Are We Alone, Arundhati Roy?

Z 





Two years ago we met in the coffee shop of Park Hotel in Delhi. What was supposed to be a short encounter became a few hours long heated discussion about literature and events of September 11th. Arundhati was about to depart India for the US where she was invited to speak. I suggested that September 11 should not be just remembered as an anniversary of attacks against WTC and Pentagon; it should be mourned as the day when, in 1973, Chilean military sponsored by the US government and private companies destroyed one of the oldest democracies on earth.



We discussed politics and we discussed mounting problems in India, but we also talked about the state of literature, topic about which we both felt passionate. We agreed that almost all great modern writers seemed to be in lethargic sleep or too frightened to address important global issues. Or maybe there were almost no great writers left.



Philosophy, politics, social criticism and vision were replaced by frivolous, entertaining plots. Pitiful state of today’s world; its disparities and scandalous post-colonial arrangement topped the list of some of the issues hardly discussed on the pages of contemporary novels. Fiction became politically and socially detached and therefore historically and morally irrelevant. Instead of aiming at retaining their status as the conscience of society, most of the writers opted for much more modest goals, turning themselves to entertainers and showbiz figures.



Great non-fiction writers were still around, writing brilliant books in the West, in India, and in Latin America, but the novel, a literary form so dear to both of us, seemed to be finished, sold out and stained by apparent - although somehow hesitant - collaboration with the business and commercial interests of those who were ruling our societies.



We parted in front of my hotel. I gave her a gift - a silk scarf from Vietnam - she gave me a hug, then entered her little beat-up car and drove away. I waved for a while, standing on the pavement, overwhelmed with absolute certainty that I just parted with one of the bravest writers of our time.



Since then I have not had a chance to meet her again, but while working in the South Pacific I came across one issue of Australian magazine The Bulletin, which carried a long article on Arundhati Roy by Jennifer Byrne. This is what writers do and have done through centuries — commenting on the societies in which they live. But now because writing and literature has become a kind of quote unquote commercial activity, it's dumbed them down like nothing ever has before, so we are supposed to be some kind of court entertainers.



Ms. Byrne asked whether there was really such a tradition, or was she (Roy) just being wishful? Yeah, there was, answered Arundhati Roy. Who were Sartre and George Orwell? And today it's reduced to something almost like toys, not even rigorous in your analysis. I mean who are the big writers today who have taken on what is huge in the world? Very few  unless they are on the other side. Like V.S. Naipaul commenting the other day that Saudi Arabia and Iran should be destroyed.



How could one disagree with Arundhati Roy? Of course, such a tradition was there for centuries, helping humanity to move forward. The greatest writers stood at the vanguard of the struggle against racism, colonialism, and imperialism. They were promoting social justice, fought for changes. Romaine Rolland, Anatole France, Emile Zola, and Maxim Gorky placed themselves on the side of exploited, enslaved human beings, demanding immediate change, even revolution.



J. B. Shaw — probably the greatest modern British playwright was consistently ridiculing entire capitalist dogma and his German counterpart, Bertold Brecht, was openly calling to arms against it.



There was an entire generation of outstanding novelists and thinkers in post-war France: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir to name just a few. All three ware active members of anti-fascist resistance, all three condemned the post-war arrangement of the world. In those days, philosophers and writers were not confined to the university campuses: when Sartre was addressing workers at a Renault factory, his speeches drew to the premises hundreds of thousands of men and women who, by the way, had no problem of understanding what he was talking about!



There were great novelists like Andre Malroux, Ernest Hemingway, and Saint-Exupery (author of famous philosophical book for children and adults — Little Prince), writers who fought in wars, engaging themselves not only by words but also by deeds. And their books were then selling by millions of copies, despite of the complex and often controversial topics they were addressing.



In the United States, Richard Wright shocked his readers all over the world with the novel Native Son, a damning, powerful and honest account of racism and discrimination of African Americans. A few decades later, Joseph Heller described the insanity of the war (Catch-22) and later the hypocrisy of corporate America (Good as Gold).



Latin America offered some of the greatest novelists of the 20th century: Carlos Fuentes, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Manuel Puig from the left, as well as Jorge Borges and Maria Vargas Llosa from the other side of the political spectrum. In Africa, Acebe described destruction of local cultures by the colonialism in his novel Things Fall Apart, while Indonesian Pramoedya Ananta Toer defined brilliantly a painful process of birth of the young nation and its horrific downfall after fascist coup in 1965.



These are just a few examples from the past, but the list is endless. The fact is that almost all great literature since ancient Greece has been dealing with the most important issues facing humanity: from Homer to Victor Hugo to Franz Kafka to Albert Camus. That the modern writers are stubbornly refusing to address serious problems of the world is a disturbing anomaly, exception from the historic rule; proof that something has gone terribly wrong, even in the societies that proudly claimed their intellectual brilliance. History of literature simply doesn't know any other period like this!



The world is full of tremendous stories. Global market fundamentalism and neo-conservative culture are overthrowing all democratic principals that humanity fought for for centuries. Millions of people are dying having no access to medicine, while pharmaceutical conglomerates (backed by the governments of rich countries) are blocking developing nations from producing cheep drugs that would save their men, women, and children.



Humanity is experiencing new colonial wars as well as religious and business extremism. Small island nations may soon disappear due to the global warming. The gap between rich and poor nations is growing. Quality of life in the United States is declining, while Europe is dismantling its welfare system. There is confusion and dissatisfaction in many developed countries, and there is anger and growing resentment towards the rich world in most of the desperate nations. In many poor places, conservative forms of religions are dangerously filling the gap left after systematic destruction of social movements and progressive governments.



Great stories are plentiful: they are offering themselves in desperate shantytowns of Lima and Jakarta, in the fast-food restaurants and sweatshops in the US where underprivileged men, women, and children are laboring at the minimum wages; in the battlefields of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa, in indigenous huts of Mexico, Bolivia, and Guatemala as well as in the small island nations of South Pacific that are slowly but irreversibly disappearing from the face of the earth.



These are stories of monumental proportions, honest and good stories, stories that can terrify while evoking compassion; stories that can call for action — stories that novel as a form is capable of telling.



If there is no lack of great stories, is there a lack of great writers? Or have they been silenced, sidelined and marginalized? Have they been broken and starved, or maybe forced to accept some regular job that allows them to survive but prevents them from writing? Have they sold out, writing romance novels and self improvement books, producing hundreds of pages describing their erections, coming of age, getting old or trying to solve some fictitious criminal plot?



There are still some great novelists left; not many, but there are. Jose Saramago, Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali, even Salman Rushdie who is presently levitating in some strange realm while we, down here, are hoping that he may soon land again on the progressive side of the barricade. There is still Gunter Grass and Garcia Marquez.



But there is also an acute lack of young writers, angry and daring, determined to change the world and to offer new alternatives to the stale intellectual swamp created by market/business fundamentalism and its faithful servant - cheap, thought-destroying entertainment industry that is lately swallowing almost all major publishing houses and independent bookstores.



It is easy and correct to a certain degree to say that it's now almost impossible to write a great novel against the establishment, while expecting it to be published and promoted. Media and publishing houses are far from being independent. Most of them are part of large companies which will be hardly ecstatic about printing books dangerous to their own interests and designs.



But the process of writing should never be fully influenced by the mercantile considerations. Writer is a storyteller, an artist, a witness, a judge and a thinker. He or she leaves important testimony about particular time and puts on the record what others would often not even dare to pronounce. Financial reward is important (as reward for any hard work should be), but longing for it can never influence the choice of the subject or style in which the book is written. If it does, the result is almost certainly rubbish.



I'm a novelist, and I believe that novel is the most complete artistic form capable of describing reality, state of the world, grievances and hopes of the people. I also believe that it should never aim at anything less than that.



My latest book: Point of No Return shows the world through the eyes of war correspondents, visiting places that are rarely covered by the mainstream media, offering provocative points of view that will be hardly acceptable to the present world of entertainment which now includes most of the mainstream publishing houses. But writing itself, writing the truth is a privilege and joy. It is worth any inconvenience, any hardship.



I suspect that Arundhati Roy would agree with my views. But are we becoming an endangered, almost extinguished species? Are serious topics going to be openly ridiculed and described as outdated? Is it already happening? Are the readers going to accept this approach? Are we really expected to become entertainers, clowns, even liars? Are we supposed to forget about all those great novels written in the past?



Or are we going to swim with all our strength against the powerful (main-) stream?



I don't think we have much choice. If we float, if we would allow ourselves to be carried by this current, we will end up in the land of irrelevance, oblivion, and shame.





 ANDRE VLTCHEK  writer, political analyst and filmmaker, presently working in Southeast Asia and South Pacific. Contact: andre-wcn@usa.net 



November 16, 2004