On Saturday, August 16, 2014, a new writer, Seigha Lin Onwuteaka emerged on the Nigerian literary scene with her debut novel, LOST IN THE CITY. Our Creative Director and one of the writers in the NaijaGRAPHITTI stables was present at the occasion and gave this speech:
The
writer, The Reader and Society
By Kenneth Nwabudike
Okafor
"There
is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
―
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The Writer
"If you
don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write.
Simple as that."
―
Stephen King
The Writer’s Motive and Motivation
I wish to preface my
presentation with a reference to George Orwell. Of course, George Orwell was
not his real name, but rather a pen name. Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), was an English
novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose,
awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and commitment to
democratic socialism. Commonly ranked as one of the most influential English
writers of the 20th century, and as one of the most important chroniclers of
English culture of his generation, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry,
fiction, and polemical journalism. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945). His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil
War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on
politics, literature, language, and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked
him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the
term Orwellian — descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social
practices — has entered the language together with several of his neologisms,
including cold war, Big Brother, thought police, Room
101, doublethink, and thoughtcrime.
In a particular speech which George Orwell gave in
1946, titled Why I Write, he enunciated
the reason why he writes. He said and I quote:
"…I do not think one
can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development.
His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is
true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever
begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will
never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament
and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he
escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse
to write.
"I think there are four
great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different
degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from
time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are: Sheer
egoism. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Historical impulse. Political purpose.
"I cannot say with
certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve
to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably
where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed
into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and
humbug generally."
At once, I would also add that a writer might write: to
contribute to knowledge or for spiritual obligation/devotion.
The Writer’s Worthy Goal
"Read, read, read. Read everything —
trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter
who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw
it out of the window."
―
William Faulkner
The
writer ought to write for the empowerment of the reader and society. The writer’s greatest
achievement would be to contribute to the library of books and the corpus of
wisdom and learning, for the discerning public and the astute reader.
The
writer for me is anyone who writes ideas fit for reflective consumption, by
which society can be built up and developed. The Writer works with ideas and
conveys them to the world by the construct of words. Ideas are crucial to the
writer. The process of writing is the communication of the writer’s ideas to
the reader and to society. This ought to be a sacrosanct relationship but I
dare say this is not always the case.
The
writer ought to be a builder using words for mortar and bricks but many times
there is failure to build or there is a misconstruction and the structure which
emerges is misshapen and unfit for purpose. There is a very commonsensical
piece of counsel to the budding writer: "Practice is
essential to learning. Each time you choose your words, order your thoughts,
and convey your ideas, you can improve your writing."
The Writer’s “Flower Period”
In the work, Culture
and Customs of Thailand, the Thai historian, Arne Kislenko writes "Poetry was so important in the Ayutthaya [Ayutthaya
period 1350 – 1767] that it became one of the most important artistic and
historical legacies of the kingdom. By the seventeenth century, poetry was very
common, and moved beyond the realm of monks. Most people in the royal court
were expected to write poems, so much so that the period between 1656 and 1688
is known as the "Flower Period" from this blossoming of poetry."
I use this phrase of "Flower Period"
to describe a metaphorical time
describing the writer’s moment of greatest flourishing, profusion and
productivity. If you mentioned this same phrase among some people with naughty
intentions it may probably mean something else for example cannabis growers.
There must be a blossoming of the writer, when the writer is at the peak of
his/her productive powers.
Every writer whose work will make impact and be as
complete as can be, must master his or her own "Flower Period" and maximize production then.
Though I am not a Jane Austen scholar, I would like to
use her life even though much of her personal stories are obscure, to make my
point about the writer’s flower period.
Historically,
Jane Austen
(16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of
romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the
most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony and
social commentary have gained her historical importance among scholars and
critics. Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on
the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by
her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast
support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer.
From her teenage years into her thirties she experimented with various literary
forms, including an epistolary novel which she then abandoned, wrote and
extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until
1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and
Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she
achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger
Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began
a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, uncompleted before her
demise.
She lived a relatively
short-lived life but story has it that she completed all the outlines of her
books by the age of twenty-four. By forty-one, her work was done but then her
legacy was also truly well established.
Whereas
as we have seen the diligent writer must be a reader first and foremost, however,
a reader must not necessarily write, but he or she must be reflective in order
to make fodder from what is written. So who is the reader?
The Reader
The reader is the learner, or should be the learner,
and would-be protagonist, who ought to become compelled by what he/she had
read.
The singular lesson I would share with anyone as
valuable insight as the singular incentive for reading is that the reader
should read to obtain education and/or to
augment education. In Nigeria where the educational system is famished and
nearly bankrupt, reading therefore becomes dire need. The poet, Odia
Ofeimun has famously described the Nigerian education system as "...an education system which give poor education to poor people in order
to keep them poor and unmobilisable"
According to Reading Culture Book Club, "Reading is a continuous self-education." I fully subscribe to this notion.
Thus, the reader should approach every volume with the
intent to be educated. The reader ought to develop a relationship with every
book they read, an interaction which helps the reader to design and improve
action and outcome, or refrain from action and outcome. For example a good
moral story may teach lessons from which the reader can learn ethics and proper
behaviour.
According to United
States NCA Commission on Accreditation & School Improvement (NCACASI), there
are about half a dozen characteristics of good readers. In sum, good readers
grasp: conventions, comprehension, context, interpretation, synthesis, and evaluation. When readers use each of this half a dozen traits they
are, in essence, reading the lines, reading between the lines, and reading
beyond the lines. The traits are:
o
Conventions—Understanding
conventions means being able to make sense of words, grammar, and punctuation.
When readers learn to identify and recognize conventions, they can understand
meaning.
o
Comprehension—With
comprehension, readers obtain meaning from text. Comprehension occurs
when readers make predictions, select main ideas, and understand important
details.
o
Context—Context
involves reading between the lines to identify setting, tone, and the voice of
the author. Context also includes placing ideas and concepts in a "bigger
picture" to help students see practical applications.
o
Interpretation—When
readers interpret, they "fill in gaps" in the text, using clues and
evidence from the text to analyze problems and draw conclusions.
o
Synthesis—Synthesis
involves reading beyond the lines, as students must apply and synthesize
knowledge from outside the text.
o
Evaluation—Evaluation
occurs when readers are able to express opinions, ask questions, challenge the
text, challenge the author, and note bias and distortion.
The good reader ultimately develops an interactive
relationship with the work of the writer and by extension the writer’s ideas,
through books.
Here are some vital reasons
for the Reader to read books:
1. To Gain Advantage and Mastery over the
World Around the Reader
In a study carried out by US National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the researchers
found that "With lower levels of reading
and writing ability, people do less well in the job market. Poor reading skills
correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities
for advancement."
In his book How to
Read and Why,
Harold Bloom says that we should read slowly, with love, openness, and with our
inner ear cocked. He explains we should read to increase our wit and
imagination, our sense of intimacy—in short, our entire consciousness—and also
to heal our pain. "Until you become yourself, what benefit can you be to
others." With the endless amount of perspectives and lives we can read
about, books can give us an opportunity to have experiences that we haven’t had
the opportunity to, and still allow us to learn the life skills they entail.
Books are a fast track to creating yourself.
Readers are
active participants in the world around them, and that engagement is critical
to individual and social well-being.
2. To Develop Reader’s Verbal Abilities
Although it doesn’t always
make you a better communicator, those who read tend to have a more varied range
of words to express how they feel and to get their point across. This increases
exponentially with the more volumes you consume, giving you a higher level of
vocabulary to use in everyday life.y read
3. Improves Reader’s Focus and
Concentration
Unlike blog posts and
news articles, sitting down with a book takes long periods of focus and
concentration, which at first is hard to do. Being fully engaged in a book
involves closing off the outside world and immersing yourself into the text,
which over time will strengthen your attention span.
to
4. It Improves Reader’s Imagination
You are only limited by
what you can imagine, and the worlds described in books, as well as other
people’s views and opinions will help you expand your understanding of what is
possible. By reading a written description of an even or a place, your mind is
responsible for creating that image in your head, instead of having the image
placed in front of you when you watch television.ad
5. Reading Makes Reader Smarter
Books offer an
outstanding wealth of learning and at a much cheaper price than taking a
course. Reading gives you a chance to consume huge amount of research in a
relatively short amount of time.
Anne E. Cunningham and
Keith E. Stanovich’s What Reading Does for the Mind
also noted that heavy readers tend to display greater knowledge of how things
work and who or what people were. Books at home have been strongly linked to academic achievement. If
you are looking for a list of great books to read, check out 10
Easy To Read Books That Make You Smarter.
6. It Improves Reader’s Memory
In their book Proust and the Squid: The Story and
Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne
Wolf explains that "Typically, when you read, you have more time to think.
Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight. By and
large, with oral language—when you watch a film or listen to a tape—you don’t
press pause." The benefits of this increased activity keep your memory
sharp and your learning capacity nimble.
7. It Makes Reader’s Interesting and
Attractive
This goes hand in hand
with reading to become smarter. Having a library of information that you have
picked up from non-fiction reading will come in handy in any academic or
scholarly conversation. You will be able to hold your own and add to the
conversation instead of having to make your excuses and leave. You will
be able to engage a wider variety of people in conversation and in turn improve
your knowledge and conversation skills.hy to read
8. It Reduces Stress
A study by consultancy
firm Mindlab International at the University of Sussex showed that reading
reduces stress. Subjects only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow
down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles. In fact it got subjects to
stress levels lower than before they started.
9. For Spiritual Growth and Maturity
The fact that scared
cannons are recorded for the present, posterity and for eternity. Several kinds
abound, but I am particularly interested in the Holy Scriptures which is an
essential part of the celebrant’s life and experience. Reading the Bible helps
to develop spiritual maturity and development.
10. For Entertainment
All the
benefits of reading mentioned so far are a bonus result of the most important
benefit of reading; Its entertainment value. If it were not for the
entertainment value, reading would be a chore but it needn’t be. Reading is not
only fun, but it has all the added benefits that we have discussed so far.
In the landmark study, to which I had earlier alluded,
using data gathered across the country the US National Endowment for the Arts
carried a research from which they produced the report titled To Read or Not To Read: A Question of
National Consequence, Dana Gioia, Chairman, National
Endowment for the Arts writing the preface asserts:
"To
Read or Not To Read confirms—without any serious qualification—the central
importance of reading for a prosperous, free society. The data here demonstrate
that reading is an irreplaceable activity in developing productive and active
adults as well as healthy communities. Whatever the benefits of newer
electronic media, they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual
and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.
"To
Read or Not To Read is not an elegy for the bygone days of print culture,
but instead is a call to action—not only for parents, teachers, librarians,
writers, and publishers, but also for politicians, business leaders,
economists, and social activists. The general decline in reading is not merely
a cultural issue, though it has enormous consequences for literature and the
other arts. It is a serious national problem. If, at the current pace, America
continues to lose the habit of regular reading, the nation will suffer
substantial economic, social, and civic setbacks."
If America finds good reason to lament a lack of and/or
a faltering in the culture of reading; is Nigeria more righteous?
But to some people, I must admit, reading is a tedium,
and books are no more valuable than furniture and decorative appurtenances;
objects of gratification to prop up one’s life and social standing. You may
know someone like that; people who would not think nothing of purchasing high-priced
libraries or prohibitively priced stocks of books and collectible volumes with
which to prop up their egos and elaborately decorate a new home, without one
iota of intent to reading.
Personally, I consider this is a betrayal, of the
writer and of the noble aim of helping grow a more learned, more educated
society.
The Society
In this presentation, I do not at all wish to come
across as negative, rather I wish to make certain to pass the message that task
at hand is clear, is unambiguous and is enormous; for the writer as well as
society. As far as any self-respecting writer is concerned, Nigeria in its
diverse collectivity should be boldly and appropriately marked "UNDER CONSTRUCTION".
This vivid imagery has helped me on occasion,
personally, to see that there is redemption to be found for the seeming endless
quagmires and even morass into which Nigeria is enmeshed as a country and
collection of societies; that the Nigerian societies, for I see them as legion,
are not irredeemable.
Let us attempt to answer the question: what is
society?
Frank Chodorov, the author of The Rise and Fall of Society (1959), has devoted the whole of his
mature life to a struggle against the twin perversions of concentrated power in
the State and intellectual irresponsibility in the academy. In the book, The
Rise and Fall of Society, the first sentence blows you away:
"It is hard to think of an age which, with less reason, has been more
smugly self-satisfied than ours." Chodorov wrote this book in 1959!
Chodorov laments the distortion and outright denial of truth in favour of
self-worship of the State. Chodorov vows to defend the individual and natural
law.
I may not entirely
share Chodorov’s philosophical outlook and ideological leanings, but I
appreciate specific contentions he has raised about society. And I fully subscribe to Chodorov’s description of society
in his book. In chapter four smartly titled Society
Are People, he writes:
"SOCIETY IS A COLLECTIVE CONCEPT and nothing else; it
is a convenience for designating a number of people. So, too, is family or
crowd or gang, or any other name we give to an agglomeration of persons.
Society is different from these other collective nouns in that it conveys the idea
of a purpose or point of contact in which each individual, while
retaining his identity and pursuing his private concerns, has an interest. A
family is held together by family ties, a crowd consists of a number of people
bent on some common venture, such as a baseball game or a lecture. Society, on
the other hand, embraces the father and the son, the doctor and the farmer, the
financier and the laborer—a host of people following all sorts of vocations and
avocations, pursuing a variety of goals, each in his own way, and yet held
together by a purpose which is in each of them. But Society is still a word,
not an entity. It is not an extra "person"; if the census totals a
hundred million, that's all there are, not one more, for there cannot be any
accretion to Society except by procreation." (Italics and
emphasis mine)
Simply put, I, from Chodorov’s definition, understand society
to be people, getting together in a
meaningful conglomeration, bound together by common norms, to pursue purpose
within the purview of agreed strictures and system of accountability (or non-accountability,
in case of outlaws), building unique sociology all of their own making. This
means that there are many factors and elements that can go to shape the emergence
and development of any society.
Books (through the writer) can duly be regarded as one
of these inescapable elements. Books can shape
society; this, however, must be a deliberately desired goal. By extension, this
infers that the writer can shape
society.
What elements then are shaping the Nigerian societies
at the present time? we may ask. As far back as 1967, a writer of renown and in
his literary distinction outstanding, had opined that modern Africa (Nigeria
included by association) was not a construct of writers. In The Writer in Modern African State
publication which was an outcome of the African-Scandinavian Writers’
Conference which held in Stockholm in 1967, Professor Wole Soyinka writes "the present philosophy, the present direction of
modern Africa, was created by politicians, not writers." I daresay the
politicians have even lost the plot to the political jobbers and quacks with an
aggravated military interregnum hangover. Several
other scholars and commentators have reinforced the same message at different
forums all over the world whenever Nigeria has to be described. In essence,
Nigeria has yet to become a learning society.
A flourish of writers had we permitted them to thrive
would have delivered to us, a learned, self-critical and reflective learning society. Somewhere else I have
written about the nature of a learning
society. I wish that Nigeria would become truly a reading and learning
society, now or in the nearest future.
In a blog post titled "Promoting Creative Mindset - Building a Culture of
Learning" I once wrote:
"Ignorance is a natural state except you
beat it back with the instrument of learning and enlightenment. Because
learning requires concentrated effort and investment, people generally tend to
follow the path of least resistance – which is to live with ignorance.
"The real
calamity is when ignorance gains prevalence and ascendancy, and, more
tragically, the ignorant climb into leadership. Ignorance has blossomed into a
growth industry in Nigeria. If knowledge is power, then ignorance is
disempowerment. The vast majority of the
citizenry are deliberately disempowered by a handful of conspirators and
collaborators. People prefer others ignorant so they can deprive, dispossess,
and disenfranchise them. …
"The real death of learning in Nigeria began
with the neglect and eventual abandonment of public library culture.
"In his memoir, I. Asimov: A Memoir, Isaac Asimov, prolific writer and American
immigrant, wrote "I received the fundamentals of my education in school,
but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details,
the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished
child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door
to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had
the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read
constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can
only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one
more way to destroy itself."
"Ikhide Ikheloa, blogger, social and
literary critic, wrote in his blog post titled The Library Lives Still, "As a little boy growing up in
Nigeria, I travelled the world in books. The walls of my school’s library
fairly throbbed with the power of words. I loved the library and it was one
place where you could find me, basking in the smell of books. I remember the
few distractions that kept me from the library of my childhood."
"We need
accessible and well-stocked libraries once more – whatever kinds may be
suitable, and whatever form is affordable. Along with extra-curricular
activities which encourage interactions with books. …
"A Learning Society would value learning for its own
sake; it would place emphasis on learning about self, relationships and
community.
"A Learning Society:
·
would be
challenging, questioning, creative, curious and risk-taking
·
would be
compassionate, collaborative, caring and playful
·
would
promote social justice, be open to change and have an international perspective
"A Learning Society would be open to all. There would
be access for everyone with a spectrum of opportunities, entry points,
locations and routes and it would not necessarily be about formal recognition,
qualifications or be institution based. The learner would be at the heart of
such a society with the natural human desire to learn acknowledged, affirmed
and nurtured. The Learning Society would be aspirational, inspirational and
courageous; invest in individuality, in being in community, in persons in
relationship, both with each other and the world."
Without promoting the writer and his/her products and
engaging with them to provide illumination and direction, to fill up square
metres upon square metres of libraries and learning places, Nigeria is dead in
the water of ignorance and underdevelopment.
This is the Nigerian writer’s Macedonian Call: come
over here and write to set us at liberty!
Counsel for the Emerging writer for her
Journey
"How
vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
― Henry David Thoreau
Well you have lived;
you have also taught and gathered rich materials with which to work. You have
no excuses anymore. Go ahead and write.
You may not be able
to create the road which your words will take you, but, at least, you can be
prepared that there never will be a dull moment in this world of working with
words. As much as you can travel light, for it promises to be exciting, and you
will gather much luggage of strange and exciting experiences (and, hopefully,
accolades, too) along the way.
Without doubt, the
readership and the Nigerian disparate collection of societies require empowerment;
you have your work cut-out for you.
I wish you a safe and productive travel on this exciting road of the letters.
May you pen wax mighty and grow stronger daily. May your ideas gain the
attention of the audience for which they were/will be forged.
