The writer reviews how all the novels written in Arabic have become quite similar, as if there was a mold that promised that the novel would be successful if it was implemented, which prompted many novelists to detach from their literary selves while writing and start to write texts that flow parallel to their ideas yet do not intersect with their personal literary style!
The German novelist of Romanian origin, Herta Mueller, who was on a European radio interview after receiving the Nobel Prize in 2009, answers the question about why her novels are similar in terms of the setting “Romania” and the theme “living under a dictatorial rule,” and whether the geography of the fictional work has any importance to the reader or to her:
“No. I don’t think the geographic landscape is important. That landscape or environment is necessary — and I have no other landscape other than the one I know, the one I came from. [My] literary characters reflect what happens to the human being in a totalitarian society or system. And I believe this is not a topic that I chose, but rather one that my life has chosen for me. I don’t have that freedom of choice. I cannot say: ‘I want to write about that thing, or about that other thing.’ I am bound to write about what concerns me and about the things that won’t leave me in peace.”
The importance of this quote lies in its statement of a truth that is hinted at by other writers whose works we see similarity in terms of subject matter. Many of them may see a flaw in that, as the writer and novelist is still laden with the residue and delusions of the writer who is the leader of an elite movement, or the representative of a society, or the spokesman for a group, or whoever undertakes to guide and enlighten the nation, etc. This is what makes the novelist adopt issues and topics that do not concern him, as if he were performing a job whose tasks were entrusted to him, and he became responsible for it in order to meet the needs of society, and occupy a place in its hierarchy, like a tailor who sews clothes in detail according to the sizes of others. However, the question remains: Can a novelist write from a perspective other than his own, and adopt an issue that does not concern him? Answering this question requires highlighting different axes that, in one way or another, reach the core of the question.
Writing and Audience
Reading is an individual act, and what I mean by reading here is the interactive process between the reader and the words in order to produce meaning to the reader. That is, if a group decided to do “collective” reading, then the act of reading –as we defined it– remains individual even if they all read the same book, as the process of reading the shapes of words and letters, “signifiers,” transforming them into images in the imagination, “connotations,” and linking them to each other within a narrative structure and form, is a completely individual task, not a collective one. But can the same be said about writing? Can the act of writing be isolated from the presence of a supposed reader or recipient?
The short answer is: no, it can’t. Writing for the sake of writing seems to be in vain. Everything that is written is written to be read, meaning that there is always a recipient in the mind of the writer for what is being written. However, if we reformulate the previous question in accordance with the topic of this article, we say: What is the extent of the potential reader’s influence on the writer? Does it contribute to forcing the author to take a perspective other than his own? There is a famous idea attributed to the Italian novelist Umberto Eco called the “model reader,” which is an imagined recipient capable of understanding the narrative text and interpreting it in line with the author’s intentions and expectations. However, this reader is not targeted as a pre-existing reader for whom the text is written, but rather exists as a model in the author’s mind, a model capable of decoding the different worlds in the text, and able to fill its many gaps. This reader is the result of his typical reading of the text, that is, he comes subsequent to the text and not prior to it. In other words, the author or the text is the one who creates this reader, and the reason for this is due to the open nature of the text, which is filled with simple and complex symbols (the symbol: the relationship of the “signifying” word to what it aims to achieve. “The signified”). We conclude from all of this that the existence of a potential and model reader or readers does not contradict the fact that writing is an individual act, just like reading, for semiotic reasons in origin.
Since the conversation revolves around the recipient and the audience, there is a social factor that cannot be overlooked, a factor that moves the topic to an area that we can call socio-literary, and this may influence the writer in choosing his topics and opinions and the perspective through which he views the world, especially if we take into account the collectivist nature of Arab societies, where it is difficult for their members to adopt ideas, opinions, values, and even interests that are not accepted collectively. Moreover, the cultural community and the gatherings of novelists are not exempt from this collectivist pressure, as the novelist fears for his image and seeks to polish it due to the consequent definition of his value in the hierarchy of this society, and this is what we can call “the public censor.”.
This phenomenon has meanings that are easy to deduce, including that writing novels in Arab societies has become a social practice rather than an aesthetic practice that digs into the individual’s own concepts and values, and a tool for exposing what is not said, or at least a means of creating shock and stirring stagnant water, albeit aesthetically. Also, experimentation –the use of new and unusual writing methods– in the Arabic novel is almost non-existent for fear of not being popular, and the Arabic experimental novel has almost disappeared, or should I say, it does not receive any appreciation from anyone and thus disappears. This is also an obsession that terrifies the Arab novelist who is often obsessed with the fan base from which he takes his literary position on the social and status hierarchy. There are also other reasons why the writer adopts other issues that do not concern him, just for their popularity and acceptance by the masses, and to write from a perspective that he does not understand or care about.
The Thematic and the Artistic Aspect in the Novel
We can look at any work of fiction as divided into two aspects: a thematic aspect related to the content of the novel, and an artistic aspect related to the manner and style through which the novel dealt with that topic. There is a great focus on the thematic aspect in the Arabic novel, forgetting that the novel is ultimately more of an art than a subject, and it is not difficult to bring up many of those novels that entered thematically difficult areas to prove the boldness of the proposition by dealing with the forbidden trio: religion, sex, and politics, and this may play a role in the writer’s relationship with the audience, as mentioned previously. However, the topic in itself does not create a novel in the artistic and literary sense, but rather creates a work called “Social Commentary”, that is, a work that does not invoke an aesthetic artistic or literary style, does not use symbolization, simile, approach, alienation, theme, or any artistic style that deepens the recipient’s aesthetic experience of the work. Rather, this is replaced by a direct presentation of the topic – often popular – that is to be addressed. One of the most famous examples of such artistic works is the famous series Tash Ma Tash and Selfie, as they criticize government agencies and some social practices and phenomena. This extremism in interest in the subject of the novel or the artistic work in general contributes greatly to forcing the author to adopt ideas dissimilar to his own for the purpose of dealing with a subject. Consequently, the work comes out as a dull and inauthentic image based on the popularity of the subject or phenomenon itself and not the artistic method in which it was presented.
The extremism of interest in the subject is matched by another extremism, which is interest in the arts alone without the presence of a subject. The result is a work that has aesthetic value but is empty or is characterized by a lot of absurdity despite being closer to the essence of the artistic and aesthetic novel, like how the author would be infusing his work with multiple artistic methods for the sole purpose of using them: an overlapping narrative (a novel within a novel), diversifying narrative angles, metafiction, temporal distortion, etc. But the author of this type of novel is not influenced by factors that force him to take another perspective, and therefore it is outside the scope of this article.
If the novelist is unable to address a topic and perspective that he does not identify with and take up an issue that does not concern him, then he cannot leave the framework of his identities and the environmental and social elements around him. This places the novelist and the Arab novel –specifically –in another crisis, a crisis that branches out into aspects that can be limited to political failure in the Arab world, religious and national identity, and the decline or lack of philosophy. These three aspects surround the themes of the Arab novel. The ongoing political failure raises the question of the possibility of writing artistic novels outside of this crisis, and the identity confined between religion and ethnicity in the region limits the novelist’s ability to see himself with identities that spring from different roots, which in turn limits the discussed issues and the writer’s expression of himself as an individual, not as a group. Finally, the absence of philosophy and philosophical discussion eliminates any attempt to use the novel as a tool to represent many philosophical theories and ideas in an artistic and aesthetic form, and it (the novel) is an effective tool for that. These elements motivate the novelist, directly or indirectly, to take popular social phenomena as his subject.
The Reader as a Part of the Equation
Since the conversation revolves around the author and the text, it would be a mistake not to focus on the reader, which constitutes an important element in the meaning-forming trinity. Indeed, it is the most important in some critical schools and theories, as its absence makes the text merely a pile of papers and ink on a shelf. However, reading, like writing, is an art, and the reader of the text has a responsibility to understand and analyze the text. Just as there is the bad novelist who writes in a direct way, there is also the lazy reader who does not want to glance behind the surface of the text, and both the bad novelist and the lazy reader complement each other in an interactive process. The first writes what is popular in a dull and inauthentic style through a perspective that he does not understand, and the other approves of it for its ease and public acceptability, and each of them continues to create the other within the process of producing consumer art.
In his book “An Experiment in Criticism,” Clive Lewis presents the characteristics of a good reader of a text through comparing the recipient of texts to the recipient of paintings and music. In short, the reader must surrender himself to the text, not approach it loaded with presupposed ideas, specific artistic methods, or even other novels and previous works that he liked – expecting the novel at hand to be like them. Rather, the reader must come with an open mind to receive any literary reading experience that the novel offers among its pages.
The novelist is thus kept within the limits of his life experiences according to his identities and what perspective he belongs to. He writes about what he cares about according to his vision without the need to pretend to be someone else, or to rely on a model reader who surrenders himself to the text –rather than judging it- in order to have a reading experience through which he tries to go outside his comfort zone and a moment of amazement within he finds within the folds of the text that will expand his perspective and horizon.
Conclusion
All Arabic novels have become similar, as if there was a mold that promised the success of the novel if it was implemented, as the literature and arts of popular and popular culture were trying to promote, which prompted many novelists to detach from their literary selves while writing and start to write texts that flow parallel to their ideas yet do not intersect with their personal literary style. They think that writing novels about issues and topics that concern them is biographical writing that exposes the atrophy of their imagination, and they forget that writing novels is an artistic work that does not accept imitation and does not accept anything less than originality, and that it is a unique creative work that accommodates various methods of experimentation and diversification as long as the reader is open to absorbing what is different from him and what he wasn’t used to it. One of the most important elements of the development of the Arabic novel is for its writers to embrace their literary selves and gain confidence in experimenting with new creative methods in expressing the issues that concern them, even if these issues are individual and concern the writer himself and no one else.
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