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 9

One Lie Begets More Lies

In Sudan Is My Land, a collection of essays, Tayeb Salih described Francis Deng  as “a cosmopolitan with great knowledge of Arabic and high mastery of English. He is a writer and novelist who has the privilege novelists normally have to see things from different angles.”

What concerns us the most in Salih’s testimony about Francis Deng is its last segment, and more accurately, the very second sentence of the citation abstractly and not only for being expressed in favor of Mr. Deng. It is not surprising that Tayeb Salih has granted novelists the advantage of seeing things differently, given that he’s a novelist eager to include his proposition as if talking about an axiom.

Is it true that novelists have the “aptitude/talent” of looking at things from more than one angle (regardless of Tayeb Salih’s presumed bias)? In fact, novelists have it and more; they do master the art of “telling lies,” as we have detailed in two previous essays. Without having any deliberate moral judgment, we would rather opt for “lies” if we want a more explicit term to replace “fantasy” (their pretext for committing falsity).

Laying Tayeb Salih’s statement on the line for the sake of boldness/daring (which the great novelist definitely did not have in mind; what he thought about at that time was almost the opposite, i.e., that novelists had the ability to create great works should be received positively from a moral perspective), novelists have the competence to lie from more than one angle. The middle ground where the different opponents can meet may be summarized in the word “fantasy” being equivalent to (as we saw earlier) the morally palatable and aesthetically/artistically glorified “process of telling lies.”

It is not that easy to go beyond the fact that once a reader finishes a novel, he is supposed to experience (in parallel with ecstasy) the feeling of abandonment because everything he has read is not real, even though it might be a higher expression of “the coveted truth,” so to speak.

It seems that the novel’s devotees are handling the “shock” of their disappointment—following a feverish passion for a wonderful novel they have just finished reading before they got back to reality anew—through sinking in further “novelistic lies” by engaging in other novels that would let them dive into the skies of desired truths. “Truth,” in this respect, corresponds precisely to our interpretation about the meaning of looking at things from more than one angle, a feeling (and act) that accompanies novelists even outside the scope of their literary work (see the testimony of Tayeb Salih in regard to Francis Deng). Salih wanted to apply the same notion, as if it were an axiom, to all novelists.

This is then the recipe of “fighting fire with fire” that the supporters of the new trend (readers, critics, and novelists) cling to so as to protect them from the shocking effects of encountering reality as long as future novels, whatever “realism” they may claim, can fly far beyond fantasy.

The novel may acquire a status worthy of appreciation provided its devotees admit that when a novel tells lies, it does not do more than simulate reality. Instead, they insist on extravagant promises for a virtuous city where novelists prevail armed with the promise of a better reality. Therefore, the most accurate role that would make the novel, along with its leaders and apostates, worthy of potential esteem could have been advocated by those devotees as a “reorientation” of the message of life—which is already hard to decipher—not only for the purpose of indirect explanation and confirmation, but also, and mainly, through flying across the shores of imagination.

Only through this interpretation can the novel gain a privilege that poetry (specifically Arabic lyrical poetry) missed. Poetry was mainly obsessed with either direct preaching of wisdom or excessive reliance on description across the various forms/purposes of ancient Arabic poetry.

The privilege in question can be more explicit when perceived as an “inverted movement” aimed at making ethics more flexible so as to help people live in accordance with practical and acceptable “utilitarianism” with the least possible remorse. That interpretation is certainly more useful to the novel’s devotees than the utopian claim that its raison d’être lies in paving the way for idealism (principles and dreams alike) to access the minds of people despite the bitter reality.