“Literature is not concerned with politics but is purely a matter of the individual. It is the gratification of the intellect together with an observation, a review of what has been experienced, reminiscences and feelings or the portrayal of a state of mind.”
“The so-called writer is nothing more than someone speaking or writing and whether he is listened to or read is for others to choose. The writer is not a hero acting on orders from the people nor is he worthy of worship as an idol, and certainly he is not a criminal or enemy of the people. He is at times victimised along with his writings simply because of other’s needs. When the authorities need to manufacture a few enemies to divert people’s attention, writers become sacrifices and worse still writers who have been duped actually think it is a great honour to be sacrificed.”

“In fact the relationship of the author and the reader is always one of spiritual communication and there is no need to meet or to socially interact, it is a communication simply through the work. Literature remains an indispensable form of human activity in which both the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses.”From Gao Xinjian’s Nobel Lecture in Literature in 2000.

One upto a time under the evil tyranny called USGov. Inc. (successor to the fair but forgotten Republic of America), there lived an aspiring authoress, Brown Riding-hood.

Brown Riding-hood loved to whip up nutritious (and delicious) literary goodies for the fair folk of US Gov. Inc. who were suffering from intellectual and political malnutrition caused by an incessant diet of MSM preservatives, PC syrup, and imperial transfat. Determined to take her gourmet, organic brownies to the grandmas and grandkids and regular folks who needed them, Little Brown Riding-hood spent all her time baking them with love and care in a little oven far from the beastly jungle of commercial publishing.

But alas, she found that because they had been put a little too far on the left of the rack, the cookies turned out just a bit too dark and were ignored by the good people of the land, who prefered white chocolate to dark. And then, some got stolen by not-so-good people, who mixed them up with their own wares and shut the door on her.

While Brown-Riding-hood was sitting forlorn, weeping that no one would buy her delicious, nutritious literary (and investigative) cookies, who should come along but a pair of lambs. One began to cheer her up with promises that he would help her feed the fair folk of US Govt. Inc..if only he would bake her cookies along with his.

Who could help trusting two such helpful friends? They looked so respectable, she thought, except that maybe, they did seem a bit fleec-y.

Now, Li’l Hood really should have followed the voice inside her heart telling her to be careful, but she was an impulsive soul. Had she only looked past the fluff, she would have seen that under the sheepskin lurked an odd couple: a coyote called Wile E. and a wealthy Road-Runner, Don Dollar-oso, with a soft smile and a sharp sword…. with two edges.

“Come with us,” they said to Li’l Hood, we’ll take you to our own special market where you can sell your cookies….”

So Little Brown- hood trotted after them…to one far away country after the next…slaving away at the cookies.

Meanwhile, Don Dollar-oso, who had a heart set on gold and very like it in weight and temperature, also had a not-so-trusty right arm, who was secretly stirring up discontent among his generals and plotting to turn the realm of Oz against the Don during his absences abroad.

And it was then that the gates of Oz were shut against Little Hood and a campaign begun against her….

Her loyalty was rewarded with banishment. Their treachery was concealed with honeyed words.

And they flashed their rapiers, for by now they had grown so powerful that even the Don himself could not control them.

So it goes under the evil tyranny of US Govt Inc. Right is wrong, black is white, traitors are patriots, and marauders are keepers of the peace.

An essay on the politics of fiction:

“In the context of the publicity surrounding the forthcoming novel, Londonstani, which like my recent novel, Psychoraag (Black and White Publishing, 2004), appears to play with demotic, my best wishes go out to the author, good on him. I have only been able to read the first chapter, which appeared in Prospect magazine. The following critique is reserved for the transnational publishing industry and mainstream, England-based print media, neither of which entities would touch Psychoraag in terms of publication, reviews, interviews, invitations to literary festivals – so that in the two-and-a-half years since Psychoraag has been published, in these terms there has been almost zilch. In this piece, I’m not going to discuss the overtly political stuff (such as D-Notices, planted journalists, etc.) which applies more to news and political features reportage, investigative journalism and other areas of non-fiction. I am concerned here with fiction, and in particular, what is known as literary fiction.

I should say that I am very lucky to be based in Scotland – a country which has produced many wonderful writers of fiction, including, in recent years, Irvine Welsh, James Kelman, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway, J.K. Rowling, AL Kennedy, Ali Smith, Louise Welsh, Alexander McCall Smith, Iain Banks, Ian Rankin and many more (the list grows longer very year). This corpus of work represents some of the most exciting, commercially successful and ground-breaking writing of the past three decades in the Anglophone world. Coda: Scotland is not a literary backwater.

Psychoraag has just won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award in California, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (the oldest literary prize in the UK) and has been nominated by librarians for this year’s (Dublin-based) IMPAC Prize. Psychoraag has received good reviews in Scotland, South Asia, various web-based magazines and in the British Asian media, is being translated by the Paris-based publisher, Editions Métailié into French and is being made into a Royal National Institute for the Blind ‘talking book’ – so it can’t be total rubbish. When my first novel, The Snake (Creation Books) came out in 1997, under the pseudonym, ‘Melanie Desmoulins’, to my knowledge it was the first ever novel written by a black Scottish person to have been published and Psychoraag was definitely the first published novel by an Asian Scot. Psychoraag was compared with the work of both Rushdie and Irvine Welsh [1].

One prominent and respected Scottish academic, himself a novelist, recently wrote that Psychoraag is “the most important and innovative Glasgow novel since [James Kelman’s seminal novel, published in 1984] The Busconductor Hines” [2]. In 2005, along with works by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, Adam Smith and Jackie Kay, Psychoraag was listed as one of the ‘100 Best Ever Scottish Books’ as compiled by the Scottish Book Trust and the List magazine (the Scottish equivalent of Time Out). It is a primary text in the study of Scottish Literature at university undergraduate level and my work is also taught in Scottish secondary schools in conjunction with BBC Scottish TV Education. Another prominent contemporary Scottish writer described my work thus: “From his earliest writings, [Saadi] was an important and unique voice. Quite apart from being one of the breakthrough Scots-Asian (if that term means anything) voices, his work was always refined, sure, and deeply erudite. It speaks not just for one community – Scottish, Asian, Glaswegian – but, as all great writing should, for the human condition. What it is to be alive, now, in this complex world. All the various histories, mythologies and circumstances that shape us” [3]. And there’s much more of this….”

More at “Psychoraag: the Gods at the Door,” Spike Magazine.

Comment:

It’s an interesting and wide-ranging essay and its topic is one any writer, whether first world, third world (or underworld) will take something from.

It’s not a comfortable topic though..

Although I’ve had similar thoughts myself, I’m not sure whether there is any use in pursuing them or even drawing large conclusions from them. Yes, the book world is overwhelmingly biased — in many ways, class, race, language. Think about the enormous advantage an English speaking writer enjoys. Vernacular writers can’t reach that kind of audience.  But what should we do about it? Start writing in the vernacular in sympathy? Or just not take the pecking order so seriously? I am for the latter.
Play the game — if you want to — but realize it is a game.

Of course, that happens to suit my temperament. I realize that many writers thrive on the literary circuit.

To me, the quiet life seems the one to envy.

This post is not, I hope, an example of the “three parts of ego” that one reader finds in “Mobs,” though he grudgingly admits it was a “great read,” which missed being even better because of the heaping scorn it poured on a variety of people and things.

I wonder about that.

Bill and I had many discussions about the levels of snarkiness the many-headed would take before throwing some of it right back in our face.

We were warned it would offend reviewers. It might. We took out a lot of things. And we put back some. We thought about softening a lot of it. I tried numskulls and nitwits, instead of idiots — just to be nice and all…..

But the herd we are talking about…..is not something outside any of us. That’s the point of the book.

Some people seem to have missed that. The mob isn’t really “out there” — it’s something we all struggle against within ourselves. The urge to conform, to follow, to do as others do, to obey senseless orders, turn on the outsider, commit judicial murder.

The heroes of our book are the individuals who don’t turn their back on the defenseless and the voiceless. But we aren’t about to confuse that kind of goodness with the professions of corporate journalists, public policy wonks, and verbose politicians.
So let me say this. Except for some modest Bush-bashing ,and of course, the mandatory Thomas Friedman festivity (this is a cottage industry not only down at the Daily Reckoning but on some academic and left-wing sites), I really don’t know who or what it was that we ridiculed  that was so sacrosanct….or didn’t deserve it.

It’s apparently OK to commit mass killings, despoil countries, lie, cheat and swindle, but mentioning that fact bluntly is altogether just too, too terrible. Next, I am going to hear — mean-spirited!

Our critic doesn’t seem to have figured out how hopeful the book is. It has nothing offensive whatsoever to say about those who really do good — the Sophie Scholls and Dr. V’s of the world. Its venom is directed at the great ones who so richly deserve it, but are protected by our platitudinous culture from public scorn.

As for James Surowiecki – we criticize him a bit, but only tangentially. Proving a thesis is not what this book is about. It’s exactly what it’s not about.

“Mobs” is not a pop sociology tract. It’s simply our report on the state of affairs in what we call the public spectacle. Wars, manias, swindles — don’t any of these call for some excoriation?

They do.
No apologies.