In a series of forty-five short essays that constitute his book translated into English under the title “Damn the Novel: When a Privileged Genre Prevails Over All Forms of Creative Writing,” Sudanese-born poet and essayist Amr Muneer Dahab denounces the privilege granted to the novel, the literary genre that is treated by publishers—and viewed by the public—as superior to all others and is virtually guaranteed marketability and profitability, to the detriment of others.

In this series of posts, the prolific author shares excerpts from the book.

This week: Chapter 10

The Novel for the Novel’s Sake

It is (somehow) permissible for some of the novel’s devotees to praise the narrative genre by analogy to “art for art’s sake” as a principle; that is, there is no motive behind the surrender to the euphoria of the novel but embracing the new trend without having any deliberate or even spontaneous attention to grant it supremacy over other forms of literary writing, or over writing altogether. Proponents of the novel may perhaps have the right to prefer—spontaneously or deliberately—their narrative devotion over other forms of creative writing, but they are not permitted to reinforce the (privileged) literary brand as being worthy of exclusive reign over the current era in retaliation for poetry’s domination (in terms of both space and time) throughout the Arabic literary tradition for more than ten centuries.

Nevertheless, it is common among novel lovers that they declare their affection through exclusion—the exclusion of the other competitors with a blow, and they’d rather it be a knockout. The novel’s fiercest competitor still unwilling to come down (though staggering) is verse, referred to above and throughout this book. This is due to the fact that literary arts such as the story and the short story are not considered to be among the most blatant rebels. They easily fall within the novelistic camp when one is categorizing literary genres as either friend or foe.

Worst of all, respondents to the “epidemic fever” of following the trend (of loving novels) are basically found among critics and novelists and not among the members of the novel’s devoted readers. Such readers resist pursuing the pleasure of a familiar art form, let alone spend much effort tasting other passions. They seem to be trying to escape an uncalculated adventure that might put their already palpable pleasure at risk.

Based on the foregoing, critics seem to be biased toward a particular literary genre even at the expense of banning the other existing genres, in case praise of the privileged category is not enough to keep people from the remaining creative writing genres; the literary category in question will end up topping the hierarchy. This is exactly what today’s prominent critics are doing in favor of the novel.

Moreover, quite a few poets have abandoned poetry to curry favor with the novel (or at least have decided to experiment with writing narrative fiction more than once) in search of literary glory they couldn’t find through verse (the most important phase of Arabic cultural heritage). Even today’s critics are deserting poetry criticism to adopt the criticism of the most prevailing literary genre and, accordingly, the one with the highest potential to guarantee prominence.

The discovery of novelistic talents has become one of the critics’ favorite missions, carrying it out as if they were saints preaching good conduct and warning against the disastrous consequences of evil. As far as literature is concerned, evil consists in everything existing independently outside the novelistic genre rather than being, according to the natural and logical definition, every work of poor value from an exclusively artistic point of view. This is true even when dealing with a well-known novel.

What makes the novel impose its authority to such an extent that it can effortlessly transcend the boundaries set by those in charge of assessing the different genres of literature? From this side, the novel seems to be a story of a real mass phenomenon which is too late to avoid (except for those who still cling to “literary orthodoxies”). It seems that all that can be done is to interpret the reasons behind the new sweeping wave, rather than to question its legitimacy to dominate. Besides, it seems that most of the critics pretend they are still committed to verse criticism as if they were reluctantly performing an indispensable ritual. These pretenders dissect (analyze) pieces of verse at their disposal with a hidden arrogance toward a literary genre that belongs (in their concealed opinion) to the past. They inevitably confirm the validity of the poems that prove to be soundly original, with much pity for the “poor poets,” referring to them as being “right men at the wrong time.” I avoid mentioning that the statement in question actually reads “wrong men in the right time” on account that the novel is the “manifest destiny” of the present time whose authority must take over everybody, though not necessarily through the perspective of “the novel for the novel’s sake.”