and won’t allow for reprints on the author’s blog. Die book, die!

But who am I kidding? Until the Nobel Committee decides on a day in the distant future to award the Nobel Prize for Literature to an author that writes using only the blogging medium will that day have truly come when the book is totally dead. And members of that Nobel Committee would have to have been first generation digital natives, born and bred in the world of hypertext. Until then, maybe we could do with a little amendment to the criminal code that gives the opportunity of only a phone call to an arrested suspect. If you want to arrest and lock me up, why don’t you give me internet access instead. All I need is twenty minutes for my next post, then you can have me in for all the time you want. At least until the next day when the next blogging cycle begins.

The book is dead. Of course it’s not. But long live its very many other manifestations, including the one you’re now reading.

On “Behind the Door”

My short story – Behind the Door – appeared as one of the eleven short stories in the premier anthology of fictions from Africa titled African Roar. That’s no news anymore, right?

What you didn’t know is that I wrote the story in about two hours after a moving experience in a local hospital. The events in the story, though fictionalized, were derived from a real life experience.

So what’s the reason for this post? I want to share with you a few of the reviews of African Roar, especially those that focused on my short story “Behind the Door.” Enjoy.

Powerful in its simlicity: Review by blogger Solomon Sydelle

Humorous without being frivolous: Review by Elinore Morris

Controlled and well-handled characters: Review by Novuyo-Rosa

The book can now be bought on Amazon, Lion Press, Barnes and Noble, and on the Kindle. Soon enough, we would be able to have them in physical bookshops all around. Until then, what are you waiting for to get an anthology of eleven powerful stories written from all across the continent?