By Anote Ajeluorou
The simple Short Message Service (SMS) seems telling and a
clear summation of the reading event: ‘Thanks for coming today. We are really
grateful. It was a great event and it showed the potential for literature in Naija.’ That was multi-faceted Mr. Toni
Kan expressing appreciation for attendance and optimism for the future of literature
in Nigeria. Earlier on last Sunday, he’d read with artist and writer Mr. Victor
Ehikhamenor at Rele Gallery behind National Museum, Onikan, Lagos, in a session
that promised a literary bout but delivered great conversation instead.
Both writers read
from old and new works, with Kan’s Nights
of the Creaking Bed and Ehikhamenor’s Excuse
Me leading the way. Kan also allowed the audience a glimpse into his
forthcoming novel The Carnivorous City
by reading delightful excerpts from it. With Wana Udobang, as moderator, the
two writers sat with a large mosaic of abstract painting of multiple heads
jostling, like the writers, for attention behind them.
Perhaps, of immense
significance and take-away for most writers at the crowded hall of Rele Gallery,
which was holding a reading session for the first time, was Kan’s charge to some
writers, whose avowal or calling is fixated on saving society from itself, to
also embrace ‘ghost writing’ if only to add value to their craft and make a
decent living. For the journalist and PR expert, if it took a comedian like
Julius Agwu about 40 minutes on stage to earn N500,000 or more for making
people laugh why shouldn’t a writer make as much to help a rich folk with too
much money to spare write his memoir or biography?
He noted that while
it’s a great idea to keep the creativity going, it was expedient for a writer
to be able to pay his bills, which creative writing alone was yet to accomplish.
For instance, he said although Nights of
the Creaking Bed might have sold 10,000 copies in six years since
publication, what has come to him as a writer was less than N1,000,000. and
wondered how he could have lived on that if he didn’t have other things doing
besides writing.
He said, “Let’s make
our writing a value-creating enterprise. Writing is not an easy occupation. If
you must do it (writing), do it well”.
But, of course, the
reading also highlighted fiction and non-fiction writing as explorative genres
in the Nigerian creative environment and how the latter was still at its infancy
compared to fiction that attained prominence long ago. The show took off with Ehikhamenor
reading from his collection of essays Excuse
Me, a piece he dedicates to his late mother, but which he wrote while the
woman was still alive; then Kan also read from Nights of the Creaking Bed.
For Kan fiction
derives its strength from the non-fictive environment that provides it a backdrop
and canvas to thrive. As he put it, “Fiction won’t exist if you don’t have
non-fiction. Fiction springs from non-fictional situations”.
Ehikhamenor also
agreed and added a metaphorical comparison, noting, “Fiction is a masquerade
and non-fiction is when you take the mask off the masquerade. Writers research
fiction in the real world. In fiction, there is more liberty”.
So, why has fiction
flourished at the expense of non-fiction in the country whereas it seems a
booming business in other environments? What could be responsible for the lack
of ‘liberty’ Ehikhamenor alluded to that prevents Nigerians from writing their
true-life stories for others to read? Why is there so little non-fiction with
the amount of sleaze recorded in high places? Why are people so mum about such
thing even when they are subjects for explosive reading and instant sellout?
Ehikhamenor was also
forthcoming on the probable reason for the loud silence. “Whoever admits to
having smoked hemp to his mother?” he asked. “Here, we have things that will
make for great non-fiction, but we are not exploring them well enough. We lack
the ability to tell the deeper truths about ourselves, our lives that are
really explosive and can make for good reading”.
However, Kan said such
reticence was gradually giving way “where people tell personal stories
truthfully”.
Author and founder
of Abeokuta-based Ake Arts and Book
Festival Lola Shoneyin argued that cultural restraint was at the heart of a
stunted non-fiction writing in the country, adding that many people hiding
under fiction to tell those sordid things about them or people they know.
According to her, “Our culture makes us conscious of the notion of shame and
that constrains us telling about our flaws, but we may be getting there. People
are feeling the need to tell the truth; we rather hide under fiction instead”.
To which Kan also
agreed, saying, “We hide under fiction”.
Ehikhamenor’s story
‘Love letter’ caused uproar in the house, as a piece that resonated well with
those raised before the advent of Global System for Mobile (GSM) and the Internet.
Ehikhamenor fleshed out all the nuances of letter writing, especially a love
letter to a sweetheart and its possible bittersweet outcomes for the naughty,
letter-writing schoolboy.
With GSM and the
Internet replacing that favourite pastime of young people, how have these new
tools rubbed off on writing skills of young people and the emergent creative
writing? Sadly, it was observed that most people writing on the Internet have
dispensed with the needed rigorous editing traditional publishing requires
before materials are put out for public consumption.
Ehikhamenor was
emphatic that “SMS and tech language were ruining use of English language among
young people”.
Kan took further it
when he said, “Bloggers are giving Nigerians a bad name. Millennial youth are
not using language properly. We had good writing without the Internet; it’s not
the case now. The freedom it allows is being abused. 140 characters (as twitter
allows) may be fantastic, but what happens after the 140 is the problem”.
“The immediacy of it
is good but people need to hold back a bit before pushing their stuff online,”
Ehikhamenor argued. “There must be reread first before publishing”.
Responses from the
audience showed that while Internet makes for accessibility, affordability and
quantity, a lot of bad stuff with poor quality gets pushed out to the public.
How to sift through becomes the problem of the gullible and untutored.
No comments:
Post a Comment