WRITERS NEED READERS WHO NEED PUBLISHERS WHO NEED WRITERS AND READERS …
By Suniti Namjoshi
Presentation on the panel, Feminist Control over the Means of Production 20th Oct.
FiLiA Conference 2019.
Suniti Namjoshi
I wrote this poem some years ago.
To Be a Poet
Saying that this was what it felt like to put
the right foot forward, and then the left, saying
that this was the taste of morning porridge,
that of milk, and this other of a niggling
but persistent pain, saying —
that, I suppose, was what was distinctive —
being unable to keep my mouth shut,
my mind from working. But a poet lives
like any other creature, talks perhaps
more than is normal, her doom no brighter,
nor her death less dismal than any other.
(The Fabulous Feminist, Zubaan, Spininfex, 2012)
A poem rises between the writing of it and the reading of it. For a poem to live both writer and reader are needed. And for a poem to be read, a publisher is needed. The process can be idealistic or commercial or both. For some writing is a vocation, not a career. Reading is engaging with a text, not mindlessly consuming it. And publishing is a service to society, not a means of making millions. But it’s the language of commerce that usually governs the three-way relationship between writer, reader and publisher; and it’s in trying to produce good work that is commercially viable that difficulties arise.
This then affects what gets published and what doesn’t. Years ago I was asked to speak at a Women in Publishing Conference. Here’s the fable I wrote for the occasion.
The One-eyed Monkey Goes into Print
It was winter. The sun was shining like anything. It was pleasant, it was cool. The temperature was about seventy degrees. The one-eyed monkey was feeling mellow and middle-aged. ‘I have travelled,’ she said. ‘I have seen the world. I have lost my tail, six of my teeth and one eye. I have lived. It’s time I wrote down what I think about it.’ But her friends, the crocodiles, appeared not to have heard.
‘Ahem,’ she said loudly. ‘I’m going to write a book.’
‘What for?’ murmured one crocodile and went on dozing.
‘What about?’ muttered the other crocodile and went on basking.
She ignored the first crocodile and addressed the second exclusively.
‘About me,’ she said strongly.
‘Oh,’ replied the crocodile. ‘Will I be in it?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘Why would a book about monkeys have crocodiles in it?’ But she saw that his eyes were beginning to close, so she added quickly, ‘But I’ll put you in it.’
‘Me as I am?’ he asked, stretching out his tail luxuriously.
‘No, you as you are in relation to me.’
‘Oh.’ He sounded dubious.
‘And you have to help me,’ she put in quickly.
‘Help you to write it?’ He sounded interested.
‘No, no, I can do that. To tell you the truth I’ve already done it. I want you to help me get it published.’
‘Oh.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Well, I have some contacts with the animal rights people. Send it to them and see what they think.’
So she wrote to them and they wrote back that her title was lacking in human interest. That’s what makes a book sell. People are interested in people, you know, they pointed out perfectly pleasantly. But they enclosed the addresses of a few publishers who were non-mainstream.
The one-eyed monkey had a crisis of conscience. Should she change the title? She changed it. It had been called The Life and Leanings of a One-eyed Monkey. She went through the text. Wherever the word ‘monkey’ appeared she put in ‘blank’. The Life and Leanings of a One-eyed Blank. She said it out loud. She persuaded herself that it had a ring to it. ‘I speak in parables,’ she told herself bravely. ‘The intelligent will know how to read in between the blanks and will appreciate my true, my native, my deliciously malicious monkey wit.’
She sent it off to the publishers. Some wrote back and some misplaced it. Those who wrote back told her bluntly, ‘The syntax slithers and the vision is monocular. Who is talking to whom, may we ask? We regret to inform you that your work is entirely lacking in clarity.’ The one-eyed monkey felt disheartened. She brooded for days. Then she re-submitted the manuscript with the word ‘monkey’ typed in clearly. And the miracle happened. A smaller publisher wrote to her saying that they were intrigued by her manuscript and would like to publish it. But please, they begged her to remember that an audience of exclusively one-eyed monkeys was hard to find; could she help to pay for it?
The one-eyed monkey tore her fur in utter despair. Her friends, the crocodiles, happened to notice.
‘Oh, all right,’ they said. ‘We’ll help you to rewrite it.’
‘But it mustn’t be about monkeys and it mustn’t be about crocodiles.’
‘No,’ they agreed. They made suggestions and the monkey rewrote it.
In the end the book achieved a moderate success under the title The Amorous Adventures of a One-eyed Minx. ‘Is it autobiographical?’ the reviewers wondered. ‘No,’ declared the monkey quite truthfully, ‘I do not recognise myself in it.’ But her publishers beamed. They patted her back. ‘Art transforms,’ they murmured kindly.
(The Fabulous Feminist, Zubaan, Spininfex, 2012)
Even though times have changed and there are more women writers and women readers as well, we are often forced into a questionable compromise. The publishers are forced to publish only what they feel they have a reasonable chance of selling, otherwise they would go bankrupt and what would be the point of that? The writers are forced to write what might appeal. This may not be their best work, but otherwise they would be silenced and what would be the point of that? And the readers? Well, they can only buy what they can afford to buy and have time to read. There are, after all, other priorities.
And so there’s a problem. There has always been a problem and it’s not one that is peculiar to women writers and feminist publishing. It’s a problem that the health care services face, that the universities face and the Arts face. The universities are now expected to be money making machines, they have to pay for themselves and make a profit. Anything that doesn’t make money is considered not worthwhile. Many university departments have been closed down for just that reason.
We work within a certain kind of patriarchy, and that creates problems for everyone, and particular ones for women. Here’s a fable from Feminist Fables about writing within a patriarchal tradition.
The Female Swan
And then there was the duckling who aspired to be a swan. She worked very hard, studied the literature of swans, the growth of their swanhood, their hopes and ideals, and their time-honoured customs. In the end, even the swans acknowledged that this duck had rendered them a signal service. They threw a banquet (no ducks invited) and gave her a paper, which stated clearly that thereafter she would be an Honorary Swan. She was highly gratified, as were some of the ducks, who began to feel that there was hope for them.. Others just laughed. ‘A duck is a duck,’ they said, ‘and ought not to aspire to be a swan. A duck, by definition is inferior to swans.’ This seemed so evident that they forgot the matter and paddled off. But there were still others who were angered by this. ‘Those ducks do not think,’ they said. ‘But as for the learned one, she has betrayed us to the cause of swans. She is not longer a duck. She is a swan.’ This too seemed evident. They turned to Andersen. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there are a great many ducks and great many duck ponds.’ But that didn’t help, so he tried again. ‘The things is,’ he said, ‘you are beginning to question the nature of ducks and the values of swans.’ ‘Yes,’ they said. ‘We know,’ they said, ‘But where will it end?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Andersen. ‘You’re learning to fashion your own fables.’
(Feminist Fables , Spinifex, 1993)
Just as we have struggled to fashion our own fables, we have had to struggle to control the means of production. And it is this struggle that the feminist publishing houses have engaged in over the years. It has not been an easy task.
We’re living in a world in which profitability is what makes things worthwhile. And that which doesn’t make money is considered worthless. In a way it was always so, but at least lip service was paid to the care of children, to the nursing of the sick, and to efforts at arriving at a more egalitarian society and producing good work for its own sake. Now even that is gone; so that it has become socially acceptable for politicians to behave badly, and to successfully appeal to what is worst in us rather than to what is best in us. Really good work in the Arts is often put down as elitist. And attempts at consciousness raising are sneered at for being ‘politically correct’. Putting money into the care of human beings, into our health, our education, our moral and intellectual welfare, is not a profit-making enterprise. It is not a means to an end, it is an end in itself. At the moment the burden of this rests on the shoulders of those who put their time and energy and what money they have into it. They make this sacrifice, but it is not right that it should have to be a sacrifice, nor is it enough.
What can we do? I don’t know. Insist that governments put money into human welfare? Make people see that the way we are carrying on is not in our interests? We are a perverse species, and we seem hell bent on destroying not only ourselves, but the rest of creation and the planet as well.