A report by Lekan Oyegoke, Professor of Literature in EnglishCONTINUED FROM'LAST'WEEKSentiment and TopicalityIN a few of the stories sheer sentimentality and topicality are the main recommendation, not art. Art works on topicality to move journalese more decisively into the region of creativity and literature. When a girl is labelled 'witch', art would attempt to suggest a credible reason for this being so. Is there perhaps something believable in the girl's character and behaviour that appears to lend credence to the false accusation' Schmaltz is no substitute for action.Similarly, humbug is no humour. There surely is a place for humour in children's literature. But the catchphrase 'we all laughed' or 'everybody laughed' is no substitute for humour. A lot of the prose writing in the competition is strewn with such phrases spoken by the narrator in the work. But, frequently, the reader can't see from the narrative itself what makes 'everybody laugh', because the attempt 'to delight' the reader is forced, pedestrian and predictable. As for the bulk of the poetry entries, one would have liked to see greater economy of language: truncated prose sentences are not the same as evocative lines of poetry. The plays submitted generally barely get off the ground, being mostly banal dialogue without much action or absurdist appeal.Homily or Literature'As for lessons to learn there are a few in quite a number of the entries; but a homily is not necessarily literature, as should seem obvious. Roman Horace (first century BC) that great writer and pragmatic theorist does not restrict the characteristics of good literature to didacticism alone but identifies other features of art such as 'decorum' and the 'purple patch' which the Neoclassic Age of English literature later pursued with fanatical imaginative zeal. John Dryden defines a play in his Essay of Dramatic Poesie (1668) as 'a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind.' As is made clear here there are other ingredients that make for good literature apart from instruction.The narrator in My Salad Days may be an adult, but the protagonist is a lad who interacts with adults and other male and female kids who are being put through early formal and informal education up to before secondary school ' being put through by their parents, guardians, teachers, missions, governments, circumstances, etc, all of which impact massively on the impressionable age. (The few photographs included in the work capture some unforgettable experiences.) So, the work is in the class of children's writing; which is to say its assumed audience is mostly children up to juvenescence. The book is an autobiography: it falls in the class of biographical literature, which continues to engage the interest of critical theory in this postmodern age.There is a fairly common supposition that an autobiographical account is made up of facts and is therefore not literature. By this reasoning Winston Churchill's My Early Life isn't literature; neither is Ak: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka. This is faulty reasoning. But how can a book of 'facts' be deemed literature'Facts And FictionFirst, a simple definition of literature is that it is experience-given-linguistic- expression. Both facts and fiction are experience; but importantly, literary theory and criticism contests the assumptions that biographical literature is made up of facts and that fiction is made up of non-facts. The point at issue is no longer whether biographical literature contains fiction, but rather to what extent is it fictional' Before the recent resurgence of critical interest in biographical literature, critical theory had maintained the position that the claim by fiction to be wholly invented material is false; so a better question to ask of fiction is, How much of the fiction is actually the experience of an author' So, generally speaking, the 'fact' in biographical literature is not wholly fact but includes fiction; the invention in fiction is not wholly invention but includes fact of experience. Poststructuralist New Historicism contests the claim to factuality of not only the historical text but all texts, including literature. Together with Poststructuralist Deconstruction, New Historicism denies the stability of a text and asserts that the textuality of facts is illusory because facts are constructible and manipulable, therefore fluid and unstable. The biographical text is not fixed in time and space.Second, assuming for the purpose of argument that an autobiography is all factual experience, and a given set of strands of factual experience is given out as raw material to two story-tellers to string together into a narrative, the outcome will be different for each story-teller. Art will account for that difference: the imaginative faculty will arrange the narrative items ' subject-matter, characterisation, dialogue, action, etc ' differently. Art accounts for the distinction between what Russian Formalism identifies as 'fabula' and 'syuzhet' in the defamiliarisation process that yields prose literature.Third, the creative stamp of art facilitates the ability of the autobiography to 'render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe'. But Conrad is not a mimetic theorist like Plato who overstates an imitational link between a literary work and the universe; he is rather a psychoanalytic writer whose works have psychological depth and sweep of vision. Conrad elaborates further in 'Preface':All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music ' which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage.Very few of the titles in the first short list of forty-four entries to the 2011 Nigeria LNG Ltd's Nigeria Prize for Literature come close to approaching the requirements of respectable art which are outlined above, in my opinion, even if one discounts the point about publisher's editorial negligence.Ailing Reading CultureThe invalided reading culture is itself shrouded in a mist of misguided diagnosis: a lot of young people and some older, can't understand why it is being said by everyone that young people don't read ' with so many examinations and qualifying tests and interviews that lie in wait for young people at every turn nowadays to prepare for in the budding academic career/vocation.'Surely, we do read!' must be the insistent response of the beleaguered young academic. But reality shows that position as incorrect. What is closer to the mark is: 'Surely, we do study!' (' and perhaps young people still study). There is a difference between 'study' and 'read' in the context of 'reading culture'. Study is an exertion that constitutes a small part of read: study meets the limited need of a discipline, usually for the purpose of mastering a subject as well as the examination which is expected to measure the extent of its mastery.So, given the multiplicity of examinations in the country, 'study' is probably doing fine. But not so, 'reading'; our concern here is more in respect of a curious neglect of literature (and language) by virtually everyone including those in the humanities. An unhealthy reading culture is when, generally speaking, there is no cordial relationship between literature and society. Language and literature are core items of culture from which no normal human being is expected to be excluded. Apart from the common denominator of language in society, life ' which literature is about, using language ' is common to all in the society. A society that treats literature with disdain is on its way to losing its grip on its language of communication because the disdainful attitude to literature erases the creative base of its language. Language ' any language ' benefits from the creative input of literature whose contents also help to broaden societal horizon of experience with rich insights. So, there is no excuse not to read literature.Recovering A Healthy Reading CultureA healthy reading culture is on the verge of extinction in the country for a number of reasons: (i) the first is the obvious much-talked-about negative influence of television culture and computer age as well as a burgeoning addictive cell phone syndrome which all continue to pillage time and attention in the postmodern age; (ii) the second is an insidious transformation of a reading public into one that has no reading culture; (iii) a third and a consequence of the preceding factors is a poverty of critical traditions.A good many people believe that a healthy reading culture will be recovered (i) by writing more literature; (ii) through increased advertisement/publicity of literary works; (iii) through more book launches; (iv)through low-cost production of literary works. Research and experience however reveal that these measures stand little chance against the ingrained anti-reading attitudes foisted on newer generations of the reading public by some of the factors outlined above. As Wilfrid Sheed correctly observes in his stimulating essay entitled 'A Thought a Day Isn't Enough', the book buying and book reading habits thrive under some form of coercion (Oyegoke). Literature can be a compulsory subject in schools at some levels, for instance, and measures introduced to ensure purchase and reading of prescribed literary works.ConclusionNigeria LNG Ltd, sponsors of the annual and currently most prestigious prize for literature in the country, must be commended for their perception and good judgement in deciding to promote literature. Literature is about language; it is also about life, so everyone is implicated: every human being uses one language or another and everybody, with no exception, is a possessor of lived experience, a participant in life, regardless of age, discipline or status. It is therefore unacceptable that the country should appear to tolerate a prolonged condition of a sickly reading culture.Nigeria LNG Ltd is playing a noble far-sighted role in supporting literature (and science) by initiating a competition that should advance literature in this country on its path of greatness, by both encouraging creativity and recovering a disappearing reading culture. For this purpose, it has looked to critical practice to define for it some respectable and enduring parameters of aesthetic quality in the literary arts through its selection of Prize winners in different categories of literature yearly. It is hoped that, to justify the confidence, which the sponsors of the Nigeria Prize for Literature repose in it, critical tradition will continue to focus on art for a determination of excellence.Works CitedConrad, Joseph (1963) The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and other Stories, Penguin: Harmondsworth.Oyegoke, Lekan (2011), 'Problematizing Knowledge', Oye: Ogun Journal of Arts vol. XVII June.Sheed, Wilfrid (1980, 1984), 'A Thought a Day Isn't Enough' International Creative Management New York: New York Company; reprinted with permission in J.C. Hodges and E.M. Whittin, Harbrace College Handbook, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
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