Diversity of Expression

Literature necessarily lives on diversity because it would be boring to read the same old stories ever again. Mind you, I wouldn’t take much pleasure in writing them down, either! Of course, there are themes and plots that are so characteristic of our human existence that we writers like using them as well-tried patterns or rough guidelines for our own work, but the stories that we produce are ours. Not one is the same as the other. Our approaches as well as our highlights are different. So are our tones and our styles. And it goes without saying that cultural background and language have their share in creating a unique story. 

Africa is a good example for the diversity of expression in literature. It’s a vast continent. It suffices to see the impressing vistas in Out of Africa to know that this is true. The film also proves that, even at a time when many believed in the supremacy of European civilization, there were people like Karen Blixen and Deny Finch Hatton who loved Africa as well as the people living there. However, they couldn’t strip off their culture and so it’s no surprise that Karen Blixen founded a European-kind school for the tribal children on her farm. Since then much of the original culture of the area must have got lost, but education was the key to independence, too. 

Even today Africa still is The Undervalued Continent as regards culture. Lamentably, the wealth of contemporary African literature isn’t very present in my corner of the planet. It’s simply overlooked and very few books of African authors are translated into German (at least to my knowledge). The situation may be better for those whose works are published in English or French, but it’s my impression that Europeans and (North as well as South) Americans keep dominating the best-selling lists. Of course, The Value of Best-Selling Lists is questionable because they give account only of high sales, but not of the literary quality of the books on them. 

J. M. Coetzee rose to fame as a novelist in the 1980s, but I never really perceived him as an African writer. Of course, he never made a secret of being South African, moreover one of Afrikaner decent. Quite on the contrary, he made his country the setting of his books. He wrote about South Africa and the living conditions there which made his work controversial in his own country. The marginalization of minorities in South Africa - Afrikaner and indigenous - takes up an important place in his work. And yet, J. M. Coetzee’s way of writing fits into the European, especially English tradition. The colonial past of South Africa keeps dominating the country’s culture. 

Albert Camus, too, is a writer whose name isn’t automatically linked with Africa in people’s minds. Much more often he’s referred to as an exponent of French existentialism and, in fact, he may have seen himself as belonging to France rather than to Algeria. After all, Albert Camus wasn’t a member of the native Arabian population of Algeria, but he was the son of French-Spanish settlers. Despite all, there can be no doubt about the Algerian youth of Albert Camus having influenced his writings as can be seen most strikingly in The Plague. All his life he felt affection for Algeria and he was critical of French politics regarding the country, and yet his culture was European, above all French. 

But indigenous Africans no longer stand in second line. There is a lot going on in the African literary scene. Authors are active at home as well as abroad as shows the big number of contributors to literary journals like African Writing Magazine, not to mention the host of entries on literary websites like African Writer. Through the internet African Words Around the Globe can spread across frontiers. Emerging as well as locally established authors can promote and possibly sell their books worldwide. In addition, important literature prizes like The Caine Prize help making the diversity of African literature visible. 

We readers and writers should be grateful for all the new ideas and points of view that African literature is going to give us.

Numbers and Words

John Forbes Nash, Jr. is a mathematical genius. He dedicated his life to numbers and even though I can’t produce any evidence for it, I’m quite sure that they helped him to fight back the paranoid schizophrenia from which he suffered and that, unlike in the film A Beautiful Mind, he refused to treat with medication. There’s hardly anything more logic and reliable in life than numbers. Mathematicians use them to express and explain the world. The ‘Nash Equilibrium’ is nothing but the expert try to put a certain aspect of the world into numbers… and to understand how things work. 

Words are different from numbers. They always imply some uncertainty because their meaning uses to vary according to interpretation, but essentially they serve the same purpose as numbers. They help us to understand what is going on and to communicate it to others. The advantage of words is that they aren’t limited to reality. Numbers can only represent what really is even if we haven’t been aware of it yet. Words, on the other hand, can also depict lots of alternatives: worlds of the present or the future that could or could not be, worlds of the past that could or could not have been. 

The flexibility of words is what attracts writers like me. They allow us to create something completely new that doesn’t follow established rules, maybe not even the laws of nature. Authors of fantasy and science fiction novels revel in the infinite possibilities of imagination. My stories are invented, too, but my approach is more realistic despite all. There is no witchcraft in my stories. No fabulous creatures, no exotic worlds. Human nature gives me enough room to experiment with characters and moods, to explore behaviour and emotions. Numbers are of little importance in this universe. 

Words are my key to understanding the world and the people surrounding me. With every story that I put to paper I learn more about the great mysteries of life and social intercourse, about society and its intricate mechanisms that so often astonish, disturb or confuse me. Like a mathematician I’m searching for hidden connections and patterns, but I can only express them in words that add up to complex stories. However, numbers anchor me in reality just like they brought back to reality John Forbes Nash, Jr. They give my world a definite and unchangeable frame. 

We need both – numbers as well as words. We need both – mathematicians as well as writers.

Age

This week my focus has been on people who have already seen passing many years and who had to come to terms with quite some changes as well as challenges in their lives. Not so long ago the elders were looked up to for their wisdom and for the share that they had in progress. Today they are often pushed away and sometimes treated like imbeciles. In our minds we equal the visible decline of physical power with a loss of mental skills although this isn’t true. Not everybody advanced in years suffers from Alzheimer’s disease like Fiona Anderson in ‘Away from Her’.

There are people who remain very active and alert until the last moment like Daniel Defoe or Susanna Tamaro’s Olga in ‘Follow Your Heart’, but in our glaring and loud world such individuals are almost invisible and inaudible. They are always around us, but we prefer to ignore them because they don’t fit into our society of the young, the good looking and the strong. Success must be achieved early in life. Someone settled isn’t expected to still have the necessary verve and power to bloom and do great things. However, there are occasional late bloomers.

Society still hasn’t internalized that human life, too, is constant evolution. Everybody is always changing. Nobody ever stays the same. We are born, we grow up, we come of age, we grow old, and we die. It’s always the same cycle. Somewhere on the road we are relabelled as old, less productive or even useless although we may still feel young in body and mind. Our internal count of years rarely goes synchronous with the Earth turning around the Sun. Also the inevitable decline of body and brain is very personal with age being only one factor in the process.

In a nutshell: age is nothing but a number and doesn’t decide when or if ever we will be the knitting granny in a rocking chair or the dozing grandpa on the veranda that appears before our inner eyes. We might as well be approaching our real bloom. Isn’t this a nice outlook?

Past Expectations

When we are children, our minds use to flow over with hopes and dreams of a glorious future. People around us, too, set faith and expectations in us to achieve great things once we’ll have grown up. We practice our innate talents, improve our skills, and broaden our knowledge. Little by little we grow out of the restrictions of childhood and get ready to occupy the adult world. Then we stand on our own feet and we trust in our power to make come true everything that we wish for. We choose a career. We start a family. We get about building the life that best matches our wishes and abilities.

We pick the rut that promises us the freedom to fulfil the desires of our young selves. At first, we are full of enthusiasm, working on the great future that we imagine to be destined for us, but it doesn’t take long and we realize that we need to make compromises on our way. We can’t always have exactly what we want! We could change direction to steer for our initial goals, but it’s easier to continue on the rut and to put up with a slight variation of our plans. It doesn’t make our lives less enjoyable, only more comfortable and more predictable. The security of the rut lulls us.

So year after year we follow the same old rut and the goals of our early years recede into the background ever more. Then comes the day when we make a balance of what we have achieved. We are having good lives, satisfying lives, and fulfilled lives. We could be happy, and yet, there’s something in us that pushes us forward, that wants more. It doesn’t matter that we achieved much that we had aimed at. We have met many expectations that family and friends had set in us. We have even met the greater part of our own expectations in us, but they are past expectations. Now we're only supposed to continue as ever.

We have new hopes and dreams although life has taught us to be humble. It’s better to take things easy, to make a compromise. We use our free time to sit down and write. At last we pen the stories that have been buried in our souls all the while. We realize that we have been too busy and too settled to hear them call out to us. Now we want to share them with the world and do our best to have them published. However, we are no longer children who believe that the world is only waiting for us to come out. We’re realistic about the future and we’re past esaggerated expectations - our own and those of others.

Hope, however, never dies. The future is ours!

The Importance of Being... Perseverant

While working on this week’s posts, I was ever again reminded of how important it is for an artist to persevere. Success rarely falls into our laps at once. On the contrary, it uses to be the fruit of much thought paired with hard work. The Commitments needed to find their niche – soul music. George Bernard Shaw needed to find his medium – stage plays. James Joyce needed to find his style – stream of consciousness. The editors and contributors of The Bohemyth are defining their writing selves on the internet. And I? I’m forging this blog into shape with every post that I share.

Every musician, writer, designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, director, actor, comedian can tell you one or two things about the struggles that their choice of career implies. Life is no bed of roses, even less for an artist! Rejection and polemics pave our ways every day. As long as the public ignores us, we’re nothing but would-be or hobby artists for the rest of the world. We’re expected to earn our livings with something useful like everybody else and to squeeze our vocation into our scarce free time. Some can deal with the situation, while others go to pieces under the pressure.

Our materialistic society appreciates creativity only in so far as it observes the rules of economy and supports the system. Market indicators decide about the future of young artists. Sex and crime sell? Writers take care to include sex and crime into your novels! This is not the way how you are writing? Sex and crime are not your themes? Too bad. Maybe you have a fantasy novel about witches or vampires on store? No? And how about some chick lit? This isn’t your genre either. Then you’re hopeless. It’s your own fault, if you remain an unpublished author.

Unfortunately, most publishers really shrink back from writers who dare swimming against the current. Their priority definitely is to sell books, not to discover literary genius. They are seldom willing to take more risk than is inevitable in the business and prefer to concentrate on mainstream. George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce were lucky. They met the right people who believed in their creative work. Who knows if either of them would ever have become so famous, if he hadn’t found a person farsighted enough to give him a chance and to support him?

Let’s hope that there are still some people of the kind of Jack Grein and Harriet Shaw Weaver on this planet to discover us.

The Bohemyth - Literary Journal

Doing research for this week's posts, I stumbled across an interesting Irish website dedicated to literature: 'The Bohemyth', a new literary journal. More precisely it's a wordpress blog made into an e-weekly that publishes short stories, flash fiction, personal essay, and photography. The Dublin based online literary journal was launched only in October 2012 by Alice Walsh, herself an emerging writer (born in 1984) with a growing list of publications. She is joined by another young Irish writer from Dublin, Michael Naghten Shanks (born in 1987), for the editing.

The idea behind 'The Bohemyth' is to give writers space to publish their work online, but not together with heaps of other texts, so readers will find it difficult to give them the attention that they deserve. Instead, each one of the weekly issues features only a small and selected number of contemporary texts "with a literary bent" and photography. The editors keep a sharp eye on the quality of their literary journal and expect much from contributors. In the submission guidelines they ask for "stories that seduce and savage souls" and for "images that linger in minds".

Of course, I haven't read the entire e-journal, but only a few bits and pieces of it here and there to get an impression. Quite obviously I liked what I found since otherwise I wouldn't bother to write about it on my blog, would I? Contents are a good mix of contemporary writing in short prose with some pats of experimental poetry in between and photos. As far as I could see, most contributors so far have been Irish or with close relations to Ireland although the editors are open for submissions from anywhere on this planet, provided that they are in English and previously unpublished.

The literary journal's homepage shows the latest issues with their date of publication that can be liked, shared, and commented as usual. It takes, however, quite some scrolling to read the whole issue  – something that I find a bit annoying, but maybe this is because I and my peers have still grown up with books and papers instead of tablet computers and e-readers. The archives and lists of recent posts as well as categories (issues) are only at the foot of the page and hamper browsing. If I'm not mistaken, a list of contributors is completely missing at the moment.

Overall 'The Bohemyth' is an interesting new journal for literature lovers as well as aspiring writers that will surely find its readers although I think that the editors should consider a few changes of design in order to make the different contents easier accessible for people like me who aren't passionate about having their finger on the mouse wheel, touch pad or screen all the time to scroll down for what feels like ages. At any rate, I wish Alice Walsh and Michael Naghten Shanks good luck for their enterprise in the constantly changing universe of the internet.

Spring is Coming

The winter cold had effaced most of the garden's usually vivid colours, when it spread its white blanket over the ground and everything else in the city for the first time in November. Months have gone by since that detrimental day. During the past days the last patches of snow melted under the strengthening sun and with the help of warm winds from the South, but the lawn in the front garden still kept its brownish green and messy look. Only the mellow yellow of the primroses scattered all over the lawn proved that spring was finally coming. At least, that was the sole sign of spring that jumped to the eyes at first sight. Having a closer look, tiny green tips appeared between the frost-burnt blades of old grass and the crumbly soil that felt soft under the feet. Soon the last reminders of the dead season would disappear and the colours of life would take over once more. What a pleasure!

Writers and Travelling

When I wrote the short biographies of Hans Christian Andersen and Jules Verne, I noticed that they have something in common: they loved travelling. Until then I had never really thought about it, but it seems to be quite common for a writer to enjoy seeing and being in places other than their home. Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, William Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, José Saramago, Vikram Seth, Bill Bryson, and many others were on the road a lot and quite obviously drew inspiration from their travel.

At one point or another even novelists may come up with a travellogue although in some cases – that I won’t mention here because I have too much respect for everyone who takes the effort to write a book – they should better have refrained from it. Others only benefit from the impressions that people and places leave in their minds. Writers can get inspired by everything and nothing, but travels certainly improve the odds to encounter something so far unknown or unthought of. A change of scenery can make a big difference. It opens minds and can change points of view.

Someone stuck in a writer’s block will be advised to go abroad and see the world. An aspiring writer like me often gets the same advice, but what if it’s out of the question to travel? The career of a writer seldom starts off like a rocket. Most of us have to make sacrifices in order to be able to follow our dream. To make a living we usually are compelled to have jobs that don’t give us the freedom to spend weeks or months on end abroad unless we manage to work there. And even if we can go abroad for a job for a while, the routine of daily life always catches up.

The solution that I found for me, is to travel in my mind – with my nose stuck in a book or with my pen on a sheet of letter-paper. I gain a lot of inspiration from both reading books and writing letters. How about you?