‘Useless’ writing has plenty of value for readers

To read Evan Mwangi’s excoriation on Tony Mochama’s book, Nairobi: A Night Guide through the City-in-the-Sun (Saturday Nation, September 26, 2015) is to unexpectedly meet the high point of navel-gazing and deficit of irony in what passes as educated criticism.

In the name of literary and critical democracy, Prof Mwangi has the right to say what he says. But, if he thinks there is absolutely nothing to learn from Mochama’s book, what does he think we the readers learnt from his strident preaching? These pages aren’t enough to do a point-by-point rejoinder to the accusations levelled against Mochama’s book, and by extension, as Mwangi suggests, such like Kenyan writing.

First, there is a sense of irony for a supposedly very sophisticated critic to say that he learnt absolutely nothing from a book.

It is precisely the ‘nothing’ that is learnt that is actually learnt. Book critics are taught to learn something from all the texts they read and I am sure that the post-modernist that Mwangi always reminds us he is did indeed discover that in the nothingness of Mochama’s book something is lurking.

It may not be philosophically profound or immersed in narratives of African nationalism and the troubles of post-colonialism — which may allow African post-colonial experts in universities in the West to mint another academic journal publication — but it does capture some moments, sensibilities and realities of Nairobi.

SELF- INDULGENT CRITICISM

And at least it doesn’t pretend to be pursuing some grand narratives of freeing Africans from post- and neo-colonialism.

Second, why insult the author before telling us what your fight with him is all about? Why dismiss the book and the author as “… junk by self-promoting writers of no consequence.” Such statements used to be made some years ago by senior teachers of literature. It explains why for a long time the only scholars who wrote about Meja Mwangi, Mwangi Ruheni, Mwangi Gicheru, John Kiriamiti, David Maillu etc, were foreigners.

On this one, Prof Mwangi seems to be echoing some of his teachers, which is sad because indeed, throughout his rant, he doesn’t cite a single part, sentence or phrase from Nairobi: A Night Guide. Isn’t this a bit of self-indulgent criticism?

Third, why the name dropping in reading Mochama’s book? Why would Mochama care about Friedrich Nietzsche’s views on alcohol?

What if one read the book via psychoanalytical criticism? Wouldn’t I see the pervasive presence of alcohol and bar-hopping as some kind of a psychological warfare in the author’s – or say, the narrator’s – mind on how to narrate the hold that alcohol has over the lives of Kenyans?

Or I could simply say that it is a sociological representation of Kenyans’ love affair with alcohol as the recent attempt by the government to limit the consumption of beer and spirits showed. One doesn’t need to narrate this national tragedy with a Nietzschean subliminality.

Fourth, is there really a need in the 21st century to prescribe to an author the themes, language, style and tone of their writing? Really? What is the value of this kind of prescriptive criticism that constantly insists that African writers have to write in an ‘African’ way — so, Mochama’s night runner has to be mentally ill, sexually deviant and a rapist — but also of ‘world’ quality by having ‘complicated philosophies embedded in the … narration.’

This insistence on standards, which aren’t explicitly stated and explained — although one suspects that they are simply some individual’s idiosyncrasies — is quite tiring and insultingly stereotypical.

One would imagine that when a writer does the unexpected in the story, the reader feels enchanted enough. We can’t continue insisting that African writers have to be ‘African’ enough but also of the ‘world.’ It isn’t possible to tell stories with the stated objective of addressing both audiences at the same time. Should an African text arrest the attention of a global audience?

That is fine. Otherwise, African writers write for their ‘local’ audiences first. Mochama is writing for Nairobians who may see, feel and meet themselves, their families, friends or neighbours in a language that speaks to many of them and not necessarily to professors of post-colonial literature in Uncle Sam’s neighbourhoods.

Should criticism degenerate into insults for it to be tasty? Isn’t it in bad taste to call people names without saying exactly how they have wronged you?

Why the talk about ‘infantile’ language, ‘incompetent editor’, ‘primitive desire for cultural purity’, ‘a fool’s book meant to be read by fellow dunderheads’, among other thinly disguised slurs?

This seeming post-modernist freedom to say what one likes is a bit unsettling. What exactly is infantile about the language of the book? What exactly shows the incompetence of the editor of the book?

DRUNK KENYANS, SERIOUSLY?

Why judge other readers, in advance, as dunderheads? Isn’t this a bit arrogant? What about a little bit of critical empathy? In other words, any critic has the liberty to judge a book by their tastes.

But it is playing God to claim that a book is useless and so is its author, editor, publisher and any fool in future who might waste their money to buy it and time to read it.

Well, the tragedy of Prof Mwangi’s critique of Nairobi: A Night Guide is that he deliberately reads the book as if it is a novel. But nowhere does this book claim that it is a work of pure creativity. Indeed, the book was inspired by a widely read column that ran in the Standard newspaper in 2006.

Some of it is ‘true’ stories, of the author bar-hopping, encountering robbers or policemen deep in the night, meeting all kinds of shady characters in those bars, drinking himself into a stupor but waking up the following day to write about the escapades.

Clearly, some of the sections are imaginative additions. The book is simply a collection of one man’s sketches of what Nairobi can sometimes be at night and what Nairobians indulge in in the evenings.

Also Nairobians — or Kenyans for that matter — are clearly not the most drunk people in the world; and there are decent, hardworking Kenyans who drink alcohol paid for from their hard earned salaries, not stolen money.

As the editor and publisher of Nairobi: A Night Guide, I have no doubt that this book wouldn’t stand out on the reading lists of theory-driven post-colonial African literature classes in Ivy League American or exalted European universities, but I am sure that some time in future someone will acknowledge that it is some kind of a record of Nairobi in the early years of the 21st century.