To the innocents who believe that writers are ALWAYS progressives!
During the Cold War, there was Vietnam war (if you still remember) when the American Army was burning Vietnamese villages with villagers trapped inside. There was a breathtaking photo of a young Vietnamese girl running naked, her body in flames.
At that time a great and well known American writer, John Steinbeck, went to Vietnam and wrote a book. In 1964, Steinbeck was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom by President Johnson.
In 1967, at the behest of News day magazine, Steinbeck went to Vietnam to report on the war there. Thinking that the Vietnam War was a heroic venture, he was considered a Hawk for his position on that war. Both his sons served in Vietnam prior to his death.
Steinbeck wrote about the beauty of the American aeroplanes in the Vietnamese sky and "all the Americans Boys" who were fighting the Communist dragon.
I still like to read him but I cannot forget that or forgive him!
In reading Brothers Karamazov without having in mind that the book is one of the greatest pieces of classical Russian prose, then one will discover the deep and clear 'morals' of Dostoevsky who sent the innocent officer into exile with his lover, and had the stingy father killed off by his 'problematic' son as a punishment for his sleeping around.
I will mention a real story that happened about two months ago in Egypt when some poets informed the authorities about a colleague of theirs whose poem had been published in a magazine; the magazine was been taken off the market and the poet is threatened with jail!
We all now what the 'Union of Writers' in the eastern block did to certain writers who did not reflect official opinion, and how some writers work as informers against other writers.
There are a lot of studies on the complicated relationship between the writer and authority, especially in the third world.
So, writers are creatures that alternate between being gods and devils. .. gods in the way they want to punish and be rewarded, telling people a lot of things NOT TO DO, and devils in the way they 'show' people forbidden fruits.
I prefer to be a devil!
Raouf
Friday, June 22, 2007
On suppressive writings, Part 2
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
On suppressive writings
In answer to Elly's question...
A writer can be as suppressive as his or her society.
See Retrospect and Prospect, published in Al-Ahram Weekly here
On writing
When I studied theatre in Warsaw in the 70s, the teacher of theatre directing would chose the most awful plays in the city and ask us to see them and write about them. Later we would discuss the weak points of the play, then he would tell us: now you know how to put a bad play on the stage!
When I was writing Ithaca, my latest book based on the Queen Boat scandal of homosexuals in Egypt (see Human Rights Watch In a Time of Torture), I had to stop writing and undergo an operation for the prostate. After a week in hospital I needed about three months to return slowly to my writing and to my book. I tried to put into it all my experience on writing a complicated text that contains many levels. The motto of my Polish teacher was always before me. Now I'm answering a long interview by mail on my writings in general, and my ideas about why I wrote Ithaca - a book which provoked a lot of hostility on the Internet. The interview in Madny with al Ansari on what he called the culture of hate in Arab-Muslim countries gave me a deep insight which I have always had, but had never expressed as accurately and completely as he.
Al Ansari also emphasised the principal of denial, which is a major characteristic of Arab-Muslim behaviour; that we are great and good people but the West and Israel are after us and they are the ones who are plotting the mass killing in Iraq and the clashes between Egyptian Muslims and Copts!
What has this to do with writing? A lot because BAD WRITING is a reflection on the depth of a writer - the corruption and fantasy; and a writer is the mirror of his or her society, but also a harsh critic of this society.
The French Arabist Richard Jacquemond wrote his PhD on Egyptian writers and their writings in the sixties, and he also confirms my ideas on the writer which is a SUPERUSER.
Raouf
[what the hell is a superuser Raouf? I didn't know, but I linked it to a subversive-looking paper anyway Elly]