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Stabroek News
March 2 2013
Indifference to literature?
March 2, 2013
It is hard to believe that books can still provoke demonstrations and
death threats but in mid-February the 75-year-old Azeri novelist Akram
Aylisli became the target of public anger reminiscent of the Rushdie
fatwa. His crime? Writing a book with unwelcome portraits of the 1994
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In the novella Stone Dreams, Aylisli
recounts Azeri mistreatment of Armenians and fails - at least in the
eyes of his critics - to acknowledge abuses on the other side. Asked
about the controversy, a BBC correspondent in Russia said that both
Armenia and Azerbaijan are "trying to control the narrative,
portraying themselves as victims and the other side as aggressors" and
Aylisli's refusal to embrace this myth had prompted the hostile
reception to his book.
Every year hundreds of writers are threatened, imprisoned or attacked
for the peaceful expression of inconvenient political opinions. A few
are well-known such as Nobel Laureates Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu
Xiaobo, or the intrepid Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, but
hundreds of other writers remain largely unknown outside the countries
which silence them.
How many people who don't work in human rights or freedom of
expression organisations know anything about the brutal crackdown on
Eritrea's independent press in 2001, or the steady imprisonment of
Chinese dissidents, or Turkey's use of draconian 'insult to the state'
laws to imprison dozens of writers? Understandably few, given how
little coverage these stories receive in the international press.
Our lack of knowledge about these writers has terrible consequences.
When governments learn that they can prosecute or imprison critics
without facing serious condemnation they rarely waste time before they
silence their writers. In Cuba's 2003 Black Spring, for instance, 29
of the 75 dissidents tried as 'foreign agents' and similarly nefarious
'enemies of the state' were working journalists.
It is slightly shameful then to see how little we value books which
were written by writers who were threatened in their lifetime, or
imprisoned for their beliefs. The list of prison writers in English is
extremely distinguished and ranges all the way from John Bunyan and
Daniel Defoe up to Oscar Wilde and William Burroughs. If other
languages are included, scores of other eminent writers would appear
on the list, among them the novelists Miguel de Cervantes, Fyodor
Dostoevsky, Primo Levi, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Varlam Shalamov;
the iconic Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the German theologian
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler - whose
novel Darkness at Noon remains one of the classic literary takedowns
of Stalinism. And yet how few of us know, far less read, the work of
the modern day counterparts to these writers.
Leaving censorship aside, it is saddening to see how few West Indians
have read the work of what might be called our essential writers.
Within the Caribbean for example, Black Jacobins, CLR James'
masterpiece on the Haitian Revolution ought to be required reading in
every household - as the Bible and the works of Shakespeare used to be
in England. But often it can be difficult to find a copy in many
island bookstores, nor any of James' other wonderful books on cricket,
literature and politics. Within Guyana, too few of us have read
canonical writers such as Martin Carter (another imprisoned author)
and Wilson Harris, nor the work of more accessible writers such as
Edgar Mittelholzer and Roy Heath - not to mention the host of younger
writers who have barely been noticed during the last 30 years.
Admittedly this is often not a deliberate choice and has more to do
with the absence of local publishers, proper libraries and school
curricula, but it is a failing that could be rectified fairly easily
in the age of digital publishing, especially if the lack of
appreciation for local writers were taken more seriously, and not just
by politicians but by the general public.
There is a popular adage that is usually attributed to Mark Twain -
mistakenly, according to scholars who use literary databases to check
these things - which warns us that 'The man who does not read good
books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.' It is a
pity that this probably wasn't said by the man William Faulkner would
later honour as "the father of American literature" but it remains a
timely reminder that local literatures can only ever be as valuable,
and engaged, as contemporary readers wish to make them.
http://www.stabroeknews.com/2013/opinion/editorial/03/02/indifference-to-literature/
March 2 2013
Indifference to literature?
March 2, 2013
It is hard to believe that books can still provoke demonstrations and
death threats but in mid-February the 75-year-old Azeri novelist Akram
Aylisli became the target of public anger reminiscent of the Rushdie
fatwa. His crime? Writing a book with unwelcome portraits of the 1994
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In the novella Stone Dreams, Aylisli
recounts Azeri mistreatment of Armenians and fails - at least in the
eyes of his critics - to acknowledge abuses on the other side. Asked
about the controversy, a BBC correspondent in Russia said that both
Armenia and Azerbaijan are "trying to control the narrative,
portraying themselves as victims and the other side as aggressors" and
Aylisli's refusal to embrace this myth had prompted the hostile
reception to his book.
Every year hundreds of writers are threatened, imprisoned or attacked
for the peaceful expression of inconvenient political opinions. A few
are well-known such as Nobel Laureates Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu
Xiaobo, or the intrepid Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, but
hundreds of other writers remain largely unknown outside the countries
which silence them.
How many people who don't work in human rights or freedom of
expression organisations know anything about the brutal crackdown on
Eritrea's independent press in 2001, or the steady imprisonment of
Chinese dissidents, or Turkey's use of draconian 'insult to the state'
laws to imprison dozens of writers? Understandably few, given how
little coverage these stories receive in the international press.
Our lack of knowledge about these writers has terrible consequences.
When governments learn that they can prosecute or imprison critics
without facing serious condemnation they rarely waste time before they
silence their writers. In Cuba's 2003 Black Spring, for instance, 29
of the 75 dissidents tried as 'foreign agents' and similarly nefarious
'enemies of the state' were working journalists.
It is slightly shameful then to see how little we value books which
were written by writers who were threatened in their lifetime, or
imprisoned for their beliefs. The list of prison writers in English is
extremely distinguished and ranges all the way from John Bunyan and
Daniel Defoe up to Oscar Wilde and William Burroughs. If other
languages are included, scores of other eminent writers would appear
on the list, among them the novelists Miguel de Cervantes, Fyodor
Dostoevsky, Primo Levi, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Varlam Shalamov;
the iconic Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the German theologian
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler - whose
novel Darkness at Noon remains one of the classic literary takedowns
of Stalinism. And yet how few of us know, far less read, the work of
the modern day counterparts to these writers.
Leaving censorship aside, it is saddening to see how few West Indians
have read the work of what might be called our essential writers.
Within the Caribbean for example, Black Jacobins, CLR James'
masterpiece on the Haitian Revolution ought to be required reading in
every household - as the Bible and the works of Shakespeare used to be
in England. But often it can be difficult to find a copy in many
island bookstores, nor any of James' other wonderful books on cricket,
literature and politics. Within Guyana, too few of us have read
canonical writers such as Martin Carter (another imprisoned author)
and Wilson Harris, nor the work of more accessible writers such as
Edgar Mittelholzer and Roy Heath - not to mention the host of younger
writers who have barely been noticed during the last 30 years.
Admittedly this is often not a deliberate choice and has more to do
with the absence of local publishers, proper libraries and school
curricula, but it is a failing that could be rectified fairly easily
in the age of digital publishing, especially if the lack of
appreciation for local writers were taken more seriously, and not just
by politicians but by the general public.
There is a popular adage that is usually attributed to Mark Twain -
mistakenly, according to scholars who use literary databases to check
these things - which warns us that 'The man who does not read good
books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.' It is a
pity that this probably wasn't said by the man William Faulkner would
later honour as "the father of American literature" but it remains a
timely reminder that local literatures can only ever be as valuable,
and engaged, as contemporary readers wish to make them.
http://www.stabroeknews.com/2013/opinion/editorial/03/02/indifference-to-literature/