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 32

The Essay: A Question of Quantity and Quality

Back to the essay as an independent literary art, not necessarily to compare it with the other existing genres. Our aim is to read its deep potential literary influence. And if we reach the point of making certain that the essay genre has an active literary effect, we will probably not need much effort to prove its parallel influence on the real part of life similar to that of other genres attaining much public acceptance and prominence.

We have discussed earlier in this book that there were those who made some insinuations because the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington originated from an essay that pleased people, so the writer decided to fatten it into a book, occupying people’s minds worldwide. Still, I am insisting on the statement that having a book evolved from an essay is a sign of the greatness of the essay as a genre and not a demerit for the book that evolved from it.

But what would have happened if Huntington stopped his prophecy about the clash of civilizations at the limits of the essay? (Was that prophecy realized the way this man saw it?) The most appealing answer that deserves consideration is that the bounds of the concept would have been much more limited than the wide-open perspectives it achieved after the publication of the book. My intention then is not arguing about the book, which doubled the influence of the essay. But when we consider many essays, which have enriched the literary arenas and occupied their practitioners and readers, we can at least doubt that the original idea of The Clash of Civilizations wouldn’t have had that considerable effect if it had stopped at the limits of that very essay.

We have cited many examples of great essays, which many books included. The most famous one in relation to the Arab arena is Wahy Al-Qalam (Revelation of the Pen) by Mustafa Sadiq ar-Rafi’i, besides the books of Ibrahim ’Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini such as Qabdo AlReeh, Hasad Alhasheem, and Sondok Adonia, let alone the book of Taha Hussein, On Pre-Islamic Poetry, which is actually a set of lectures (the lecture as the oral twin of the essay) collected in a book that (pre)occupied people’s thinking.

That of course was at the level of the Arab (cultural/literary) world. In the same context, the Western arena showed more daring as usual where the essay makes its impact on its own without being included with others in a collection of essays, or being fattened into a book. The examples about this in the West are too lengthy to be listed briefly, but still we can note “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes as the most eminent Western essay in the literary world.

In the introduction to his book The Author: The New Critical Idiom (the translated version by Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority: Kalima), Andrew Bennett stated: “This book begins with a discussion of the two most influential essays on authorship in twentieth-century criticism, Barthes’s ‘The Death of the Author’ and Foucault’s ‘What Is an Author?’ (1969). In many aspects, these essays have dominated discussions of authorship throughout decades since their first publication: they have largely set the terms of the debate and have in equal measure been applauded for their radical reinterpretation of the concept.”

We may thereby give another example about an essay causing literary revolution by Michel Foucault’s “What Is an Author?” as Andrew Bennett signaled above. Nevertheless, the antecedence and popularity of “The Death of the Author” make us more occupied with Roland Barthes and his difference-making essay in this context.

The essay by Barthes consists of twenty-five hundred words approximately in seven nonlinked paragraphs, as Bennett stated reacting to the essay’s criticism. Personally, this is what made me appreciate it more. The absence of methodical rigidity in the Barthes essay is a doubled testimony of supremacy of the essay as a literary genre, far from any academic recommendation that may pull it into the box of purely scientific research. It took “The Death of the Author” from between the university’s narrow-spaced walls into a wider literary horizon. Somehow, this is applicable to Foucault’s essay which is twice the size of Barthes’s with more prudence in its methodical aspect. Still, respecting the methodical aspect did not put it in a better situation in terms of criticism, but it was criticized side by side with “The Death of the Author” with claims of their inconsistency, imprecision, and the inclusion of historical paradoxes, as Bennett noted.

About “The Death of the Author” specifically, and referring to the publication date of the essay in 1967, Bennett stated: “Since then the coffin of that essay was being scratched up and looted. . . . The Barthes’ declaration has pushed this author’s case to the forefront of criticism and literary theory. . . . Barthes’ essay was considered as the last word being said about the author in the decades following its publication.”

And if Bennett confirms the importance of “The Death of the Author” concerning its theme in specific and literary theory in general, what concerns us in turn from what is mentioned above is the supremacy of the essay’s influence. We have visited Barthes’s essay precisely to stress the confirmation that the depth of impact is not a matter of length even when compared to another valuable essay in the same conceptual area as Foucault’s.

We have actually mentioned previously some Western matchless essays in terms of influence, such as Machiavelli’s essays that his famous book The Prince included, and with more expansion the lectures/essays of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “The Social Contract” and “Discourse on Inequality.”

Here, as a summary, I can say that I feel no embarrassment to note that, except for the literary and artistic work that fall under poetry, story, the play, drama writing, and the like, it is applicable for other literary and critical writings in various sections of life to be described as belonging to the genre of the essay, besides the purely literary work that walk proudly in essay garb. Therefore, every book is about to enter the genre of the essay except the lies of poets (I say with a severe sense of guilt) and the myths of storytellers (and this one with rested conscience).