A Kuwait Newspaper article on Literary scene (The Kuwait Times)

Defining the local literary scene with Yahya Talib
Published Date: November 21, 2008 By Hussain Al-Qatari
Arabic literature is going through a transitional phase, what with the emergence of a genre of popular fiction and the attention of the West in translations of Arabic works. The new genre of Arabic pop-fiction became especially apparent with the publication of female Saudi author Rajaa Al-Sanea’s controversial novel Banat Al-Riyadh (translated into English and published by Penguin under the title ‘Girls of Riyadh’). Together with the works of Alaa Al-Aswani (The Yacoubian Building, and Chicago) these works made evident the existence of Arabic pop-lit in the bookstores of the region after being dominated by translations of English pop-lit with works of authors like Danielle Steele, Stephen King and James Patterson. As the new genre appears, new problems of censorship arise. Al-Aswani’s books were banned in Kuwait, for example, causing a sudden and abrupt shut-down of Kuwait’s one and only Virgin Megastore. Al-Aswani’s novels were accused of featuring taboo issues that touch upon the red lines of religion and sexuality. Away from censorship and its prejudice, a number of individuals foster a passion for Arabic literature, reading it and studying its aesthetic value. Kuwait Times interviewed Yahya Talib, a writer and comparative literature scholar to talk about the literary scene in Kuwait and the beauty of Arabic literature and language.
KT: How would you define the local literary scene?Talib: There is a literary scene, but is it popular? I would say no. there is a literary scene but it is confined to the ‘reading’ public in Kuwait and the Gulf region, which is very small in comparison with other Arab countries. So there isn’t much to be sought after in terms of the creation of a pop literature scene in the Gulf area except among colloquial poetry. In that, you will find a very active scene; for here, people memorize, love and adore these poets, their poems are often quoted and used as song lyrics. In my opinion, I personally consider that to be related and is a natural legitimate child of Arabic lit, since it is written in a dialect derived from the Classical language, in addition to the fact that the poetry itself takes themes, ideas, ideals, techniques, rhyme, rhythm from Arabic poetry. If you’re talking about Arabic literature in general, then you will be able to find not as much of a scene as the European and American pop-culture. The European writers have a very huge fan base for books. Writers there publish 10,000 copies, while here an Arab young writer prints 1000 copies, and, mind you, there isn’t usually a second print. However, this is just to talk about the Gulf region. In the Arab world in general, you have better reception for literature as the cultural literary community/scene is centuries old in cities like Cairo, Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus and many other cities and (as problematic as the term is) cultural ‘centers’. These city-dwelling communities are established, and education has been widespread among its people for centuries and that would, in time, create a larger cultural and literary community (perhaps relatively speaking) than those communities in the Gulf region.
KT: What about the ‘city-dwelling community’ in Kuwait?Talib: It’s very recent, though I’m very optimistic. Kuwait and other Gulf countries were poverty-stricken, semi-tribal unrecognized communities up until mid-20th Century . After the oil-boom of the 50s, the literary and cultural scene started to expand and mostly in Kuwait (Al-Arabi magazine in 1958, the Writers Association and the Formative Arts Society and other cultural societies were all established in the 50s and 60s). But with that oil-boom came consumer-culture and the age of Globalization followed, thus stopping the regular slow process of the creation of a strong culturally informed public. However, literature is slowly seeping into the popular culture. People are getting to slowly learn about local literary figures. If you ask any Kuwaiti about who Layla Al-Othman is, quite a large number will tell you that they’re familiar with the name because of the controversial haze that surrounds her name. We have a culture that seeks controversy. These writers may not represent the real literary scene in Kuwait, which has its own characteristics and themes. It is developing regardless of these obstacles if I may call them so.
KT: When they write, how controversial are they? Do they, for instance, cross the red lines of religion?Talib: Yes, some writers do tackle such issues. They cross the red line very much. Some of them actually choose to provoke censorship in Kuwait, by presenting their works to be censored, while others don’t.
KT: How do they go around censorship?Talib: If you’re a writer trying to publish a book, wanting to sell it in local bookstores and press houses in Kuwait, you will have to get the approval of the Ministry of Information. This means that the Ministry will (most likely) censor your work. However, you only need to do that if you’re publishing to sell here.Now, there are writers who intentionally do that. They present their work to the Ministry to be censored, and they anticipate a ban. I actually know a writer who, in a very recent interview, has actually bluntly and proudly mentioned ‘My book was banned.’ These writers spark a controversy around their work in order to gain big sales. Thus, the banning of books became a marketing tactic through which writers gain big sales.
KT: What about the banned works? What issues do they tackle from your readings of works of writers?Talib: Religious, mainly. And some works tackle sexual issues. Some writers do that very bluntly – this is from my literary critical point of view as a reader – they do tackle these issues only to provoke people and censorship. Some of them aren’t even literary, it is sometimes stripped from all its literary values and is plain direct writing: I hate this, I hate that, etc. Not that I am supporting censorship. On the contrary, I fight censorship and self-censorship as well. What I personally am against is the production of literature for the sole purpose of defying censorship. Literature to those writers thus becomes a counter-action; their works in result become didactic, blunt, unsubtle, and naively ‘angry’. And to draw an example, one of the books published last year and that was banned is, in my literary opinion, not worthy of any mention as it didactically instructs people against the establishment - be it religious or social (an act which is in itself not one that I am against). But that it is done in that counter-literature form that it becomes devoid of any literary value. A simple search on the Net would prove that all the reviews discuss the book as one that is banned. So it is a discussion of the ban, not of the book. It is not literature, it is the act of censorship being read by the controversy-seeking simple-minded reader.
KT: Moving on to a different subject, why is there in our region a bigger market for literature in the English language rather than in the Arabic?Talib: There are a lot of factors that contribute to this problem – I consider it a big problem, personally. Speaking as a Comp Lit student, I am shocked everyday to see that some people are completely oblivious to the literary scene not only in Kuwait, but to the whole Arab region. The majority knows – and mind you, this only comes from Western media – Naguib Mahfouz. Do they know—as big a name, as important a writer as– Abdulrahman Munif? Or Yousif Edris? Taha Hussein? Poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Adonis – these are poets that were nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But do they know about them? I am talking about the Gulf region here. If you go to Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq, there is a relatively bigger number of people who are familiar with such writers.But in our region, education has failed to bring students any closer to their culture and literature. They see it as being oppressive and restrictive to their idea of freedom. They believe as a result that Arabic literature must be in parallel to the image they have in mind.
KT: A great majority believes that the educational system in government schools is insufficient for teaching Arabic literature. What is your personal take on that?Talib: If you study in a public school, the material that you study in Arabic courses is usually very classical, very mild, and its only purpose is not as much to introduce literature as it is to introduce Arabic language. That is why a lot of the Arabic courses always focuses not on the literary merit of the text, but on the grammar. Private schools, on the other hand, don’t even have a good Arabic course curriculum whatsoever. People fail in their Arabic courses and can still graduate from school with diplomas. So you end up having high school graduates who study English literature and become scholars afterwards, and they go abroad representing, mind you, Kuwait and the Arab world. When they go to the US or to Europe for grad school, they are considered Arab students. But when asked by scholars abroad, do they know how to speak about their own culture? Would they answer a simple question as: ‘Name three novelists from the Arab world’? I must say this is a real shame. Not only do these people misrepresent literature in the Arab world, but they add up to the stereotype of us.
KT: How do you think we can overcome this problem?Talib: You cannot overcome this unless people themselves are interested in literature and culture and know and appreciate its value. I personally graduated from a public school, but like many people, I grew up in a family of readers. It’s all about loving books and loving reading. So it all depends on the person themselves and their family. If you choose to know a culture, you will learn about it whether you are educated about it or not. All you need to do is read. The problem is that people who are Arabs disregard their own literature. Do they assume that among the 200 million Arabic speakers, none of them can produce literature good enough to compete with the translated literature that they read? Arabic has a very profound literary presence, especially in the form of poetry. Therefore, when in the early 20th century the Arabs were introduced to modernist techniques in writing poetry (free verse, prose poetry and such) from the West, they excelled in their imagery using the very same techniques they borrowed from the West. Arabic literature is 15 centuries old, and is time-honored and cannot be simply disregarded because it cannot compete with popular-fiction published and marketed by large corporations around the world.