Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

Especially, practical-minded people and men of action are often inclined to disapprove of literary fiction. They consider reading creative literature as a frivolous and debilitating activity. In this respect, it is quite revealing that, for example (as I have already pointed out in an earlier essay), the great polar explorer Mawson — one of our national heroes — gave to his children the stern advice not to waste their time reading novels; instead, he instructed them to read only works of history and biography in order to grow into healthy individuals.

Allow me to dwell a short moment on this particular advice, for it reflects two very common fallacies. The first fallacy consists in failing to see that, by its very definition, all literature is in fact imaginative literature. Distinctions between genres — novels and history, poetry and prose, fiction and essay, etc. — are essentially artificial; these conventional classifications are of practical use mostly for booksellers and librarians who have to compile catalogues or arrange books on crowded shelves; otherwise, above a certain level of literary quality, they present little relevance. For the perceptive reader, indeed, Proust’s great novel is in fact a philosophical essay; Montaigne’s essays are more diverse and surprising than any novel; Gibbon’s and Michelet’s histories remain alive first and foremost as great literature; and, of course it would be ludicrous to reduce a polymorphous giant such as Shakespeare to the absurdly minor and narrow craft of playwrighting. As to the art of fiction, we have already learned that its aim is nothing less than “to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe,”[1] whereas the mission of the historian is to imagine the past — since history is believed only when a talented writer has invented it well. Novelists are the historians of the present; historians are the novelists of the past.§

The second Mawsonian fallacy results from a mistaken notion of what “health” is. On this subject, I think that Laurence Sterne provided the correct perspective in his description of a visit he made to his doctor:

— Sir, the doctor told me, your health is perfectly normal. — On hearing this, I began to rejoice, when the doctor pursued — Such a condition is exceedingly rare: it is a cause for concern and calls for extreme caution.

Since Mawson just took us to Antarctica, before leaving this particular field I might also add that I have always preferred the example of Shackleton — a much greater man. In the darkest depth of disaster, when all members of his expedition had to discard every piece of superfluous luggage, he refused to abandon his beloved copy of Browning’s collected poems. One day, some scholar should write a doctoral thesis on “The Role of Poetry in Polar Exploration”—but right now, I had better not wander too far away from my subject. My point was simply this: whatever fragile harmony we may have been able to achieve within ourselves is exposed every day to dangerous challenges and to ferocious batterings, and the outcome of our struggle remains forever uncertain. A character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa gave (what seems to me) the best image for this common predicament of ours: “Life is a shitstorm, in which Art is our only umbrella.”

This observation, in turn, brings us to the very meaning of tonight’s function — the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Any well-ordered state must naturally provide for public education, public health, public transport, public order, the administration of justice, the collection of garbage, etc. Beyond these essential services and responsibilities, a truly civilised state also ensures that, in the pungent squalls of their daily lives, citizens are not left without umbrellas — and therefore it encourages and supports the arts. The Premier’s Literary Awards are one important aspect of this enlightened policy.

The beauty of all literary awards is that they produce only winners — there can be no losers here. For this is not a competition, and in this respect it resembles more a lottery. When we buy a lottery ticket in support of some charity, we expect nothing in return. Yet, if one day we were to receive a phone call informing us that our number had just won a sports car or a holiday in Tahiti, we would be surprised — and delighted. We would be delighted precisely because of our surprise. Though it may be pleasant to obtain something after a long and hard struggle, to be given it without even having had to ask — this is pure bliss.

Without doubting the quality of his own work, a writer who receives a literary award is perfectly aware that he is very lucky indeed. Not only does he know that this honour could have gone to any other writer on the short-list, but he also knows that there are many equally deserving writers not on the short-list; and furthermore, it is quite conceivable that the most deserving writer of all did not even succeed in having his manuscript accepted for publication — it was rejected by twelve different publishers, and may have to wait another twenty years before having its true worth duly recognised.

Yet these considerations should not tarnish in the least the happiness of the winners. Ultimately lotteries are designed to benefit not their winners, but handicapped children, or guide dogs for the blind, or whatever good cause is sponsoring them. And it is the same with the literary awards: year after year, they have only one true and permanent winner, always the same — and it is literature itself, our common love, which we have all gathered here tonight to support and celebrate.

* Address to the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, 2002.

† I hope this will not now hinder the smooth progress of his canonisation.

§ These notions are developed further in an earlier essay, “Lies That Tell the Truth.”

THERE is no sublunary topic on which Samuel Johnson did not, at some time, issue a pithy and definitive statement; this particular subject is no exception, and although the Johnsonian quote is well known, it should still provide an apt starting point for our own little survey: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Boswell faithfully recorded this utterance of the master, but he was shocked. Surely Johnson said this in jest? Did his own noble and tireless activity in the service of literature not give the lie to such a cynical paradox?

Yes and no. We know, for instance, how Johnson dashed off Rasselas at stupendous speed in order to pay for his mother’s funeral. Under the pressure of financial necessity, he could display a prodigious capacity for work, but his natural inclination towards indolence was no less colossal. Later in life, when his material circumstances finally became more secure, he wrote rather little. To Boswell, who had expressed respectful puzzlement at this relative idleness, he retorted tartly: “No, sir, I am not obliged to do any more. No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life for himself.”

Yet Johnson’s attitude was not shared by all the great writers of his time. Voltaire, for instance, instead of writing in order to make money, made money in order to write. Through shrewd investments and clever financial operations, he accumulated an enormous wealth (bringing him a yearly income of £140,000) which, in turn, enabled him to acquire a splendid estate located strategically on the border between the kingdom of France and the republic of Geneva. This gave him the liberty to write and to publish as he pleased: whenever he offended censors on the one side of the border, he could find instant refuge on the other side.

Rousseau, who, for all his personal frailties, had a much nobler soul, also aimed at intellectual freedom but, unlike Voltaire, he never coveted riches. Although his books triumphed throughout Europe, in an age that ignored copyright they brought him fame but earned him hardly any royalties. In the last part of his life, he declined generous offers of patronage from the great and the powerful and opted instead for independent poverty: he made a meagre living by copying musical scores. He carefully calculated how many pages he needed to copy every day to keep his modest household afloat, and once he had done his daily quota, the rest of the time was entirely his own. In this way, he could secure both self-sufficiency and inner peace. He said: “I always considered that the condition of author is not, and cannot be, glorious and honourable, if it were also to become a paid craft. You cannot think lofty thoughts when you think for a living.”