Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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News of a pronouncement

By Youssef Rakha

Are epoch-making pronouncements cultural events? If so, the expatriate literary critic Sabri Hafez has the greatest claim to be centre of attention this week. In an interview with Mahmoud El-Wardani (Akhbar Al-Adab, 24 September) he captured an image that had been forming, gradually and tentatively, for years. Defending the generation of the 1970s (erroneously so-called), El-Wardani played the devil's advocate. But this did not prevent Hafez from finally uttering, with click-click precision, what in recent years has been obvious but only partially and vaguely stated: "I consider [the writers of the 1990s] to be a generation... If the generation of the 1960s effected a transformation in Arabic novelistic discourse, going beyond what had been achieved by the generation of Naguib Mahfouz and Youssef Idris in his wake, then the generation of the 1990s deserves credit for the next transformation to occur. Because writers who emerged between the 1960s and the 1990s produced a continuation of, or variation on, the achievement of the 1960s, while one can argue that the generation of the 1990s concluded a narrative rift with all that had come before..."

One can take issue with Hafez on several counts, the cheering veracity of his statements notwithstanding. Compared to the poetic endeavours showcased in such "new writing" forums as Al-Garad (now defunct) and Al-Kitaba Al-Okhra, the novels to which Hafez inexplicably restricts his analysis (he mentions, among other practitioners of the genre, Miral El-Tahawi and the late Wael Ragab), comprise only a small, arguably less revolutionary portion of the 1990s' literary output. Failing to take account of short stories and non fiction, Hafez perpetuates the vicious circle through which an arbitrary predilection for novels and poetry has been asserting and reasserting itself. In so doing he ignores the possibility of a hitherto undiscovered literary genre currently doing battle with the novel, the poem and the short story, pre-established media in which such an undiscovered genre, in embryonic form, might be found. 1990s writers might sound different to all their predecessors, but how does the content and appeal of their work compare? In common with the overwhelming majority of commentators, Hafez simply posits the collective vs. individual consciousness scenario. With the possibility of changing the world perceived as virtually nil, writers now concentrate on the self, particularly the individual body vis-à-vis the world as it is. They ignore -- and so, alas, does Hafez -- the question of whether or not readers will actually be interested.

Aware of this tension, Hafez attempts to justify and rationalise stylistic quirks, many of which are mere affectations adopted to qualify the writer as an intellectual and hence beyond reproach. But it is exactly such quirks that have prevented not only the generation of the 1990s, but all contemporary writing since the time of Idris (with which Hafez begins his novelistic hagiography) from reaching out to a readership -- any readership. Literature thus caves in on itself, becoming irritatingly self-referential and increasingly inaccessible.

How far can one believe the standard claim, repeated here by Hafez, that it is the readership that must transform its understanding of fiction in order for what, translated literally, would be called "the crisis of reception" to come to an end? How might a book read by only a handful of writers and critics be truly successful? And what is the point of writing that lives and dies on the bookshelves of the literati? If the 1960s' transformations robbed people of their faith in reading, will the progeny of the 1990s restore that faith?

Otherwise the cultural press had little more to offer. A sort of Swedish Academy whistle-blower sheds critical light on the internal dynamics of the Nobel Award in literature; novelist Son'alla Ibrahim is extensively interviewed about his latest novel, Warda (in the 24 September issues of Al-Hayat and Al-Wasat, respectively). Yet such events seem like pebbles hurled sporadically into a stagnant pond. The one highlight worth mentioning is Colloquial Arabic poet Abdel-Rahman El-Abnoudi's comprehensive treatise on the oral quatrains of Upper Egypt, published in the aforementioned issue of Akhbar Al-Adab. Discovering a connection between the Upper Egyptian quatrains (erroneously but widely attributed to a non-poetic historical character, Ibn Arous) and the work of a Moroccan folk poet, Abdel-Rahman Al-Majdoub, El-Abnoudi illuminates the vibrant cultural world of the Sa'id through the ages, elucidating the assumptions and practices of its singers, its poets, its performers and, notably, its gypsies, the Halab. An untimely contribution, it nonetheless provides an inspiring antidote to a prevalent and slightly ominous quietude.

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