Does journalism affect capability of writers?

In his classic novel, Lost Illusions, the French writer Honoré de Balzac chronicles the life of Lucien, a talented but finicky poet and novelist from the provinces, who goes to Paris in search of literary fame, but poverty drives him to seek solace in journalism.

He fails to steady himself against the waves of treachery in the sea of journalism and ends up a bitterly failed writer.

Reading this text makes one wonder why professor Taban Lo Liyong accused East Africa of being a literary desert yet when you read our newspapers you come across many talented and exciting journalists who can easily come up with brilliant works of literature, but have not done so.

All they do is waste their potential covering our gloomy politics, drab entertainment stories, sports, business, and such, and shroud themselves with veils of complacency in newsrooms thinking that their mission is done.

 Low regard for books

My former university professor Lawrence Njoroge used to narrate to us sophomores how West Africans had a low regard for books written by East Africans.

They believe that no worthy writer can come out of this region where small-minded, uneducated journalists colour their dour stories by only quoting “ancient philosophers and dead poets.”

That explains the virulent attacks on the late professor Ali Mazrui by West African scribes when he wrote The Trial of Christopher Okigbo.

They could not imagine that some East African neophyte could put to trial one of their greatest poets.

It is sad that until now, few of our writers have taken up this literary insult and avenged our collective honour by offering masterpieces that shame our brothers from western Africa.

Others are contented with the shallow comforts of the newsrooms, reclining on their armchairs, figuring out how to pen the next piece about our corrupt parliamentarians or Vera Sidika’s lightened skin.

Of course an ancient philosopher or dead poet will be quoted somewhere for the piece to be complete.

 Political writer

Our best novelist to date, Ngugi Wa Thion’go, started his career at Daily Nation as a political writer in the 1960s, but eventually branched to serious literary work.

Even as a young journalist, he and Mazrui were already asking President Jomo Kenyatta if they could pen his memoirs.

If Ngugi lacked such a vision, he could have ended his career as a senior sub-editor somewhere, like some of his controversial contemporaries, and not written the celebrated Petals Of Blood or the acclaimed Weep Not Child.

But apart from Ngugi, our other prominent writers have come from professions far away from newsrooms.

Think of Grace Ogot, Margaret Ogola, Yusuf Dawood, Kinyanjui Kombani, John Kiriamiti, Muthoni Garland, Marjorie Oludhe-Macgoye, the list is endless.

African writers of the golden generation — the immediate post-independence era — all honed their skills in newsrooms or broadcast studios. Chinua Achebe worked as a radio journalist prior to writing his magnum opus Things Fall Apart, Wole Soyinka edited the greatest and most thoroughgoing journal of our time called Transition, Okot P Bitek was in a class of his own as a journalist and critic...all these celebrated writers had a background in journalism.

However, they looked far into the horizon like the proverbial giraffe, and stretched their talents to literature.

Talking about Transition, I do not think there is any of those early journalists who contributed for that noted journal that brought a marvelous renaissance in African journalism, who did not move on to reap great success in literature.

The question is, if those early journalists, saddled by a nauseating post-independence hangover and fighting repressive regimes, could dream of producing literary works that shook the common belief among Western scholars that Africans cannot write illuminating fiction, why not the current generation that enjoys a free environment and technology to aid research?

There is an interesting and fashionable trend among the current crop of journalists, of rushing into writing biographies of political heavy weights or corporate ne’er-do- wells, who can pay, or whose names can generate sales. A few weeks ago, we were treated to a biography of the president which a critic rightly dismissed as a “study of how not to pen a memoir.”

I hear there are others to be churned out within the year as politicians compete on who can have the liveliest, juiciest and most illustrious story to tell.

Of course writing memoirs is not a bad thing.

In fact it should be encouraged.

But the level of research and honesty that is put into these works should be above board, so as to give readers a true and dignified account of the subject. It should not be a mere public relations stunt.

Back to my point.

Why are our pens so idle in newsrooms, just scribbling gossip instead of being put into better use producing some classic that is to be remembered for eons?

I think that is because our revered columnists, humourists, satirists, critics are all afraid to try to venture into the tiring world of literature. It is intellectual laziness by all accounts.

 Asserted his authority

I am glad that some journalists have ably followed the footsteps of Binyavanga Wainaina who asserted his authority in the early years of the millennium by winning the Caine Prize for African Writing.

Tony Mochama is a great example of a scribe who easily transverses both the literary and journalistic worlds.

His poetry and short stories are a joy to read.

We also have the indefatigable Nganga Mbugua. There is also Billy Kahora, Peter Kimani and the astute Ken Walibora.

All dazzling journalists whose ability to churn out literary works is unequaled.

I have also woefully noted that few of our journalists identify with any of our leading literary movements.

You might think that such movements do not exist, but they do.

 Mainstream media

And yet you will be surprised that few of our journalists working in mainstream media houses know about these movements.

An editor I talked to was of the opinion that most of the correspondents he works with write badly and are not well informed because they do not read.

“You cannot expect people who can barely construct proper sentences for newspaper stories to write serious fiction,” he averred.

The ancient poet Petrarch ridiculed scribes who spent years in monasteries blindly copying great works from antiquity.

He urged such scribes to learn from those works and produce their own.

It is true that journalists should yearn to produce more refined works than the political and entertainment gossip they are used to.