Conghaileach
4th July 2002, 10:32
Our Writers' Failure
by John Pilger
June 26, 2002 Mid East
MIDEAST
Martin Amis represents a problem: that some of the most acclaimed and
privileged writers in the English language fail to engage with the most
urgent issues of our time.
On 1 June, the Guardian published a long essay by Martin Amis, entitled
"The voice of the lonely crowd". It was about 11 September and the role
of writers. What did Amis think about on the momentous day? He thought
he was "like Josephine, the opera-singing mouse in the Kafka story:
Sing? 'She can't even squeak.'"
By that he meant, I guess, that he had nothing to say about "the
conflicts we now face or fear", as he put it. Why not? Where was the
spirit of Orwell and Greene? Where was a modest acknowledgement of
history: a passing reflection on the impact of rapacious great power on
vulnerable societies, which are the roots of the current "terrorism"?
Amis referred rightly to the "pitiable babble" of writers following 11
September.
Most of the famous names were heard, their contributions ranging from
morose me-ism to an aggressive defence of America and its "modernity".
Not a single English writer commanding the celebrity that provides an
extraordinary public platform has written anything incisive and worthy
of our memory about the meaning and exploitation of 11 September - with
the exception, as ever, of Harold Pinter. Compare their "babble", and
their silence, with the work of the celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwish, the subject of a fine Guardian profile on 8 June by Maya
Jaggi.
Darwish is the Arab world's bestselling poet; people's poet may sound
trite, but he draws thousands to his readings, thrilling his audiences
with a lyricism that touches their lives and makes sense of power,
injustice and tragedy. In his latest poem, "State of Siege", a "martyr"
says:
I love life On earth, among the pines and the fig trees But I can't
reach it, so I took aim With the last thing that belonged to me.
Darwish's manuscripts were trampled under foot by Israeli soldiers at
the cultural centre in Ramallah where he often works. I was in this
building last month, not long after the Israelis had left. They had
defecated on the floors, and smeared shit on the photocopiers, and
pissed on books and up the walls, and systematically destroyed
manuscripts of plays and novels and hard disks. As they left, they
threw paint on a wall of children's drawings. "They wanted to give us a
message that nobody's immune - including in cultural life," says
Darwish. "Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them
hope - a political solution - they'll stop killing themselves."
Perhaps it is unfair to compare a Darwish with an Amis. One is speaking
for the crimes against his people, after all. But Amis represents a
wider problem: that some of the most acclaimed and privileged writers
writing in the English language fail to engage with the most urgent
issues of our time. Who among the collectors of Booker and Whitbread
Prizes speaks against the crimes described by Darwish - the product of
the longest military occupation in the modern era? Who, since 11
September, has defended our language, illuminating its abuse in the
service of great power's goals and hypocrisy? Who has shown that our
humane responses to 11 September have been appropriated by the masters
of terror themselves? - by Ariel Sharon and his "good friend" George W
Bush, who bombed to death at least 5,000 civilians in Afghanistan.
Consider Amis's unexplained reference to the conflicts we must now
"face or fear". The Palestinians have been facing and fearing an
occupation for more than 35 years: an atrocious stalemate sponsored by
every American administration since that of Lyndon Johnson and
reaffirmed this month by Bush himself. Since 11 September, those who
have been allowed to grind English into a series of clichés propagating
their "war on terrorism" have also supplied the Israeli regime with 50
F-16 fighter-bombers, 102 Gatling guns, 228 joint direct attack
munitions (JDAMs) and 24 Blackhawk helicopters. A batch of state-of-the
art Apache helicopters is on the way.
You may have seen the Apache on the news, firing missiles at civilian
apartment blocks in occupied Palestine. The other day, I spoke to a
group of children in Gaza. They smiled, but it was clear that their
dreams, indeed their childhood, had been despatched by Israel's attacks
on a people who, for the most part, have defended themselves with
slingshots. Among these children, almost certainly, are those who will
sacrifice, as Darwish wrote, "the last thing that belonged to me". Who
is his equivalent in the west, setting that wisdom against our
government's part in the making of this terror?
In the 1980s, Martin Amis published a valuable collection of essays on
the threat of nuclear war. Today, India and Pakistan seriously threaten
nuclear war, which is not surprising, in a world dominated by threats
since 11 September: a world of either-you-are-with-us-or-against-us, of
bomb now and talk later. What does Amis or any English writer have to
say about the great warrior against terrorism in the White House, who
says that "first strike" is now the superpower's policy and that
America "must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark
corner of the world"? This includes the nuclear option, Martin Amis,
should you still be interested.
"After 11 September," wrote Amis in the Guardian, "writers faced
quantitative change, but not qualitative change . . . They stood in
eternal opposition to the voice of the lonely crowd, which, with its
yearning for both power and effacement, is the most desolate sound you
will ever hear." Those who publish and promote such empty words,
holding the robes of English literature's current emperors, have an
urgent responsibility to hand the space to others. Our language should
be reclaimed, its Orwellian vocabulary reversed, its noble words such
as "democracy" and "freedom" protected, and its power redeployed
against all fundamentalisms, especially our own. We need to find and
publish our own Mahmoud Darwish, our own Arundhati Roy, our own Ahdaf
Soueif, our own Eduardo Galeano, and quickly.
by John Pilger
June 26, 2002 Mid East
MIDEAST
Martin Amis represents a problem: that some of the most acclaimed and
privileged writers in the English language fail to engage with the most
urgent issues of our time.
On 1 June, the Guardian published a long essay by Martin Amis, entitled
"The voice of the lonely crowd". It was about 11 September and the role
of writers. What did Amis think about on the momentous day? He thought
he was "like Josephine, the opera-singing mouse in the Kafka story:
Sing? 'She can't even squeak.'"
By that he meant, I guess, that he had nothing to say about "the
conflicts we now face or fear", as he put it. Why not? Where was the
spirit of Orwell and Greene? Where was a modest acknowledgement of
history: a passing reflection on the impact of rapacious great power on
vulnerable societies, which are the roots of the current "terrorism"?
Amis referred rightly to the "pitiable babble" of writers following 11
September.
Most of the famous names were heard, their contributions ranging from
morose me-ism to an aggressive defence of America and its "modernity".
Not a single English writer commanding the celebrity that provides an
extraordinary public platform has written anything incisive and worthy
of our memory about the meaning and exploitation of 11 September - with
the exception, as ever, of Harold Pinter. Compare their "babble", and
their silence, with the work of the celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwish, the subject of a fine Guardian profile on 8 June by Maya
Jaggi.
Darwish is the Arab world's bestselling poet; people's poet may sound
trite, but he draws thousands to his readings, thrilling his audiences
with a lyricism that touches their lives and makes sense of power,
injustice and tragedy. In his latest poem, "State of Siege", a "martyr"
says:
I love life On earth, among the pines and the fig trees But I can't
reach it, so I took aim With the last thing that belonged to me.
Darwish's manuscripts were trampled under foot by Israeli soldiers at
the cultural centre in Ramallah where he often works. I was in this
building last month, not long after the Israelis had left. They had
defecated on the floors, and smeared shit on the photocopiers, and
pissed on books and up the walls, and systematically destroyed
manuscripts of plays and novels and hard disks. As they left, they
threw paint on a wall of children's drawings. "They wanted to give us a
message that nobody's immune - including in cultural life," says
Darwish. "Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them
hope - a political solution - they'll stop killing themselves."
Perhaps it is unfair to compare a Darwish with an Amis. One is speaking
for the crimes against his people, after all. But Amis represents a
wider problem: that some of the most acclaimed and privileged writers
writing in the English language fail to engage with the most urgent
issues of our time. Who among the collectors of Booker and Whitbread
Prizes speaks against the crimes described by Darwish - the product of
the longest military occupation in the modern era? Who, since 11
September, has defended our language, illuminating its abuse in the
service of great power's goals and hypocrisy? Who has shown that our
humane responses to 11 September have been appropriated by the masters
of terror themselves? - by Ariel Sharon and his "good friend" George W
Bush, who bombed to death at least 5,000 civilians in Afghanistan.
Consider Amis's unexplained reference to the conflicts we must now
"face or fear". The Palestinians have been facing and fearing an
occupation for more than 35 years: an atrocious stalemate sponsored by
every American administration since that of Lyndon Johnson and
reaffirmed this month by Bush himself. Since 11 September, those who
have been allowed to grind English into a series of clichés propagating
their "war on terrorism" have also supplied the Israeli regime with 50
F-16 fighter-bombers, 102 Gatling guns, 228 joint direct attack
munitions (JDAMs) and 24 Blackhawk helicopters. A batch of state-of-the
art Apache helicopters is on the way.
You may have seen the Apache on the news, firing missiles at civilian
apartment blocks in occupied Palestine. The other day, I spoke to a
group of children in Gaza. They smiled, but it was clear that their
dreams, indeed their childhood, had been despatched by Israel's attacks
on a people who, for the most part, have defended themselves with
slingshots. Among these children, almost certainly, are those who will
sacrifice, as Darwish wrote, "the last thing that belonged to me". Who
is his equivalent in the west, setting that wisdom against our
government's part in the making of this terror?
In the 1980s, Martin Amis published a valuable collection of essays on
the threat of nuclear war. Today, India and Pakistan seriously threaten
nuclear war, which is not surprising, in a world dominated by threats
since 11 September: a world of either-you-are-with-us-or-against-us, of
bomb now and talk later. What does Amis or any English writer have to
say about the great warrior against terrorism in the White House, who
says that "first strike" is now the superpower's policy and that
America "must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark
corner of the world"? This includes the nuclear option, Martin Amis,
should you still be interested.
"After 11 September," wrote Amis in the Guardian, "writers faced
quantitative change, but not qualitative change . . . They stood in
eternal opposition to the voice of the lonely crowd, which, with its
yearning for both power and effacement, is the most desolate sound you
will ever hear." Those who publish and promote such empty words,
holding the robes of English literature's current emperors, have an
urgent responsibility to hand the space to others. Our language should
be reclaimed, its Orwellian vocabulary reversed, its noble words such
as "democracy" and "freedom" protected, and its power redeployed
against all fundamentalisms, especially our own. We need to find and
publish our own Mahmoud Darwish, our own Arundhati Roy, our own Ahdaf
Soueif, our own Eduardo Galeano, and quickly.